It’s been a wonderfully full few months. So full, I’ve had to get very focused with my priorities. This is the best thing about fullness – it doesn’t allow room for hot air or bad energy. And, so I’ve had to – for the first time in almost four years – drop this blog for two weeks. I had a gap to build.
In spite of concerted efforts to slow my life down, things have sped up. I was in Forbes (central west New South Wales; population 7500) last week, speaking at a business lunch, and a woman in her forties approached me – with little tears in her eyes – to share that she, too, was trying to slow down but feared that because she was such a frenetic person who attracts lots of “doingness” into her life, she was doomed.
“Ah,” I said.
“You can keep doing, but be still while doing so.”
And you can have lots going on, if you own it in your own way.
It’s taken years for me to work this out. Slowing down for me isn’t necessarily about slowing down what I’m doing on the outside. It’s slowing down on the inside, getting gentle and mindful and happy with my speed and activity. It’s having techniques that I choose to turn to, so that I can do what I do best: doing. Because…
You can choose to be while you do.
One of the techniques I actively choose is having pauses. Proper pauses. I was overjoyed to read in Esquire’s What I’ve Learned series the other day that Radiohead’s Thom Yorke does the same. The headline is his, in fact.
I worked for the duration of my recent “holiday” in Sardinia. It was unavoidable and I chose to be OK with this. I’ve taken on a US book deal and, now, a UK book deal (this just happened), my business has grown from two people (me and Jo) to ten staff in just a few months, I have a second