Are You Breathing?
I think I finally learned my lesson!
Since January, I shipped a successful Fearless Femmes group program. I went all-out, riding the massive wave of inbounds that is typical for the New Year. I rebooted relationships with existing clients after the holiday break. I felt myself start to wobble.
So I slowed down. I just did it. No one else was going to give me permission.
Check out my calendar for this week:
Rest. Rest. Rest. Hours and hours of rest.
We inhale, then we exhale. Or else we keel over.
This week is my exhale. I have a few sessions that were scheduled beforehand, but the secret is simple: to avoid tasks expanding to fill all available time, schedule your unscheduled time.
One of the most common complaints I hear is a desire to ascend to more strategic work, and also to feel like there's "enough time".
Are you waiting for someone to give you permission to be more strategic?
All strategy is is finding the highest-leverage use of your (or your team's) time. Chances are, if you're falling victim to myths about urgency, you are choosing to not be strategic. You're constantly reacting, constantly playing catch-up, and when that's your MO, you don't make time to ask yourself what is *actually* most important.
Strategy isn't in a hurry. Strategy can wait for you to thoughtfully respond.
If you want to speed up, slow down.
Expand your frame.
Will I close as many sales this week as last week? Absolutely not. But will this week of rest allow me to reset, reflect, f*** around creatively, and then deliver my best quarter yet?
Obviously.
If the goal is to breathe: you make sure you inhale, and then do whatever it takes to exhale. That's strategy.
It's worth fighting for.
Quote that I've been pondering:
“The best way to overcome [the fear of death] — so at least it seems to me — is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”
Bertrand Russell
Question for you:
When's your next exhale?