Oct 16, 2020
It’s been an interesting week. An interesting few weeks, actually. I’m sure you can all agree. And while the world has been talking about slowing down and taking time to pause and appreciate what you have, I have doing everything I can to keep busy, to stay occupied, to hustle and stay productive.
Maybe that sounds okay. Maybe it doesn’t sound that bad. But it was, for me anyway. And now I’m learning, trying to slow down so I can better create.
Let me explain.
I come from the corporate world
I have worked for a corporation since before I graduated college in 2009. I take that back, even the “smaller” jobs I had in fast food and retail were also corporate. So that’s been more like somewhere around a total of 19-20 years? (Putting it in numbers like that makes me feel old. I’m NOT old people. 36 is not old. And, psh, I’m going to be young forever….)
Point: I’ve learned a lot form my employment history. A lot of good things, yes, like how to work hard and how to value my work and how to manage and how to market and how to communicate and how to research and how to … all the stuff. But I also learned some bad things, like work hard, work every minute of the day. If you’re not hustling, you’re not a good worker. Get it done now, even if it makes you sick or mentally ill or all the bad side effects of not taking a rest, not allowing your mind to rest.
Those bad things were the things that caused a horrible anxiety attack that I couldn’t come down from until a month after I quit. And even then it took me months to fully heal. And it was those bad things that made me come to the decision that I didn’t want to go back to work for corporate. I needed to figure something else out. And so I embraced my dream of being a full-time author and have been loving the writing journey since.
But I didn’t truly get away from the bad stuff
This has been a slow realization. But it basically came down to this misconception: In order to succeed, I need to be engaged in working as much as possible.
WHAT?!
Maybe you think this too. Maybe not. Maybe you figured out that that is not true productivity. I commend you. That has been a hard lesson for me to learn.
When I talked to Scott about this last night, he said, “I don’t think it comes from just your experience in the corporate world.” That’s what we are taught from a young age. If we are not actively doing something and hustling and bustling, we are lazy. We are taught to always be working on something. We are taught to always be busy.
It’s true. Right?
But it’s not the right answer. Staying busy and being fast does not always present quality work and efficiency. Instead it can create sloppy work, plans that have not been fully thought through, redundancies, and more. It creates anxiety and other mental, and sometimes physical, health problems when we force our brains to be in continuous thought, never giving our minds a break.
Have you ever gotten done with a work day and felt your brain hurt? It’s super tired and thinking kind of hurts?
That has been me the last few days. And I wondered why I was doing it to myself. Why was I putting so much strain on myself? What good was it doing?
Slow down to let the creativity flow
While I was working so hard to the point of brain hurt, I felt the creativity in my soul slip away.
Scott said it best in a text to me today: Sometimes we get so caught up in thinking we forget to feel.
When we are forcing our brains to work continuously with no break, we don’t allow the inspiration in, which means we don’t allow the creativity to flow.
After going to bed tense again last night, I decided I would slow down today. No one was pushing me but myself. And I needed to stop. It’s not what I want for my future. It’s not what I want for this business Scott and I are creating. It’s not what I want for my life when Scott gets home. I want to work and have fun with writing and The Comte Creative, yes, but I also want to be in the present and enjoy life.
So, as I mentioned, I slowed down today. I woke up a little later than usual. I taught yoga using an older flow so I didn’t stress myself thinking through a new one. I talked to Scott. I journaled. I meditated. I had lunch delivered and took time to just sit while I ate. I listened to some podcasts and hung out on my balcony with Obi. And now I’m writing this blog post at almost 5 p.m.
I didn’t check off a giant list today. But I did allow my brain time to rest. And it’s true, inspiration comes when you shut off your brain, when you slow down.
So if you get anything at all from this somewhat ranting blog post, I hope it’s this: Slow down and let the creativity flow.