So busy managing our lives...
We are so busy managing our lives that we cover over this great mystery we are involved in.
- John O’Donohue
Are you longing to hustle less? Rest more? Create space?
I've been feeling it too. And I think it's a calling for our times. An inclination toward something more true than the cult of achievement via maximum productivity.
I may claim this to be a natural longing - a pendulum swing for post-industrial age. But, you probably still feel like you are moving against the grain if you don't keep up a frenetic pace.
A few weeks ago a client met with me in a special strategy session (these are sessions off our usual meeting cycle for when surprises or derailments occur) and lamented, "I'm not sure who is crazy - me or the people at work. Everything seems like a fire drill but I just can't get worked up about it anymore."
Another client said, "I really don't want to quit, I can't quit. But I can't carry on like this and I don't know how to not give it 150%."
Poets and sages have been tackling this bind for eternity.
Just to remind you that you aren't alone...here's a quote, video, podcast, and book all conspiring to support your urge to do less, be more.
Thomas Merton, the American Trappist Monk, wrote in 1968: "The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times."
Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry is guest on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. Wow. She makes some pretty powerful arguments for rest as a caring act that can be both practical AND radical. When she shared stories of her own recovery from exhaustion and burnout I heard echoes of experiences me and my clients have had. Hersey's work was also profiled recently in the NYT.
Marie Forleo interviews Kate Northrup with some unusual advice to 'Do Less.'
David Whyte's book The Heart Aroused about how to replant work and business in our lives so that they can nourish (rather than deplete) our souls.