Doing v Being

“What matters isn’t whether you’re keeping up, but what exactly you’re keeping up with.” - Oliver Burkeman, 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

We live our lives in a near constant state of doing, yet, we call ourselves Human Beings.

Doing and being are mirror opposite states of existence. This paradox lies at the heart of our existence and begs some exploration. 

Doing Being

Future-focused Present-focused

Achievement-based Experience-based

Externally validated Internally fulfilling

Effortful           Effortless

Leads to burnout Leads to balance

We rarely stop to consider: What is all this Doing for? And how can we shift toward a balance that allows space to simply be?

Doing is easy! 

Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt says we live in a WEIRD culture (Western Educated Individual Rich Democratic.) One that gives us little choice but to join this race of doing. 

Doing is so deeply ingrained, it’s how we start most of our conversations. “How are you doing?” An invitation to talk about just how busy we are.

Or meeting someone new…

”So what do you do?”  An immediate, if subconscious, assessment of the value someone contributes.

We learn at a young age that we need to get good grades, to go to a good school, to get a good job, to get an attractive partner, and get a good house…

The message on the importance of “being” is completely drowned out. By adulthood, doing becomes an identity, and being is an afterthought. 

The promise of all this doing is so that we can BE happy. Right? 

But when?

We get so used to doing that even when we’ve got everything we need to be happy, it’s not enough. There’s always something more to do. 

But this endless doing isn’t just externally imposed—it’s also fueled by something deeper within us, often without our awareness.

 Chasing Meaning

Doing is a constant chase of something outside of ourselves for happiness. 

We think we’re consciously chasing a goal to create fulfillment but subconsciously, we may actually be running from something that creates the need in the first place.

As kids, we have no control over the experience of our lives.

Our egos don’t form until our teenage years, so, as Carl Jung says, our perception of our selves is “I am as I am treated” 

We all receive messages from the world that are distorted through this lens of our young minds. We don’t realize how powerfully these messages are encoded in our subconscious. 

At age seven, my parents divorced and soon after that my dad moved across the country. By middle school, he disappeared completely. 

I buried the pain under an avalanche of accomplishment. 

For years, I convinced myself that my experience made me stronger. That it gave me an example of how not to be. But deep down, the message I absorbed was: ‘I am not enough.’

All of our adult brains are great at explaining away our childhood pain.

But our childhood selves are alive and well in us. Critically, I realized when I was at my worst as an adult, it was that younger part of psyche in control. 

That’s the power of our subconscious programming. We’re all running on a program we didn’t write.

However, through an intentional cultivation and recalibration of “being” into our lives, we can start to rebalance, and often, begin to heal those wounds.

Centered in Being

This is not a rallying cry against doing. I’m not advocating living a life of meditation like a buddhist monk in a forest monastery. 

I like doing! I like succeeding! 

If doing and being are opposite ends of the spectrum, It’s finding balance between them. Knowing that the world will always be pulling us to the the extreme end of doing.

It’s about pausing to reflect where we are on that spectrum. 

I had everything in my 40’s and it wasn’t enough. All of the externally validated “doing” would never be enough to create true happiness. 

It wasn’t until I shifted from constant doing, externally, to being, internally, that my eyes began to open.

When I created space to pause and reflect. 

When I defined my values and gained clarity on what was important about them. And how I came to have those them in the first place.

With that clarity, I was able to reframe all that doing to see if it was driving me closer to, or further away from, who, how and what I wanted “to be.”

Ways In to Being

It’s hard to convince someone, especially younger people, the truth of this earned wisdom. Slowing down is the antithesis of all the messages we’ve internalized.

This is why hardship and adversity are often the gateway into this understanding. They have a way of shattering the ego’s illusion of control. 

Ego thrives in the world of doing. Recoils at the boundaryless world of being. 

Being is the way of our soul. A word you won’t hear talked about much in the halls of education or business. 

For one, you can’t measure it. You can’t optimize it. Can’t improve it. Heck, you can’t even really prove it exists.

But we know it does. We feel it. 

When we walk in nature, we sense it. Connection to something bigger and all around us. 

When we got lost in play with friends. When we feel our hearts swell looking at the people we love. 

When we slow down and take a minute to appreciate the small moments of beauty and joy that surround us. 

When we are quiet and stop moving.

When we close our eyes and listen to our breath. The bridge between our inner and outerworlds, our egos and our souls.

The tug of war between doing and being is easiest to see here. 

For the instant you focus on your breath, thoughts of doing will interrupt you. 

And almost universally people say  ”I’m terrible at meditation! I can’t DO it!” 

The irony is that is exactly what mediation is! The practice of observing your thoughts and returning to your breath/mantra/etc…over and over. That’s it!

There’s nothing really at all to do but sit.

It is precisely because we find it so hard to sit and do nothing but observe and be with our thoughts, that we so desperately need it. 

Start with Awareness

Take a moment to reflect how often your switch is stuck in the “doing” position.

Can you create one minute a day to simply be? Maybe right now?

When we do force ourselves to slow down, even for a few deep breaths, we feel ourselves relax. We feel our systems slowing down. We can begin to reset. 

As we cultivate this place of calm centeredness, and our ability to access it, we unlock our true power—our curiosity, compassion, courage, confidence, and creativity.

These aren’t the results of endless doing; they emerge from the space we allow ourselves to simply be!

-Coach Kris

P.S. - Yoga Nidra is a relaxing and highly restorative way to simply “be.” Give this a try and see what comes up!