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help you do things easier or better. Slow down and have a good giggle—or cry—with a friend. If you can’t visit, at least stay in touch with a heartfelt note or card saying how much you value their friendship.
“It’s OK That I’m Too Busy—Everyone’s Too Busy”
    Do not pass go! This is not an Olympic event you need to train for, and there is no great award or endorsement deal if you win the “I’m busier than you” race. Just because the world is busy moving at warp speed around you doesn’t mean it’s good or right for you. It’s difficult to
not
feel the need to get competitive with being busy. It takes attention and effort to
not
succumb to the busyness plague and spread it around.
    It only takes one person to be the calm in the center of the rush, the voice of reason that says “no” to more busyness, or the smile that lifts someone else’s heart. It’s far nobler to stand out for your sensibility than for your speed. You’re bright—why couldn’t you be the first in your group with a new, less-busy, and more relaxed lifestyle? You’ll actually be living a green lifestyle—natural, sustainable, and reducing the negative impact on health.
“At Least I’m Not Bored”
    Incorrect! Parents say that if they don’t keep their kids busy, they will get bored and sit around eating junk and playingvideo games. You think that you are staying away from boredom by being chronically busy. Busy and bored can be different descriptions of the same problem—feeling like you aren’t completely engaged with high-quality experiences. These are mental processes that loop each other like a Venn diagram.
    Filling every minute with activity and planning every day to accomplish the most doesn’t leave much room for wonder, serendipity, chance, and just plain magic. You need to create space, or gaps, in your activity continuum. Space spares processing resources in your brain to be open to a brilliant solution. Space invites serendipity and unexpected blessings by allowing you to be more aware of your surroundings.
You’ve Taken Responsibility, Now Take a Bow!
    I believe that you have just done a very courageous act—you’ve taken responsibility for your busyness by closely examining your reasons for being so busy. Bravo! You may have also discovered that some of your reasons are actually excuses, and that some of your excuses are actually myths. Your next heroic and spirited act is to declare that you don’t want or need the stress that your busyness is causing you. Read the next chapter to find out which of your physical symptoms and emotional warning signs are pointing to dangerous stress levels and learn a quick, easy, five-minute first aid for beating stress. This is your life, and you’re making it better.

Chapter 3
The Dangers of Being Too Busy
    Nothing can bring you peace but yourself
.
    â€”Ralph Waldo Emerson
    Being busy may be a necessary part of your job and your life, but being too busy has more than just social consequences. As you’ll discover in this chapter, it’s not the busyness itself that ends up getting the best of you, it’s the stress that comes with the territory that proves to be most problematic. If you keep up the hectic, action-packed pace that probably led you to pick up this book, inevitably you will begin feeling the physical and mental signs of stress. That’s right, my friends: being too busy is bad for your health. When you start to feel trapped by your lifestyle, you’re in the “busyness danger zone.”
Pat and Dawn
    This is the tale of two ladies. As in Charles Dickens’s
A Tale of Two Cities
, it begins with the best of times and the worst of times, so to speak. Dawn and Pat have similar full-time positions as retirement community managers across town from each other. Each has a husband with a full-time job, and they have children of