You Don't Have To Be Productive All The Time!

Are you constantly trying to be productive? Is it difficult for you to relax or enjoy yourself without feeling guilty or ashamed? If so, this talk can help you to recognize you really don't need to be productive all the time.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Noah Elkrief and today I want to tell you that you don't need to be productive.

I'll say that again,

You don't need to be productive in every moment of your life.

How does it feel for you when I say that?

So much online is how to be more productive,

How to stop procrastinating,

How to get more done.

But what if you didn't actually have to be productive in every moment?

What if being productive was counterproductive?

What does being productive even mean?

Being productive sort of means making progress towards some sort of goal.

So if your goal was to be the strongest man,

Then being productive would be spending time working out and spending time working or spending time swimming or hanging out with friends would be unproductive.

If your ultimate goal was to make money,

Then any moment you're doing something that helps you make money is being productive and any moment you are not doing something that helps you make money is unproductive.

So now we're in agreement on what productive is.

It's all relative towards a particular goal.

So what are your goals?

What are your intentions?

What do you want?

Why are you alive?

Why are you in this body breathing?

Really why?

You know that's an ongoing exploration for most of us.

But what I invite you here into today is sort of separating the means from the goal.

So if you believe you want success more than anything or you believe you need to be productive all the time towards success,

Wealth,

Something like this.

Why do you want success or wealth?

What do you hope to get from it?

Like in 50 years,

30 years,

20 years,

What do you hope to feel when you have success or wealth?

Many people when I ask this question and when I've explored it within myself in the past is I hope that finally I can rest.

I can feel relaxation.

I can feel free.

I can feel worthy.

I can feel enough.

I can feel happy.

And so when these are our answers,

Which they usually are,

The question is or sort of the conclusion,

The understanding that can come from it is actually what I want most is happiness and success is the means to get there.

Wealth is the means to get there.

Happiness,

Joy,

Freedom,

Relaxation,

Whatever version of that matters most for you.

So success or wealth or one of these types of things isn't the goal in and of itself.

We are using that as a means to help us get something else.

So right here,

Right now,

Are you allowed to be unproductive?

Are you allowed to rest looking at the stars?

Are you allowed to enjoy looking at the leaves dancing in the wind?

Are you allowed to hang out with friends?

Are you allowed to watch Netflix?

Are you allowed to,

I don't know,

Spend two hours cooking?

Are you allowed to do something that is enjoyable but yet unproductive,

Seemingly?

You see,

When we do something enjoyable now,

We're skipping the middleman.

So when we're trying to be productive forever,

We're often doing things we don't like to do,

Hoping one day it will get us success or wealth,

Which will one day get us happiness.

But we can save ourselves a lot of time and trouble if we simply just choose for happiness now.

Choose for relaxation now.

Choose for what opens our heart now.

How does that feel for you?

What comes up for you?

Now for many of us,

We also don't want success or wealth.

We know that we want to feel good enough.

We want to love ourselves.

We want to feel happy.

So then we have to be productive towards feeling happy,

Productive towards feeling worthy.

So that might look like trying to be healthier.

So going to the gym,

Working out,

Doing yoga.

You might be doing meditation,

Healing yourself,

Disbelieving your thoughts or some other sort of self-help or spiritual practice.

But so much of the time,

The fuel behind the fire to heal yourself,

To improve your body,

To eat healthier is unworthiness,

Is inadequacy,

Insecurity.

So when we want success or wealth or we want enlightenment or happiness or to feel worthy,

So much of the time there's this hidden agenda underneath it,

Which is I feel unworthy as I am.

I feel insecure,

Inadequate,

Like a fraud,

Insufficient,

Lacking.

And therefore I'm going to try to do things,

Progress in some way to feel better about myself.

And there's nothing wrong with this.

There's nothing bad about it.

But there is something sort of inefficient about it and unhelpful.

So if you notice it's difficult for you to relax,

If you notice it's difficult for you to rest,

If you notice it's difficult for you to be unproductive in whatever way unproductive looks like for you,

Then instead of judging yourself,

I'm bad,

I should be more productive,

Instead of shaming yourself,

Instead of just going on with the endless pursuit of productivity and boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Bang,

Bang,

Bang,

I invite you to ask yourself a different question.

How do you feel when you're unproductive?

How would you feel if you never improved in any way ever again?

If you didn't get any better,

If you didn't get any stronger,

If you didn't get any healthier,

If you didn't get any wealthier,

If you didn't get any more successful,

Then what?

For lots of people,

What comes up is like,

Ahhh,

This like restlessness and anxiety that I might have to stay as I am.

I am not good enough as I am.

Like I can't die with the amount I've accomplished.

I need to accomplish more.

I need to have been better.

But I am not enough as I am.

If you want to stop trying to be productive all the time,

Or in other words,

If you want to be able to enjoy your life,

If you want to be able to be happy,

Relax,

Rest,

Spend time with friends,

Lovers,

Trees,

Nature,

Passions,

We have to sort of dim the fire of unworthiness.

We have to reduce the intensity and the power of our inadequacy because it's fueling us in directions that aren't intuitive,

Aren't what we actually feel.

This isn't about not being productive.

This is about choosing from our intuition.

So a lot of the times people are afraid to not be productive.

They're afraid to relax because they think then if they don't force themselves to be productive,

If they don't force themselves,

Push,

Push,

Push,

Force,

Force,

Force to get things done,

Then nothing will ever get done.

That they will never ever improve.

But if we look underneath that,

This desire to improve isn't genuine.

It's not authentic.

It's coming from this unworthiness and inadequacy and that would be totally fine if being productive could help.

But no matter how much success you get,

The birds are speaking,

No matter how much success you get,

No matter how much wealth,

No matter how healthy you are,

No matter how beautiful your home is,

How strong and beautiful your body is,

No matter how many certifications you get,

Accomplishments you have,

Marathons you run,

It's not enough to get rid of your insecurity,

Your inadequacy,

Your unworthiness.

I've seen it within my own life and I've seen it with every client that's ever been to me that has any bit of success,

Which is a lot of them.

So when you let go of your unworthiness,

When you reduce the power of it piece by piece by piece,

It's not that you lose the desire to achieve,

It's not like you lose your desire to do the things you love.

It's that it just feels different,

It doesn't feel like forcing and pushing.

You can go to the gym or spend time on your business or eat healthier because you want to,

Because you feel like it,

Not because I should,

It's best,

I need to,

And all of that.

So let's invite up a little bit of that unworthiness now and take a step or two in the direction of freeing ourselves from it.

So right now,

Imagine yourself doing nothing,

Like staring at the ceiling doing nothing for hours,

For days.

Just imagine yourself doing nothing,

Not getting any better at anything and not doing any of the things you should do,

Not working out,

Not meditating,

Not healing yourself,

Not watching YouTube videos,

Not working on your business,

Nothing,

Nothing productive at all.

And see what comes up in you.

Feel it,

Maybe it comes up as a feeling arising in your chest or belly,

Maybe a thought starts coming up,

I'm a failure,

I'm not enough,

I have to,

I have to,

I have to.

And for this moment,

I invite you to let yourself feel like a failure,

Let yourself feel insecure,

Let yourself feel completely worthless.

Instead of spending your life running from the feeling of worthlessness and inadequacy,

I invite you to move towards it,

To invite it up to the present moment and to hold it.

It is not you,

So when this feeling comes up,

Unworthiness,

Failure,

Not good enough,

It's not I am unworthy,

It's not I am a failure,

I feel this energy,

This sensation,

This experience of worthlessness,

Failure.

And I don't want to run from it,

So I invite it to get bigger,

I invite it to grow,

I invite any buried unworthiness in my body to make itself known,

To show up to the surface and to just move through me.

You can come out through my breath,

So every inhale I'm going to suck up some of it like a vacuum and every exhale I'm going to let some of it go.

You can come out through my pores,

Seeping out through my pores like a steam.

You can come out through tears as I just cry away of the worthlessness and the inadequacy that I am,

The piece of garbage that I am.

I invite it just to move through me,

You can explode and burst,

Destroying me.

Whatever it is you want to do,

I invite this energy of unworthiness or worthlessness or piece of shit,

Whatever wants to come up,

I invite it up in its fullest fullest form so that I am not spending my life running away from you.

So I am not spending my life trying to force myself to be productive just so that I never ever have to feel this sensation of unworthiness.

I'm done living in fear of you,

Unworthiness.

Speak to the unworthiness.

I'm done living in fear of you.

I'm done running from you.

I want to run towards you.

Now the more comfortable you get with this unworthiness,

With this insecurity,

The more you can just let it flow through you and not live your life in fear of it.

Invite it up any chance you get,

Any time that you're feeling this push,

This pressure,

Which often manifests as like a burnout or stressed or working way too many hours or not having a social life or not being able to relax.

Invite up the unworthiness.

Invite up what you're most afraid of,

This feeling like a failure,

This feeling of never being enough.

Who you are has nothing to do with how much you've accomplished.

A baby deserves love,

Even if they've accomplished nothing.

So a lot of the time when we want to become worthy,

When we want to accomplish,

Succeed,

Be productive,

It's with this unconscious intention to become worthy.

But to have worthiness,

To have self-worth is really just short for to feel worthy of love.

To feel self-worth,

To feel confident,

To feel that in a deeply genuine way means to feel worthy of love.

But are you not worthy of love as you are?

If we look at any child,

We know they just deserve love just for being them,

Whether they're good at math or bad at it,

Whether they're good at painting or bad at it,

Whether they have a big vocabulary or a very small vocabulary,

Whether they're skilled at reading and writing or horrible at it,

They deserve love just for being them.

Their loveability,

Their worth is irrespective,

Have nothing to do with their skill level at any task.

The same applies to you,

Even if you're terrible at everything you've ever tried,

If you're bad at your job,

If you're terrible at speaking,

If your intellect is slow,

If you don't have to be creative,

If you're bad at athletics,

Who gives a shit?

It means nothing about you.

Instead of spending your life trying to improve at skills and accomplishments or whatever,

So you can prove that you're worthy of love,

Which won't actually work,

Just feel your unworthiness.

I'm horrible at this.

I'm terrible at this.

I'm a failure at this.

And it's okay.

Can you love yourself even if you're horrible at everything?

I eat the worst.

I'm the worst meditator.

I have so many fears inside of me.

I'm bad at healing myself.

All of it.

It's okay.

You deserve love even if you're bad at absolutely everything.

And the more you embody and integrate that,

Not just as a concept,

But feel it,

The more your actions,

Your life,

Your movements,

Your words are driven by interest,

Passion,

Love,

Openness,

Intuition,

Your soul,

Whatever you want to call it,

Instead of your whole life actions being driven and motivated by unworthiness and the endless pursuit of worth,

Which won't actually work.

Self-worth doesn't come from improving.

It comes from discovering you are enough as you are.

So all that being said,

You are enough as you are,

And you don't need to improve or be productive in any way to become any more worthy of love.

That is my message for you today and every day.

So I hope it hits you and penetrates as deep as humanly possible.

Have a beautiful day.

Bye.

Reviews

Love that. Sometimes we need a break from the ‘healing work’ too ❤️

That was so powerful, I just cried buckets , needed to hear this time and time again to deeply embed. Thank you 🙏

That was really nice. Thank you!

I have heard and read this message of "being enough" many times before, but never really sunk in until I listened to this talk. Thank you so much!

Excellent...a thought provoking talk thanks for the insight it was inspiring 🙏

Beautiful, thank you!