Are you addicted to being busy? It’s a question I’ve been sitting with lately, after hearing writer and broadcaster, Eleanor Mills describe busyness as an addiction - “like sugar or heroin,” she said. It made me stop in my tracks because it struck a little too close to home.

We live in a culture that glorifies doing. Productivity is praised, rest is romanticised but rarely practised, and somewhere along the way, we learned to equate our worth with how much we achieve.

The to-do list becomes a badge of honour, and slowing down feels almost shameful, as if stillness means failure.

But what happens when that pace becomes unsustainable? For many women, the wake-up call arrives disguised as a crash: burnout, redundancy, illness, or simply a deep sense of emptiness that no amount of achievement can fill.

It’s in those moments that the truth reveals itself - busyness isn’t always purpose, it’s often distraction.

I’ve noticed how easily we can fill every minute, often in service of others, until there’s no space left for ourselves. Yet the irony is that the more we do, the less we feel. The constant motion keeps us from listening to what our bodies and hearts are quietly trying to say.

Midlife has a way of bringing this into sharp focus. It asks us to pause, to prune what no longer serves us, and to rebuild around what brings genuine joy. That pause isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom. It’s the moment we realise that a full life isn’t the same as a full calendar.

So what if we redefined success, not by how much we juggle, but by how deeply we live? What if we started treating rest as sacred, presence as power, and peace as proof that we’re finally living on our own terms?

Because slowing down isn’t about giving up the drive or the passion that brought us here. It’s about choosing discernment over depletion, alignment over achievement, and purpose over performance.

There’s a new kind of strength in doing less, but doing it with meaning. And perhaps that’s where the real freedom begins - in letting go of the noise long enough to hear ourselves again.