Sometimes I feel like I'm winding myself up, week after week, like one of those little toys you have to twist to get to move. I can feel my insides getting tighter, my head less clear and decisions more difficult to make. I find it a struggle to stick to what I say I'm going to do, and most crucially I fail to keep my promises to myself.
In those times I have learned that the answer is to pause. This notion is fantastically counter-intuitive because in my mind all I can see are that there are pressing things that need attention and the urgency feels real. Still as much as there is work to do, I have learned through experience that the biggest lever for making a shift is to stop. Take a break. Make a clearing in your brain. This past weekend I spent three days in the hills of Maryland where I grew up (a few miles south of Westminster). It was an immersion back to acres of space where the loudest noise was the wind brushing through the trees, the birds chattering and an occasional truck roaring by. Lush green landscape everywhere I look. Fireflies lighting up crisp nights like paparazzi. The most important tasks are finding an hour or so to walk the dog and figuring out what to eat for the next meal. Coming back from 3 days in that life is a total reset button. The fog in my mind lifts, the excuses I put between what I want to do and what I actually choose to do release, and life boils down to the simple things that seem to matter above all else. When I'm in this headspace, focus and execution flow without resistance. The outcomes I was looking for before come out naturally. Creating space for a reset is like doing a cleanse for the brain so it can return to functioning at it's brilliantly high level. Do you need a reset button somewhere in your life right now? How can you create the space to make a clearing in your brain?
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How often do you assume the worst is going to happen?
Certainly .. this can be a good strategy for having a back-up plan. Don't get me wrong, I am all for being prepared for things not to work out. And yet if we start to tread on the territory of projecting the worst will always happen, then it is far more likely to become our reality. So my question is - what happens when we create a space for the most amazing thing to happen? If we leave room for something extraordinary to show up, may times it will. Perhaps the end result doesn't look exactly like we think it will. And we will often be required to make a leap of faith, especially when times aren't looking so hot. Yet when we detach from the outcome and trust the essential core of what we're looking for will be there, I am amazed what takes place. I've been experimenting with this all week. My experience has been that this attitude can turn a somewhat normal set of days into what feels like marvelous ones. From my observation, it takes a few critical components to end up this way:
Try a week of anticipating miracles. See what shows up for you. We hesitate at the idea that we used to draw or play an instrument or loved numbers. We wave it off as childish and unpromising as a career, never considering how powerful these inclinations are in manifesting our talents and a potentially great life. Often times, when you hear stories of people making drastic career changes, it usually falls into this category of returning to their inclinations and bringing them back to life." This quote is pulled from an article on 99U called "The Career Compass: 10 Essential Ideas for Navigating the New Career Landscape." What I love about this passage is that it illustrates the simple truth in that we are born with unique curiosities, an innate pre-disposition toward certain skills and activities. It's no accident, and it is a waste to not pay attention to those cues as we construct our life's path.
Re-connecting with who we've always been, and combining that essence with the experience, skills, truth and talent we've gained across our lifetime is a powerful way to live full of our potential today. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, and hope without critical thinking is naïveté." - - Maria Popova I started my Monday morning off with an incredible "On Being" podcast interview of Maria Popova from Brain Pickings. She dropped a line in her conversation that struck me with it's truth - "critical thinking without hope is cynicism, and hope without critical thinking is naïveté."
Wow. How resounding is that? Her insight got me thinking about the power of hope. At times that faithful optimism can be ungrounded, disconnected from what is happening in the world, or it is blind to a reality it doesn't want to see. And at the same time hope is an essential ingredient in any kind of progress, innovation, creativity, and leadership that is moving the world forward forward. Why else would we try anything bold or new if we didn't hold out some form of belief that it can mean something? Too often our prevailing culture / media fall into cynicism .. we deem hope as naive, fluffy and demote it to the words of cliche speeches. We have to give that gig up, along with our dreams and our own voice. But hope is in fact courageous, especially when we combine it with critical thinking, as Maria suggests. That is because it is actually more challenging to choose hope in the face of all the negativity we see around us. If we pick hope, that means we cannot give up the fight and just accept the world as it is without having to try doing anything about it. We have to pick ourselves up from our setbacks and keep trying. A wiser form of hope invites us to say "I see all the struggle, the obstacles, the hurt, the pain around me ... I know that I will most certainly go through all of that myself again ... and still ... I choose to embrace that something inside me that knows there is meaning here, and I can do something about it." Finding our wise form of hope is insanely difficult, testing, and feels moronic at times. It is a journey to discover it for ourselves, and all the grappling we do to get there will most definitely transform the person we are and what we can accomplish in the world. Today I wanted to share the experience I’ve had with failure. I see a growing movement today toward ‘failing is good’ today, which is fantastic. And in order to make this concept a reality we embrace and not just proclaim, I want to talk about what folding a company felt like for me and what happened afterward. Failure isn’t just a word, it is an experience. Let's discuss what that experience means and why it is so vital for our growth as a human being. I would love to hear how this resonates for you. How do you view and experience failure in your life? Does it hold you back from trying new things, does it mean nothing to you?
I am experimenting with video today! And coinciding with the theme of this post, recording a video of myself talking into a computer and putting it up online is one of those things that gives me the jeebies. Nevertheless, I've had this format as an idea in my head for some time, so it is time to give it a go :) |
Allie ArmitageEmpowering people to connect with meaning and vibrancy in life. Archives
February 2020
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