PhotoCredit: BeStillMy
I've been traveling. It was oxygen to meander cities again. To imbibe art. Savor the familiar. Discover the new. Travel is an old and neglected friend. The reunion was sweet and delicious.
I'd forgotten how much I need to explore the world. I need it to fuel my brain. I need it to fill my heart. It used to be easy. Jumping on a plane was effortless. It was almost a reflex.
It shouldn't be a reflex. We have a clear obligation to travel responsibly. We also have a responsibility to travel. To broaden our horizons. To meet new people who might not be the same as us. To see old friends who feel exactly the same as us.
Time goes by slowly and then quickly. In the blink of an eye so much life has changed. Mostly accidentally. Regaining what was lost is hard when we didn't notice we lost it. It's even harder when we don't know where we lost it.
What are you missing?
DRIVE
PhotoCredit: PuppyPower
As I pursue graceful productivity, my theme from last week, I have been more than obsessed with the idea of cognitive load. Grace implies a flow and presence that an overloaded brain seems incapable of. Or at least my brain.
Decision making fatigue is at the core of this. An incredible recent email from Rian Dorris at The Flow Research Collective broke this issue down as follows, "the brain is an organ. It gets fatigued just like muscles do. Making decisions depletes energy and can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and even depression. Cognitively, it compromises executive function. Physically, it can lead to headaches and impaired digestion
Doris notes that there is research to suggest the brain makes something like 35,000 decisions a day and over 200 of them are food decisions. Pop me an email if you want me to forward the full article...they don't publicly publish their newsletter content.
As a result of consuming this intel, I made a few instant decisions. I book all my work trips to depart at the same flight time. I always fly the night before meetings, so I have the afternoon to prep (and some buffer for flight changes). I answer every email within the day I get it, with a quick answer if I don't have time for a longer one (please don't test me on that). I deleted a HUGE backlog from Trello and obliterated my Netflix queue because having a million things I wanted to watch seemingly made it harder to choose. I cleaned all the screengrabs from my phone and filed them in Evernote or deleted them (now I just get to look at pics and not think "oh yeah, I need to order that doorbell..." And I organized the 500Billion articles I had open on all my browsers. Now I read them immediately or save them to Instapaper.
I know, that is a LOT of admin. But I really feel like I lost 10 pounds. From my brain.
There are a million ways you can automate your world. You can establish a daily schedule, you can set morning and evening rituals, you can pre-make decisions (I love making all my food in the weekend, so I just need to grab something from the fridge when hunger strikes.) One of my other favorites is delegating decision making in certain areas to a trusted friend. Best case is either a good decision or one less friend - which surely reduces cognitive load on some level.
Have a think about it and try a couple on for size. Or just observe what you find hard and how you might be able to program a decision-making algorithm for yourself? Leave your brain for the important decisions like where to go on vacation and whether you need another puppy...
OVER IT
PhotoCredit: gaggle
The saying "your goose is cooked" refers to being in a degree of trouble as a result of one's actions. Evidently originating from the martyrdom of a person whose name sounded like 'goose' in German. Or so the internet says.
Don't ask me how my brain works. I don't always know. But this is the saying that leapt in my head as I thought about today's topic. Burnout.
It sneaks up on you and is very insidious. Gradual, subtle and with very harmful effects. Well, it's subtle in the beginning. Once it takes hold, it's anything but subtle. It's debilitating.
It's also extremely confronting. Not only are you faced with not being able to do things the way you used to, but you also need to acknowledge it's the result of your own most excellent work. All your striving and caring and perfection and being relied upon. Your reward for being a good person who does great work is to be thoroughly exhausted and on the verge of collapse.
The best part is...wait for it...nope - there is nothing good about this. It's a massive alarm bell that you need to make some changes and make those changes reasonably quickly. Failure, please hear me on this, is not a pretty picture. You are literally damaging your adrenals, minimum, and creating damage to your health that could take a lifetime to repair.
The worst part is confronting the fact that you are doing it to yourself. You are the one taking on too much work. You are the one not getting enough help at home to compensate. You are the one saying yes to too many things. You are the one who the team keeps relying on rather than doing the hard yards themself.
You are the one.
You matter.
You owe it to yourself to take control. You owe it to yourself to stop making everyone and everything else matter more than you.
If this is you, or might one day be you, please stop. Just for a moment. Take a deep breath through your nose. In and out. Feel what it's like to have a second of calm. Just one second. Take another, deeper breath if you didn't feel it the first time. You need to recognize what that feels like. Step One of moving beyond burnout is understanding that you are in constant fight or flight mode, and you need to teach your body what the rest-state feels like.
That is your task this week. More to come next week but for now I want you to find as many moments as possible in your day for one-deep-breath. Just one. One second. One breath.
You owe it to no one else but yourself.
PLAY TIME
PhotoCredit: OutsideTheLines
I always felt rather guilty that my morning routine started with checking my inbox. I even feel guilty when I check the news. They are both great things to do; I don't want to miss anything urgent in my work-life or in the world. They are also both problematic things to do, they can create a massive vortex that will suck you in and distract you from your priorities.
Most aspirational morning routines start with variations on the theme of meditation, exercise, healthy smoothies and lighting incense to welcome the day. I am more of a "stumble out of bed, guzzle coffee, bang on computer" kinda gal.
And it worked for me. Well it did. I've been getting up earlier and realized that, it doesn't matter what time I get out of bed, my brain needs time to boot-up. So I started experimenting with morning play-time.
I prep for this the night before. I make sure to have an hour each evening where I clear and organize email then set my priorities for the next day. If I don't do that, I definately get behind. I also ALWAYS tidy my desk - there is something infinitely distracting about a messy desk in the morning. To each their own, unless you are my husband - in which case it's mandatory. Love you!
In the morning, I do what I want to do for the first 30 minutes to an hour - depending on what I have on that day. Most days this means meandering through interesting articles. I might also pick up a recipe book or three, do some online research (ok, so shopping), or read a couple of good newsletters I subscribe to but don't always make time for. Basically, it's my time, I do whatever I damn well please.
What I have found with this system is: a) I am getting up before any work email comes in; b) regardless of the day ahead, I have had some time for myself; c) I am naturally following this time with meditation which is really locking in focus for the day; and d) my brain feels a lot more charged up, starting the day this way seems to encourage brain expansiveness.
While clearly the mediation helps substantially, the free play seems to wake up every part of my brain. It's like the ultimate warm up for the most important muscle in your body. Well, maybe the brain is an organ, but you get my point.
KISS THAT FROG
PhotoCredit: BeingGreen
I was recently reminded of the saying “eat that frog!” The saying originates from a Mark Twain quote “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”. Um, ick! Tony Robbins has a more PETA-approved method. Robbins takes a cold-plunge every morning, or so he tells us, advising that everything else in your day will feel easy in comparison.
Somewhere between Twain and Robbins, the frog eating idea was picked up by self-help author Brian Tracy. It was the lead idea in his book of productivity hacks. I haven’t read the book (but purchased it on kindle so that’s basically like reading it, right?) Tracy’s take was that the frog was your biggest, highest impact and likely most procrastinated job. So obviously that is the job you want to do first each day. Tackle and conquer that job first and the rest of your day will be smug fueled.
The advice does work on a lot of levels. The human brain is wired for detail and focused tasks in the morning. Getting one major thing completed at the start of your day is kinda the definition of productive. Creating this rhythm over time will have you slaying your to-do list.
The problem is that the real world doesn't work like the self-help world. In the self-help world we hear great advice once and it’s embedded. Obvi. Locked and Loaded. No need to tell me twice. I am a lean, mean, efficiency machine.
In the real world we are sucked into the vortex of inbox overload, realize we forgot about that urgent deadline, slept in after the dog was barking at ghosts at 1am and feel a bit shabby because I-so-shouldn’t-have-had-that-extra-glass-of-wine-last-night.
Change is hard. Motivation waxes and wanes. Life is demanding. Ambition can be a mixed bag. We know what we should do. What we actually do is a little more variable. Ok, a lot variable.
The solution is to use that to your advantage. With any of these hacks and techniques; pick one or two and think of them more as a goal. We are humans, not robots. As my incredible yoga teacher and friend says - this is about progress, not perfection. It's more about kissing frogs than eating them. And sometimes you gotta just kiss a lot of frogs.
THE FINAL FRONTIER
PhotoCredit: Space
A friend of mine is a big astrology geek. I really enjoy catching up with her and talking star's and moon's. It's about the least scientific I get, except for when I pull out my Tarot cards. Don't quit me yet, logic will prevail - I promise.
In our latest session we talked about Mercury In Retrograde. This is a science "phenomena" that astrology has commandeered. The planet Mercury observably goes into retrograde motion, moving backwards. Well, sort of. The planet does appear to go backwards but it's an illusion based on Mercury's movement versus Earth's position.
This Vox article explains it nicely and has a bonus video of Taylor Swift explaining Mercury In Retrograde.
Tay-Tay aside (which is a potentially career-ending move so I tread carefully here) I do think there is something to learn from MIR. Yeah, I just turned an astrology term into an acronym. (I know, what will I do next?)
2022 has four time periods when Mercury is in retrograde. From a woo-woo standpoint this is a time when communication becomes difficult, technology becomes impossible and negotiations become acrimonious. Or to quote my girl "everything is going to be completely wrong and messed up."
Usually MIR is only three times a year. So, four is potentially not good news people. This could be a hella-messed-up-year.
I see it differently. First, it's not really a thing so feel free to go about your business. Second, and obviously the point I have been building to, it's a useful lens for assessment. The reason I like Tarot - and even on occasions star-sign stuff - is that they are really left-field ways of thinking about yourself and your life. It gets you thinking differently. Maybe examining your life through a lens you don't often think about.
MIR is a great excuse to plan, review, research, think and calm your jets. We don't do enough of this. We all spend way too much time in hustle-mode. All energy, all external, all the time. We miss valuable information and insight.
We can use that to great advantage in 2022. While I expect a recovery-year, I also anticipate some turbulence as we attempt to exit pandemic-life. It will not be a straight line to whatever normal starts to look like. I am personally taking an agile-approach and using the MIR window's to sprint and then review/plan. It's just an aid to a planning cycle. You do you, always. But - if your contract negotiations go sideways, your phone breaks and you start having fights with friend and loved ones...it could be the dreaded Mercury In Retrograde. Though it's more likely just time for a new phone (and maybe friends).
BUILDING BLOCKS
PhotoCredit: Quentin Gréban
A couple of years ago I re-discovered Lego. I had been buying sets for my niece and nephew and found it extremely meditative. Calm would ensue as we sat at the table, "read" the instructions, found the needed piece and positioned it as directed.
My main role was sticker-stickering. Little fingers struggled with manipulating the tiny stickers onto the tiny bricks. I might note, it's not without complication for big fingers.
Brick By Brick the 3D promise is revealed. Behold a VW Camper Van; Firehouse, Hospital; and SpaceShuttle.
Lego is an exceptional metaphor for many aspects of life. The obvious overtone of building is applicable to many work and life contexts. Less obvious is the sequence of micro-steps that lead to exceptional creations. The latter is especially interesting. Farnam Street speaks about the power of compounding results from small actions. James Clear has built a majestic writing career off the back of the concept of Atomic Habits; tiny steps that lead to outsized results.
Over the weekend I was equally inspired by this Observer Effect interview with Marc Andreessen on his lego-like calendar. I had previously attempted this approach to blocking out my life and dismissed it. It felt obsessive and lacking in spontaneity. Revisiting it, I realize it solves a few problems I hadn't appreciated at the time. It elegantly enables the programming of lego-blocks of time into one's day that ladder up to big areas of focus. It also actively plans for other parts of his life that might otherwise get overlooked or deprioritized in a busy day/week. Gym, Sleep!, Reading, and Admin.
I also really liked Andreessen's comment that he regularly steps back from this to make sure he is appropriately managing his time, priorities and commitments.
There is a lot I could unpack from the interview. I strongly encourage you read the Observer interview but I will also leave you with a couple of key takeaways/thoughts/challenges. First, think about what the focus of each day of the week is for you. Note Andreessen has a couple of internal/planning days a week (Monday and Friday) and reserves the rest of the week for more direct, external, work with his portfolio. Do you have a cadence or operating rhythm that structures your week?
Second, look back on the I AM statements you wrote. Do you have dedicated time/building blocks in the week to support you in those areas? You can do the exact same thing for your business goals too. Andreessen has an elaborate system for keeping on top of his projects which I plan to experiment with. What could you experiment with? Give something new a try to take control of your schedule. There are three weeks left in February, it's an excellent month for testing out a new system. Block by Block.
ADVENTURE
PhotoCredit: OnTheRoad
For 12 years I had a sidekick. A golden retriever named Rugby, who I dare say a number of you knew. He was a very special dog who gave a lot of love to a lot of people. I miss him every day.
When we were told he was sick, “bad sick”, it felt surreal. I remember thinking it made no sense that pets couldn’t live forever. It seemed very unfair. A grand injustice with my name on it.
These moments seem the perfect opportunity to fall apart. To remove ourselves from the world and wallow. To curl up in a ball of self-pity and die a little. But something else grabbed me. A different energy took hold. I decided we needed to have adventures. So I booked weekly Friday excursions and started planning weekend getaways.
Friday’s were just for Rugby and me. We would just go do something fun and new. We explored LA, we made ordinary chores fun and we made time for things I hadn’t made time for before.
On weekends we would pack up the car with a million Rugby-things and drive somewhere not too far. Rugby never liked long car rides. We would find new coffee shops, pizza joints and - most importantly - pet stores.
We turned trauma into life. It felt powerful at the time and it’s beyond meaningful now. His final months are a blur of happy memories.
There are lots of moments in life that feel traumatic. A collection of unwanted inconveniences that seem more than we can handle or more than we want to handle. We can find ways to numb ourselves to the world or we can find ways to pump life into those moments.
Look at your problem through the lens of what you have, not what you want. We all have an abundance of resources, the trick is to look harder at the solution than the problem. When we find the adventure in whatever life throws at us, we discover positivity, optimism, resilience and strength. We also find life.
PLANE TIME
PhotoCredit: BigJetPlane
I miss travel. I know, cry me a river. It’s a confession that smacks of privilege. Someone book me on the Oprah show stat. I sure do hope you got that joke, I so just cracked myself up.
What I actually miss isn’t the travel bit. Getting to my destination is usually a harried cocktail of meetings, too many dinners, frantic catch-ups, fractured sleep and probably too much wine. I don't miss any of that. Other than the seeing-people part.
What I miss is the ritual. I miss packing my bag, choosing my clothes for 10 days, downloading a few shows and playlists and getting hyper-organized for the ensuing mayhem. I miss the drive to the airport where I completely relax in the satisfaction of on-top-of-it-ness.
The drive across LA is like a mini-portal between my two worlds. No one can find me, or so it feels. As I shift from LA-Claudia to NZ-Claudia, I disappear from view for 24 hours. I walk through the airport and hide in a corner of the lounge. I get on the plane and bask in the 12 hours I have all to myself. Sheer Bliss. Accountable to no one.
That’s what I miss the most. My plane-time. I catch up, read what I want, watch what I want, don’t have to think about anything.
I decided a couple of weeks ago that I was going to gift this back to myself. Every six weeks I plan to disappear. Poof, she’s gone. I did it last week and it was a liberation. I blocked my calendar for 24 hours, organized my food for the day, turned all my devices to DoNotDisturb and took a ride in an imaginary jet plane.
It was liberating. Please try it. Every six weeks, give yourself a break. I’m calling it an Inspire Day. Catch up on all those articles you haven’t found time to read, listen to a few podcasts, nap at unconventional times, and get your head (and heart) out of the rinse and repeat of the zoom-fatigue-ladden world we wandered into over the last 12 months.
Plane Time. DO IT.
BIG MAC DREAMIN'
PhotoCredit: Breakfast
When I’m talking with someone who is about to travel to New Zealand, I always ask them what they plan to eat first. New Zealand does food well: from the classics of fish and chips and meat pies at one end of the spectrum to the best oysters and lamb in the world at the other end. And everything in between. It’s always a question that reveals a lot about the other person and inevitably comes with a story. It’s not just about the lamb, it’s the way your mother makes it. It’s not just about the fish and chips, it’s the special place you go out of your way to get them from.
Obviously I don’t get to ask this question with much frequency any more. However I did get to ask it before the holidays and I was given an answer I had never heard before. “A Big Mac” was the answer.
I immediately said, “I’m not judging, but why a Big Mac”? I was SO judging. My little health-meets-culinary-snob kicked in as I pondered what to make of this answer. He said, “Big Mac’s taste different at home.” And I was instantly transported back in time to eating a Big Mac sometime in my past and how delicious it really was. I got it. Big Mac’s are not worth considering in the US but #downunder, there is something indulgent and escapist about them.
I love asking questions like this that help me uncover hidden gems of personality in people. Seemingly light questions that have hidden depth. Questions that make people think from a place of heart and soul rather than academically. Instinctively, not intellectually.
Moving questions from our brain to our heart is a power move. It can reveal hidden information. One of my recent favorites is the question “what is your McDonald’s?” Not a culinary or calorie question but a question about competition. Who is your real competitor? Who, or what, is competing with you for your audience’s time, attention or money?
I have coupled this with “who is the person, past or present, that you most want to be in the world?” to help me think about my mission and vision. An inquiry I always make academic but which really demands a soul perspective.
Thinking about goals and vision can be really hard and esoteric. Grounding the question in who your hero is and what is competing with that aspiration breathes life and soul into the inquiry. Whether it’s personally or professionally, or both. As you filter through people that you most want to emulate, you get clear about what you really care about and need to prioritize. I found myself questioning the business models, ethics and the depth and substance of the work of the people I admired. It helped me get clear on what I care about and how I want to participate in and contribute to the world.
The next step is then simple, sort of. What is the one action you can take today to move you forward? Big steps are great but the small steps are often more powerful and much more sustainable. If you ask yourself this everyday, you will start to move yourself forward.
GRADUATE
PhotoCredit: GraduationPanda
The first time I did yoga was at a community centre in my hometown in Wellington, NZ. There wasn't a lot of yoga around. In fact, I think they called the class "calisthenics". It was a long time ago.
I remember doing tree pose for the first time. I remember wondering how the heck anyone was possibly holding this peculiar pose. I remember wondering, really, why I was even bothering to try! Stupid Pose. Of course, tree is now one of those poses I look to as a barometer of how I am doing on a given day. There are days I hold that pose like a mighty oak. There are days I wobble around like a spritely aspen. There are days I am felled, repeatedly, like I am a beginner once more.
In a conversation yesterday, I likened 2020 to doing tree pose on a paddle-board. This year was an advanced class, a master class, in finding balance, ease and frankly focus. Every time we thought we had it, the wind turned or the waves got bigger or some damn idiot in their speedboat set a wake heading in our direction. I will let your imagination run wild as to who that idiot might be.
It was the year of everything being hard, most especially the stuff we thought we knew how to do. School, food, groceries, marriage, cohabitation, parenting, being a friend, being an employee, and - critically - being OK!
A lot of us experienced a lot of not being ok. Even if it was a decent year for us, it didn’t feel all that decent. It was a bit messy. But we made it through. We stumbled to the almost finish line. While it didn’t ever feel like we had it together, here we are with 10 days left in the year and we are mostly in one piece.
I’m so proud of us. I really hope you can reflect on the year and see what you have achieved. As you wobbled and fell, and kept getting up again and again, and you kept trying. Being a beginner is hard work. Especially when you didn’t choose the course of study. When it was imposed on you. And when you had much better plans for the year.
Consider this a graduation. Are you seeing the gains? If you haven’t already, sit down and write a list of all the things you've conquered. Sourdough, cutting your bangs, learning patience, mastering-ish technology, adaptability in spades, how to sit still, how to take breaks from sitting still, how not to F your back from all the sitting still...the list goes on and on.
Take a moment. Look at the good. Look at what you have learnt. Tree pose is hard just as life is hard. 2020 made every day a master class. You just completed advanced life-101. GO YOU! See your gains: graduate, commemorate and celebrate. I’m grading us all an A++.
MARKERS AND MOMENTS
PhotoCredit: Celebrate
Emerging from a lockdown-ish Thanksgiving that felt a lot more about online sales than it did turkey, I feel confused about what to expect from the rest of the year. Maybe it’s just me. How is it possible to feel fatigue after doing very little over the last four days? How is it possible to feel fatigue when I’m restless for adventure?
We progress through another day, week, month of living with COVID-19. We progress through another day, week, month of changes to the lockdown rules. We progress through another day, week, month of feeling that our lives are indefinitely on hold. It occurs to me that this feeling is not fatigue. It’s disorientation.
Disorientation is, according to my brief poke around google, a mental disorder. “A wide range of conditions that affect mood, thinking and behavior.” Sound familiar? In psychosis form it is “characterized by a disconnection from reality.”
We are lost in a fog of restriction and limitation. Disconnected from reality because our reality exists on shifting sands. Birthdays and holidays and vacations and weekends have lost their meaning. These markers and moments of time that used to ground our experience now create more chaos and confusion.
Spatial disorientation is what they call this when pilots lose their sense of what is up and what is down. This is because our human senses are designed to navigate in a “terrestrial” environment. Our senses betray us when the environment changes.
When flying in these circumstances, the instruction is to trust your instruments. Apparently this is inherently difficult because your human brain is 100% positive it is correct. Many plane and, especially, helicopter crashes happen in these circumstances. Most are deadly.
So what instruments, I wonder, do we have at our disposal to guide us through our pandemic-induced environment change? I don’t have a complete answer to this yet and it's personal. It’s a great question to ask yourself. It might be routine. It might be regular calls with the great people in your life. It might be limiting calls with the not-so-great people in your life. It might be thinking about new goals in an altered world.
I have recently observed friends and family delighting in getting their houses dressed up for the holidays. I break out in a cold sweat thinking about putting up a tree with an inquisitive puppy on the prowl - but I think it needs to happen. Tradition, whether old or creating new ones, is extremely grounding. An added bonus is anything that will stimulate you creatively.
It’s easy to let things slip. It’s easy for it to be too hard to haul the decorations out of storage. To cook a full meal when it’s just one or two of you. To let your vacation time look a lot like your weekends (which already look a lot like your weekdays). Force the celebrations. Don’t let too much time go by as we idle in this low-gear world we find ourselves in. Life is not limitless. Make the moments count!
DON'T SPEAK
PhotoCredit: Hush
This week feels hard. The eyes of the world fall heavily on us. We have a decision to make. We are making a decision. One that will be unpopular no matter what. There will be a winner but, what feels more clear, is that there will also be losers. I personally struggle deeply with outcomes that deliver a severe loss to one side. Apparent or real. It’s all real.
My practice is to stay in the present moment. It’s a weird one right now. Our “present” feels temporarily on hold. We are standing in the vortex, the eye of the storm. There is no present. It’s on life-support. The heart beat is so faint. I have to sit really still to feel it. And I don’t want to sit still.
I’m pretending I am not thinking about it. Good luck with that. It’s the only thing I am thinking about. It’s certainly the only thing anyone wants to talk about.
I find myself not knowing what to say. What possibly hasn’t been said? The speaking thing seems not to be helping anyway. There is no healing when every opinion has to be right. Like our self-worth depends on landing a winning argument. Knowing more than others. Knowing better than others.
Answers will only take us so far. We need to say what we believe is right. Carefully, please. We absolutely must speak but not at the cost of listening. Listening like our lives depend on it. Like others lives depend on it.
MAKE YOUR BED
PhotoCredit: SweetDreams
Every morning I make our bed. I leave the bedroom with the deep satisfaction that I have done one thing well for the day. My perfectionist tendencies are satiated by pillows neatly placed and the duvet smoothed down. All is well with the world.
For a moment anyway. Winston has opposing tendencies. In a fierce battle of wills, he is determined to prove that dogs do belong on furniture. I return to my bedroom to find a neat 50-pound puppy sized indent in the duvet. Invariably accompanied by a toy, carefully placed like a calling card. Puppy waz here.
When our beloved Rugby died earlier this year I found my clean floors impossible to enjoy. There was no satisfaction in a tidy house without a permanent supply of fur. I am now constantly irritated by my messy floors and it makes my heart so happy. I secretly love finding the indent in the duvet each morning. It’s officially a game and, unofficially, a ritual.
These are signs of life. It’s a good thing that my world doesn’t stay neat and perfect. Neat and perfect, I realize, are signs of absence, death and decay. Our messy and chaotic existence is vibrant and full of possibility and potential - even though it’s largely inconvenient.
As we remain trapped by a pandemic, we start to feel trapped by everything else. The pandemic shines a spotlight on all the suboptimal in our existence. Superficial and real. The messed up bed and the messed up politics. You can choose which of those is superficial. It actually doesn't matter much, there is a difference but also - there is not. It all manifests as frustration which builds and wears on us. And builds and wears on us. Like a rock that has been beaten down by years of crashing waves. After all the days of 2020, we wear thin. We seek fairness and justice and we long for travel and hugs and a sense of whatever ‘normal’ was.
Inconvenient feels like the polite thing to say.
In yoga we often do a counter-pose after a challenging sequence. More than a rest, counter-poses are active practices that bring ease to the body (and the mind). They are designed to restore balance. A place of calm in an intense practice. Space to assimilate what our teacher is trying to show us. What she wants us to learn.
A great teacher knows that these moments are critical. Without them we have just wear and tear.
We need moments that allow us to see the good alongside the destruction. To appreciate the stubbornness of the puppy and to be thankful for the fur on the floor. Muscles - and minds - need time to rebuild. We need to do the counter-poses. Even if just for a moment.
THE REALNESS
Photo Credit: Rainbows
It’s not going to come as news to any of you that I love yoga. Deep love. ‘Don’t get between me and my yoga' kindof love. My first real studio was in New York and frequented by Juilliard dancers. I think I have told this story before. It's the story where I spend a LOT of time feeling deeply insecure about my inability to do most of the poses. Where I spend a lot of time comparing myself to everyone else in the room.
And a lot of time missing the point.
The point isn’t how well you do the pose. It couldn’t matter less. The point of yoga is to link breath with movement and unleash the power of presence and biochemistry that results. That's a little reductionist but I had a dream once where I was saying exactly that while being interviewed by Oprah. So it must be right.
I tell husband-Mark this every time we practice. You know, in that helpful, loving wife know-it-all way. "Honey, don’t worry about the pose, just focus on your breath". And moments later I hear the audible strain of him doing the complete opposite.
He knows. I know. I still hold my breath. I still strain. I still look at him doing Bakasana like a damn PRO and contain my inner pissed-off’d-ness that he can do it better than me. Mr ‘I picked up yoga 18 months ago’. "Honey that’s amazing" I say - doing my best impersonation of an enlightened yogi who understands we are all on our different paths. While thinking ‘WTF’ under my strained breath.
I want what he’s got AND I want what I’ve got. And I want it now. Veruca Salt level impatient, unrealistic and demanding.
Impatient, unrealistic and demanding - on myself.
This is the stuff burnout is made of.
It’s not a pandemic issue. It existed long before. It’s just the list of what we want has grown. Our quest for perfection in that small corner of our life expanded exponentially at the start of the pandemic. An already untamed beast just got unleashed from its cage and is roaming, hungry for gold stars for excellence achieved in the home. We expect to be teachers and daycare and cleaners and chefs and - oh yeah - full time professionals.
We talked about subtraction last week. I know you all nodded as you read and many of you emailed me. You get it. It's not complex math by any means. So, what did you subtract? Anything? I know you had good intentions. I also know you well enough to know that #stuff got in the way. Why do I know? Because it’s hard for me too.
This is the realness. You know better than this. You know better, but you are not doing the things you know you should do. We are in auto-pilot or we are coping or we are barely holding on. And It takes a massive force to exact change. That’s time, energy and focus that you just don’t have spare.
The realness is that you are too busy to change. That’s a massive problem. That is the problem.
Next week I will share active steps you can take to change. Today’s homework is to decide that you are NOT too busy to change. To see that excuse for the bullshit it is. Pardon my language, but this is the realness.
We are all where we are. Looking around the room at everyone else is just not helpful. It’s an exercise in futility to add things to your list that don’t spark joy (we love you Marie Kondo) or take you towards your dreams. It’s worse than that, sadder than that, it makes you less of who you truly are. But no more! Welcome to the realness.
SPICE UP YOUR LIFE
Photo Credit: Spicey
I have become rather partial to re-organizing my cupboards. In a universe where I don’t get out much anymore, I have plenty of time to Marie Kondo to my hearts content. Some things feel hard to get rid of. It was easy to throw out spices that were no longer fragrant - clearly they would not pack a punch. Yesterday, I stalled over a stash of band-aids that we had likely had for 10 years. Expensive spices gone, but the band-aids I kept?
As I questioned this I realized there is an emotional need driving the band-aid hoarding. There is low to no alarm in the “what if I don’t have the right spice” moment but not having a bandage when I need one taps a primal survival vein. Especially in today’s environment. It’s frankly hard to let go of anything.
My friend and I share a “back-up to the back-up” Covid-Inventory planning methodology (ie one must have a supply of three of all deemed necessary items). It works very well for vitamins, it’s highly problematic with ice cream (husband takes stockpiles of ice-cream as a personal challenge). As I spoke with my friend last night she curiously said “I had three months supply of everything - I wasn’t sure if I would be alive after that”.
She was joking but we all felt the apocalyptic vibes when the pandemic confined us all to our homes. I remember my grandparents would never throw anything away and my parents explained that behavior was a result of the scarcity they endured through the Great Depression. That was a much deeper cut than what we have experienced so far. But it raises the question, what scars will we emerge with?
I personally continue to see this moment in our lifetime as an opportunity for growth. Scars can heal with the right attention (and a good band-aid). If we create new practices and allow the new to unfold, the resultant behaviors will be net beneficial. It feels good to be cleaning out my literal and metaphorical cupboards. Cleansing what I don’t need and ensuring (moderate) supplies of what I do.
The postscript to this is that I needed a bandaid last night (the oven won the fight) and I used one of the old ones. It promptly fell off. So I threw them all away and ordered a stash of the fabulous Welly “bravery badges”. They are brilliant, both in style and function. My new spices are also incredible; I researched some smaller suppliers after reading a great article on supporting small economy’s through spices. All told it has felt great finding new brands to support and new experiences to have in my limited universe. There is still a lot of exploring we can do, even when we can’t get out much to do it. Especially when you have a good supply of Bravery Badges #backuptothebackup.
SILENCE
PhotoCredit: BlackHeart
I wrote my blog during the week in a fit of productivity. Given the events of the weekend nothing I wrote seems relevant. It’s feeling a little hard to know what to think let alone what to write. We spent the weekend in some sort of vortex of vortex’s with riots seemingly surrounding us. Helicopters and sirens were the playlist of the weekend. A pandemic wasn’t enough. A war zone had erupted around us.
I never feared my personal safety but, that said, I didn’t feel safe either. Which seems fair enough given the ignition point of the riots around the US. A significant number of fellow citizens don’t feel safe on a day to day basis.
It’s not ok. It’s not ok that any human doesn’t feel safe. In society or, for that matter, in the workplace.
One of the strongest messages from the weekend is that silence is not ok. I struggled with this. Honestly, I don’t know what to say. Harder still, I don’t really know what to do. I did the only thing I knew I could do - I went out to my neighborhood shops and just felt the impact of the insanity of the prior night. I watched as glass was swept up, beautiful stores were destroyed and businesses were boarded up. My heart broke as one of my favorite stores had every beautiful item, every treasure, smashed to pieces. Not just things but works of art that became casualties of the mayhem.
I even watched, not realizing what I was seeing, as a man fled a store with his arms full of the last goodies that remained in an unattended business. In broad daylight.
We were doing what we could to help the businesses. Sweeping glass, checking in. Feeling overwhelmingly helpless in the midst of all the destruction. I feel more helpless in the midst of the broader issue of human rights and equality.
One store that lost everything had the presence of mine to post that, while they lost everything, it was replaceable and must not be a distraction from the true issue at hand. His intention was so clear. There is a broader conversation we need to have. Lives are not replaceable.
Let’s not miss the point.
As I have contemplated this moment in my life, in our life, I keep coming back to intention. There is much work to be done, yes, but it is also work we must do on a daily basis. The bottom line is that much of most of our days are not spent intentionally. We get busy, distracted, overwhelmed and unable to participate in society much more than an instagram post and a couple of zoom calls.
When our words and actions are not thoughtful - shit hits the fan.
I don’t have the answers. I barely know the questions to ask right now. What I do know is that how I treat my fellow humans will have impact. The simple act of reaching out over the weekend, much like we did at the start of the pandemic, has real impact. Kindness seeps out. Awareness creeps in.
So if you are struggling with what to do, I have a simple place to start. Stay connected to yourself and stay connected to your people. Start there. From that place we will have the broader conversation with the compassion and impatience it deserves. And as you have other ideas, please let me know. This is the time for us to speak up and speak out.
THE IDK
PhotoCredit: The Lorax
I’m really good at making things hard for myself. Finding the struggle in the struggle - on it! As I pulled a muscle in my back halfway through this whole quarantine situation I realized I hadn’t slowed down. I wasn’t traveling but I was rapidly filling the void. Work calls increased by an order of magnitude. Any other space in my life was filled with ordering supplies as if the apocalypse would be upon us any day now.
Three weeks into my injury and I am so over being restricted in my movements. Entering our third month of quarantine, I recognize the same frustration.
My back is holding me back from doing all I want to do. Covid-19 is a handbrake on the world. My back reflects the literal tension of this moment.
I see a similar parallel in recovery. I have been efforting myself to health. Each time I thought I was “fine”, suddenly I wasn’t. I spent any moment of relief doing laundry, cleaning, baking, and taking apocalypse inventory. I was deploying frustration to fix myself and, in the process, I was undoing any good I had done. My effort was removing any ease I had found.
True healing happens when we let go of our need for certainty and embrace the IDK. Embrace the I Don’t Know of it all. Certainty is rigidity. In our backs and in our lives. Not knowing affords a freedom. Freedom to seek information and not force a solution.
My back wasn’t damaged, it was stressed. I kept adding to that stress trying to push it back to where I was before. The truth is that my body is tired. Tired from years of effort. I forgot about ease. I forgot about the IDK.
I know my back is getting stronger, even in its weakness. I know our world is getting stronger, even though it’s hard to see what recovery will look like. I’m working on letting go of my frustration and allowing ease to emerge. I’m learning to embrace the IDK.
Glorious newness will emerge from this crisis and make us stronger as we find the ease of not-knowing.
DARE, DREAM, DO
PhotoCredit: Totoro
I was on a zoom call last Friday for my friend’s birthday. Apparently, this is what we do now. It was such a boost to see a collective of incredible women gathered digitally. There is no way we would have been able to coordinate this PreIsolation. IRL or digital. I drank a bottle of wine that night. I’m impressed my girlfriend could be such a bad influence from a distance. I am more impressed, quite frankly, I could drink a whole bottle of wine. Not so much the next morning...
Most of my zoom calls have been for work. I have been in “we got this” mode. No time for exhaustion. We have to make our cash work. We have to trim our overheads. Rethink revenues. Ask ourselves “what are the business models of the future? When will small businesses open? When will the US start flying again?”
I haven’t had time to think about what I was missing. As the “onwards oriented” person that I am, I hadn’t stopped to think about it.
Hugs seems to be the top-ranked collectively missed thing. Then uber-eats (for my friends in Level 4 lockdown). Dinner parties and drinks are next. Travel is the secret thing that no one wants to talk about. It’s pretty clear we will have everything else before travel.
No one seems to miss the daily commute. No one is going to miss being at home with their kids all day.
What I am missing is inspiration. Not that I am feeling uninspired. There just doesn’t seem to be as much space for inspiration. Innovation yes, we are working hard to think about what this new reality means to us, to our lives and to our businesses. But inspiration feels a little lost in the equation. I worry we have stopped dreaming.
It is understandable. There is little room for imagination and creativity when you are homeschooling your kids; running an empire; keeping up with your Netflix binging; and participating in the baking-obsession that has taken over us all.
We are tired. This is boring now. We know why we are doing it - we know it’s important - but we all want to tap-out of this reality show we have all unwittingly signed ourselves up for. Or alternate-reality show!
I get it but I want more. And I want you to want more. So I have a challenge for you. A dare. Give yourself space to dream a little of what your future could look like. To think of something really big. Possibly a bit crazy. Something really different that you are almost scared to say out loud.
Yes a lot of stuff isn’t working but, how could we find a way for those things to work? How could home schooling work? How could separation make us closer? How can we make the regeneration of our environment permanent?
We will be through this in no time. It just feels like an eternity right now. We have a unique opportunity to reimagine what our future might look like. It’s precious. It’s a gift. And it has an expiry date.
Let your imagination come out and play for a while. It’s a quarantine-approved activity.
IT'S ALL SO QUIET
PhotoCredit: Bandana Girl
I almost got arrested yesterday. Well, that’s what the homeless man would have told his buddies. He was concerned that I was not wearing a mask. “It’s the law to wear a mask,” he said with deep concern across his face. He pointed to his shirt, a “Sheriff” badge embroidered on it. Dead-serious. I was more serious about him maintaining six feet of social distancing from me.
To be fair, he was correct. In LA we have been asked to wear masks in public. I dutifully oblige when I am going into a store but, I was out for a walk on Easter Sunday. Nothing was open. No one was around. I didn’t need a mask.
Moments after this encounter (which if it sounds scary, rest assured it was more comical than alarming) I came across a store selling masks. They had just received the shipment. Not N95 masks. Just some overpriced, cotton, basics. Still, it was good to see a supply of any kind of mask - much like I found it oddly comforting when the supermarket had hand sanitizing wipes back in stock.
These are lead indicators. Signs that some (even if small) part of the economy is functional.
As Mark and I walked a little further along Melrose Avenue we passed the iconic pink wall outside Paul Smith. Any other Sunday the parking lot would be buzzing with tourists getting their ‘gram on in front of the wall. This Sunday it was emptier than the canned beans aisle at Whole Foods.
These indicators are heavily based on human behavior. No instagrammers coz no tourists. This tallied with my other lead indicator for travel; the distant view of LAX from my office window. I get oddly excited when I see a plane now. They are few and far between.
I am acutely aware I am watching out my window for signs of recovery.
And beyond my window. Whole Foods still has no yeast. Toilet Paper is in short supply. The N95 masks we ordered are still “shipping any day now”. People are still anxiety-baking, panic buying/stockpiling and our basic medical supplies are stressed.
But my favorite lead indicator, hustle and innovation, is showing positive signs. We are starting to see enterprise spring forth from the wreckage of the pandemic. This will continue and is one of the greatest signs of recovery. Innovation and entrepreneurship will support change, evolution and resilience. We will be stronger on the other side if we do this right. As we do this right.
Finding peace in the hard moments is work and it’s work that’s worth doing. What are you using as a barometer for your personal journey through the chaos? What are your lead indicators that help to keep you on track? A little observation goes a long way.