At the risk of sounding like a broken down record here, life is busier than ever for more people than ever before, is it not?  People are rushing around, barely looking up from their smartphones even when crossing the street.  It’s almost as though we are all terrified at the prospect of not keeping up with the latest social media marketing posting tool or not being up to date with world events precisely at the moment as they are unfolding or not having that precious information at our fingertips that could just make our lives better in general.  It’s all madness!  We are quite literally living in a society that is more depressed than ever before, more disconnected and disengaged than ever before and yet we have more devices to help us communicate than ever before.  Why is this??

Now I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever.  But what I do know is that people are quite simply cramming in more and it’s causing anxiety and overwhelm and stress.  I know – I’ve been there and done it myself!  When you juggle too many things, and a ball or two drops, it’s difficult to keep the others in the air.  And things do invariably go wrong and often will.  Usually at the worst possible time.

So why are we doing this?  FOMO is enormous now and fast becoming a huge issue.  People are thirsting for knowledge more than ever before in history.  Everyone is turning to devices for answers to questions and can have those answers within seconds thanks to good old Google.  So we become impatient when we can’t get an answer quickly.  We become annoyed when we can’t have what we want.  We do more online like paying bills, buying goods and making transactions so that even waiting in line somewhere is becoming intolerable.  Look at how many stores are hiring security guards these days.

Depressing enough for you?  So what is the solution?  It’s simple – simplify.  Do you remember a time before Facebook, Reddit, E-Bay and even e-mail?  We did actually manage to exist.  Quite well.  What is so important than we need to sleep less, eat more rubbish than we ever have before and exercise less in order to cram more in every single day?  I’m seeing a lot of people turning up late for meetings and then rushing off when it’s over.  People forgetting orders or getting them wrong.  Even people disconnecting from building relationships because of a lack of time.  Have we got it all backwards?

I think so.  We need to go back to the simple stuff.  Meditate.  Spend time in nature.  Drink plenty of water.  Laugh more.  Exercise more (it is the most underused anti-depressant there is).  Eat better.  Simple stuff, right?  But we all seem to do a very good job at putting this most basic stuff on the backburner in favour of sitting in front of a screen for longer.  And for what?  It’s not like our incomes are soaring because housing affordability is at its lowest ebb.

I challenge you to go back to basics.  Spend time every day reading.  Walking outside.  Watching the clouds.  Meditate.  Exercise.  Smell the roses.  Watch a sunrise and/or sunset.  Drink plenty of fresh, clean water and eat heaps of fresh, raw foods as much as possible.  Let’s stop the overwhelm, the anxiety, the depression, the craziness.  Let’s create a movement.  Life wasn’t meant to be complicated – we just make it so.