When we don’t intentionally integrate mindfulness practices into our lives to re-center and to cope with difficult emotions, it is actually easier to remain busy and to distract away from what is going on below the surface with us. I believe that one of the most common and incredibly damaging coping mechanisms of highly competent adults is to stay busy. To throw ourselves into more and more work, to consistently have to-do lists we are attending to, to join commitment after commitment, to feel unable to say “no” to requests, to need to be busy in order to feel worth something or to feel important.