By Dr. Scott Zarcinas | Author, Doctor, Spiritual Guide

In this article:

• Why constant doing creates inner friction rather than fulfillment

• How identity quietly shifts from essence to roles, performance, and productivity

• Why more self-improvement often deepens the sense of heaviness

• The moment when change begins—not through effort, but recognition

• How being naturally re-emerges when interference drops

“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”

Shakespeare wasn’t posing a philosophical riddle in Hamlet. He was pointing to a tension that still runs quietly through modern life.

Most people today are doing a great deal. But very few feel settled in who they are while doing it.

Days fill themselves with motion — waking, commuting, working, returning, repeating. Activity accumulates, but something essential feels absent. Life keeps moving, yet meaning feels thin.

This isn’t because people aren’t trying hard enough. It’s because being has been overshadowed by doing.

When Doing Replaces Being

When life becomes organised almost entirely around tasks, roles, and outcomes, identity quietly shifts.

We stop living from ourselves and begin living as our schedules.

Over time, this produces a particular kind of exhaustion — not physical tiredness, but a sense of inner roughness. A feeling of being slightly displaced from one’s own life.

People often describe it as:

• feeling stuck

• lacking direction

• doing everything “right” but feeling wrong

• achieving without arriving

This isn’t failure as such. It’s misalignment.

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Why More Doing Doesn’t Help

When this inner friction appears, the instinctive response is to do more.

Work harder. Improve habits. Earn more. Optimise life.

But the unease doesn’t resolve. This is because it wasn’t caused by a lack of effort.

It was caused by interference with being.

When identity becomes fused with roles, performance, or productivity, being is no longer something you rest in. It becomes something you try to earn.

That’s when life starts to feel heavy. I call this invisible weight “Soul Weight“.

A Moment of Clarity

I remember a moment when this became unmistakably clear to me.

I was a junior paediatrician in London, running late, hurrying down a hospital corridor, already resentful before the day had even begun. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing. I wanted the situation to change.

And then the thought arose, simply and quietly:

The job isn’t going to change. Only you can.

It wasn’t a motivational insight. It was a moment of recognition.

Nothing external needed to be rearranged before something internal could settle.

The Misunderstanding About Change

For a long time, we’ve been taught that change happens through effort: work on yourself, improve your character, become better.

But real change doesn’t begin with self-correction. It begins with self-recognition.

When identity is no longer carried as something to be managed, improved, or justified, being returns to the foreground on its own.

You don’t need to become kinder, calmer, or more compassionate. Those qualities are natural expressions of being when interference drops.

Why “Being More” Misses the Point

The idea of “being more” or “becoming better” or “improving myself” is well-intentioned but misplaced. The reason is that, unfortunately, the striving for “self-improvement” subtly repeats the same pattern as to-do lists.

In other words, self-improvement turns being into another project.

Why? Because when you monitor who you are trying to be, you’re still positioned outside yourself, evaluating, adjusting, measuring.

The constant questioning of “Am I getting better?” subtly interferes with your natural essence.

Being doesn’t require instruction. It requires less interference.

What Actually Restores Balance

Life regains its vitality not when you add more qualities to yourself, but when you stop carrying identity as a task.

When attention settles back into essence — what I call soul identity — being is no longer something you aim at or need to improve. It’s what you’re already resting in.

From there:

• action feels cleaner

• purpose feels quieter but clearer

• effort reduces

• meaning stops needing to be manufactured

You don’t have to remember to be yourself. You simply stop forgetting.

The Real Question

The question is no longer:

“What do I need to do to be more?”

It becomes:

“What am I still carrying that interferes with being?”

That’s where clarity begins. Not through lists. Not through effort. But through recognition.

And when that recognition settles, doing naturally follows; not as strain, but as expression.

‘To be, or not to be?’ was never a question of choice.

It was a question of attention.