Slowing Down, Holding Thoughts Loosely, False Peaks
In this week's IMM I talk about how slowing down can help us to feel, why you should be embarrassed of who you were a year ago, and what mountaineering can teach us about life.
Slowing down makes it easier to feel
When you are driven and working hard it is easy to forget to do simple things like check in with yourself or allow yourself to truly feel emotions as they arise. The momentum of work, social lives and hobbies can leave very little room for thought or reflection. Chris Bumstead (6 time Mr Olympia champion) spoke about this and how retiring from bodybuilding gave him a chance to truly stop, think and realise some of the things that have pained him for a while but he's never had chance to explore. A busy calendar may be a sign of a successful work life, but are you booking time in your calendar to allow yourself space to uncover things that are challenging for you?
Holding thoughts loosely
There's a quote from Alain de Botton that says "anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough". The thought is that you should be learning at such as speed (and be so open to making mistakes) that you are constantly improving and proving your old self wrong. Yet in the modern world where social media is a gallery of all the thoughts we've had it is common for an old thought to be used in present day judgements, as if it were unthinkable that a person may have a different opinion now to one they posted on Twitter 6 years ago. Chris Williamson talks about thoughts as being waypoints rather than moorings; you can use them to show how far you have come and how much you've grown over time while continuing to move rather than having one thought and forever being tied to it for the rest of your life.
A similar idea is "strong opinions, loosely held". Be sure of yourself in the moment and defend what you believe to be right, while being prepared to be wrong, and gracious in being wrong.
False Peaks
In mountaineering false peaks are a frequent occurrence. You believe you're looking at the peak of the mountain but just a few steps later you see over the hill uncovering a peak much higher that still needs to be conquered. Life can quite often seem like mountaineering. You work hard to achieve one goal, one target, but once that is complete you best believe another one is coming along shortly, like that dinosaur jumping game on the Google search home page (press spacebar on the google page if you're ever offline), obstacles keep coming down the road for your to jump over. And with each challenge comes a new high, a new peak ready to be conquered, a new level of success (however you define it) waiting for you to take by the hand.