There’s a natural order to things

We have so much to share with you soon.

In July, we’re teaching a class called “What are you made of?” We’re launching a zine in August. Our Inner Architecture offering is coming out of beta, and we’re bringing it to teams in an exciting way. All things we’ve been working on for as long as 2 years.

And yet halfway through last week, after starting the week with grand plans and lots of energy, my energy plummeted, and I hit block after block. My body said a big fat nope to doing the majority of the preparation I had intended, and I got so caught up in my own restlessness. 

I’m a major advocate for prioritizing flourishing alongside productivity; shouldn’t I be beyond getting caught in this sort of cycle? My entire philosophy is built from witnessing so many founders get lost in putting productivity over their own well-being, and yet there I was, facing that exact tension. Turns out knowing how it works doesn’t make you immune to the process. And thankfully so. 

There’s a phrase at a big idea that informs everything we do – care to imagine. The more you nourish the core of who you are, the more you have the capacity to imagine, to create, to do the right work that makes everything else easier. 

I knew exactly what I was being asked to do, and yet I resisted. Because! I! Had! To! Get! Things! Done! Because I was excited to. Because I wanted to move things along for my team. And yet there I was, drained and stuck. 

What do you do when reluctance finds you? Do you force yourself and your people to push through arbitrary deadlines, or do you take a step back? Do you risk not looking “productive enough” or  “together enough” to let yourself and whatever you are working on breathe?

The very real challenge in a moment like this is that your sympathetic nervous system activates. The fight or flight mechanism in you has a hard time - it needs to take control to survive. Unless you know how to tend to your system, you can just…get stuck here. When I look around at workplaces today, this is what I see. So many brilliant people, subconsciously committed to this state. And it’s not only dulling their work, but it’s also dulling their lives.

In letting my system reset (albeit somewhat begrudgingly), I knew I was giving it the time it needed to complete emotional cycles I didn’t quite have the words for. Instead of squirming away at my computer, I gave in to little joys and trusted the cycle to complete.

The thing is, everything I mentioned at the top of this email is something I have a big vision for. It’s scary, and my system knows it. And it also knows what to do to prepare me to be the version of myself who sees the vision through. Included in that is letting go of old beliefs that I need to force productivity to be seen as valuable, capable, or responsible. That I need to exert my will on life instead of joining its natural flow. 

Part of the journey of creating beautiful, meaningful things is engaging with the mystery. Is letting life do its thing even if you can’t understand what it’s doing or why. Nature has an order to things. This I am certain of. And it’s a certainty that’s worthy of holding onto when you feel stuck or lost or behind or confused. 

We haven’t built space in modern business for these very real human dynamics (our Inner Architecture work will change that very soon, pinky promise). There are always emotional and energetic processes happening within us that our KPIs are ignorant of.  But the closer we look, and the less resistance we have, the more we see that they are doing the invisible work of preparing us for new terrain. It’s on us to do ourselves the kindness of allowing it. 

When I reached a point in the cycle where I could loosen my grip, life delivered. I saw a lecture series on the Creative Path being taught by the acclaimed poet David Whyte, and knew I had to sign up. Unsurprisingly, the first class was all about the role of reluctance and procrastination – how both serve as preparation for leaving behind old parts of ourselves and creating space for what we have yet to discover. 

 A line that really stuck with me was: 

“Reluctance is a wise reconnaissance.” 

How beautiful, and how generous would it be if we could look at reluctance not as something to will away, but as a trusted partner, surveying the path ahead and making the necessary internal adjustments. I left that class with a commitment to hold my reluctance in higher regard, to remember all the ways it’s served me in the past, and slowly, then suddenly, led me to the ohhhh-I-get-it-now moments of truth and clarity. 

It’s easy to be obsessed with the fun parts of creativity, but to be enchanted by the mystery of your own reluctance? That’s when things get really juicy.

The more we enable it, the more easily we get to the heart of the matter. And more than any launch, any outcome, or any metric, this is how we know we’re alive. 

Lori