Learning when to leap
+ working out how to be still, and still moving
I’m feeling buzzy this morning.
There seems to be a little fire nestled in my belly, glittering away in a small, cosy fashion. Two black coffees are flowing through my veins, and Radiohead’s Karma Police is playing through the speaker. And I’m typing to you dear and lovely humans. I like these micro-moments of joy. Nothing particularly of note is happening, but everything seems to be coalescing into an experience of deep, unshakeable wellbeing. Even the grey clouds outside look friendly.
I’m watching myself enjoy the buzziness of this particular morning, and noticing a tendency to not just ride the happiness wave but to make more of it. To not simply hop on it and enjoy it for what it is, but to try to attach reins to it and drive it harder. To compel it to move more quickly, and to try to move mountains at the same time.
My old patterns of drive and push and hustle are hard-wired it seems. But the more I notice them, the more they disperse gently.
My realisation today:
We will never make as much progress moving fast as we do by getting still.
This is what I am learning at present. To find the pockets of stillness while the wave is in motion. To be still, but still moving.
This summer, I learned to boogie-board. I’d never managed it before. My guy had tried patiently to teach me which waves to choose and when to push my toes into the sand and leap. Nothing doing. I was a boogie-boarding buffoon.
But this summer, something shifted. I got three tips from two pros (aka Mia & Taz). Then I backed myself to choose the waves that felt good, and to leap when it felt right. Lo and behold, boogie-boarding suddenly felt easy. And riding a wave felt good: so good that to try to make the wave go faster or slower - or any other way than the wave dictated - was unthinkable.
We hop on and ride the wave where it wants to take us. And we feel the joy of stillness and surrender as we’re being hurtled towards the shore.
A powerful metaphor for life, I realised.
We teach ourselves the art of timing: of choosing when to wait, and choosing when to leap. We have faith that we’ll get it right. When we don’t, we shrug our shoulders and wait for the next wave without self-judgement, bitterness or regret. When we do, we enjoy the ride. Then we walk back into the ocean and wait until it’s time to leap again.
Three Qs for you:
Where are you trying to make waves when it’s actually time to be still?
Where are you riding a wave and trying to make it bigger, smaller or different?
Where are you stopping yourself from leaping onto a wave that feels really good and right?
Gentle nudges towards …
The courage to change
✨ We’re gearing up to launch the next round of What Comes Next? (my program to find out who + what you want to be when you grow up, then find the courage to make it a reality). The first round was CRAZY-TOWN AMAZING with a group of CRAZILY AMAZING HUMANS who found the courage to find + follow their soul’s calling. One participant had her dream job land in her inbox in Week 3 of the program, then started said dream job on our last day together.
We have an info deck with details + results + testimonials: you can request one here.
Connection
✨ Here is a short snippet of Helena Bonham-Carter reading one of my favourite poems: Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. If you’d rather read it with your rather beautiful eyes, here it is. It never fails to reconnect me to the world, to myself and to peace:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Creating Impossible Dreams
✨ Rumi, that mischievous 13th century Sufi poet, wrote “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears”. I can’t tell you how often I’ve put off a task that I KNOW I’m meant to be doing, and transferred it to tomorrow’s to-do list over and over (and over) again, only to find that when I eventually HAVE to do said task, it takes half the time I thought it would and is twice as enjoyable as I thought it would be.
I imagine you do the same thing? At least sometimes?
We have this strange tendency to think that huge, scary dreams require huge, scary steps. I’ve never found that to be true. Instead, we achieve our huge, scary dreams by tricking our fearful minds into taking small, doable steps. Our way is paved one seemingly inconsequential brick at a time. All we need to do is figure out what the next brick is, then start walking.
A clarifying question:
What are you putting off doing that - if you quietened your fear for a moment - you know you’re being pulled to do?
With much love, as always,
Gemma 💛