Working Meditation

Observations from a life in motion

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#70: Thresholds and pauses

There seem to be two ways of orienting to any new task. The first way is to jump in head-first without a pause and the second is to pause and understand the structure of the task, and our role and skills in relation to it. The pause-less action may be because of well-earned confidence or lack of awareness. If we take a pause, it may be short or long, noticeable or invisible even to us.

Like everyone else I’ve followed both approaches at different times but I’ve never really reflected on this because my approach to a task wasn’t the noteworthy part, the task was. I’ve recently experienced the comfort of doing something hard without thinking much and the discomfort of feeling unprepared and stuck mid-task. I’ve had to perch above my shoulders as I worked to observe what I was doing and what needed to change. I’ve had to pause and reflect on whether I had the tools, skills, information, context and mindset that I needed.

How do we know that a pause is in order and how can we make this process instinctive without overthinking? Two tell-tales have been helpful to me:

  1. Is the next task sufficiently different from what I’m doing or anything I’ve ever done? In other words, am I crossing a threshold? 
  2. Am I stuck spinning my wheels?

“People who wonder whether the glass is half empty or half full miss the point. The glass is refillable.”— Simon Sinek, author

#68: Room for doubt

There are times where even a hint of doubt is undesirable. For example, high-stakes situations with immediate consequences; like landing an aircraft or performing life-saving surgery. For a lot of other things however we carry more doubt than we show and we tend to hide it even from ourselves. Maybe because action requires certainty and commitment to follow through and we fear if we dwell too long in doubt, we’ll melt our resolve to act. But suppressing doubt doesn’t nullify it. We carry uncertainty, hesitation and indecision perpetually.

A particularly poignant example for me is Mother Teresa, who continued in her good works despite a 50-year crisis of faith. She says in one of her letters to her spiritual advisor – “When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great, nothing touches my soul.” This is was written in the 1940s, relatively early in her work and roughly 30 years before her Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. These doubts never abated but she didn’t abandon her belief or her work.

It’s a difficult place to operate from…when something speaks to us intrinsically enough that we commit to it but know on some level that we know little and will never know the full picture. Parenting, faith, and entrepreneurship are some common examples but the biggest example is the human life itself. Most of our discomfort is tied to the existential questions. Can any of us say with 100% certainty, without any doubt why we are here, what the purpose of a human life is, and what happens after we die? We fill in the blanks with high-judgment estimates and go about focusing on our daily life and goals. We let the act of living guide and consume us enough to create a sense of certainty in aspects: “I don’t know what happens after but know I was made for this work”. “The only thing I’m certain of is that I love my kids”. “Math has always made sense to me”. “I feel at home when I play the piano”. And so on. Micro doses of certainty on the macro path of unknown. Moments of clarity interwoven with moments of doubt, fear and loss. 

My evolving theory on doubt is this:

  1. The clearest indicator of what we should pursue and how we should live is a faint and sometimes hard to hear signal that we carry somewhere inside. Even though we carry it within, it comes across only when we silence the noise of daily pursuits, and listen without judgment. Because we may resist what we hear.
  2. We have to act despite doubt. The action doesn’t need to be big or all at once.
  3. A shared space with other people doing similar work is a huge boost, especially if we aren’t comfortable with what we’re being called to do. If this space or collective doesn’t exist, we need to create it.

#3 is perhaps the most important part in working alongside doubt. It ensures that in difficult moments, we have the wisdom of others doing  their own but similar work. That we have a safe space to air doubt, gain perspective and courage to keep going. It’s important that they understand this specific practice we have chosen. Its nuance, its promise, its fear, its draw and terror, the joy of having taken this path and the ache of having given up other options. If we want to keep going, it’s important we create a space that helps us recommit when we stumble. 

“It’s not necessary to be a saint to do good. You need willing hands, not clean ones. If we wait for our souls to be totally clean, our time on Earth may slip away.”― Mother Teresa: Roman Catholic nun

#66: Prototyping the everyday

I haven’t published in two months. I was building other parts of life that left little brainpower to review and edit. Or so I thought.

Over the last year, I saw my writing-voice take shape. But behind the scenes I was observing and getting to know myself through this part that likes to write. I saw how ideas arrive, which ones I select, how I process them, but also what I observe, what I care to write about and how I string together language. I was not only finding my writing-voice, I was finding my voice and wisdom. And because I sought discernment, I wanted to think things through a bit more before I published. I didn’t post last two months because I didn’t have time to think things through to the degree I would have liked.

I also noted that I had pieces at various stages of readiness. Some thoughts were supported only by quick scribbles to help me recall later while others were over 90% written, just needing final edits. Simultaneously, the inflow of observations and thoughts never stopped (I am thankful for this). So a mental traffic jam occurred. On one side, incessant mental downloads knocked on my brain waiting to be unfurled and on the other side half-written notes awaited attention. And there I was crushed in the middle…wanting to publish when my personal standards had been met. This act of turning off the publishing faucet created a creativity backlog so instead of flowing, my words felt like a tangled mess on my Notes app.

I’ve been learning prototyping tools and mindsets over the last couple of weeks. Today I realized that the prototyping mindset applies even to my writing. A prototyping mindset frees startups to experiment in front of potential users without being ashamed of failures and imperfections. The prototype only has one goal: learning. So it’s developed just enough to gain learnings and not an ounce more. Prototypes aren’t meant to be perfect, they are meant to be iterative. Each prototype a fertilizer for the next.  

The act of writing over the last year has been learning in motion for me. I write about this and then about that. An addition here and a deletion there. Sometimes poetic and sometimes prose but always a learning. When I stopped posting, I stopped learning. The desire for better got in the way of doing.

Thinking like a prototyper, I might have published more. Published more imperfect work that would have been enough to get the point across and taught me lessons not only for my writing but also other work and life. This writing isn’t meant to be perfect; it’s meant to teach me something and be of use to others. One prototyped post at a time.

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”― Vincent Van Gogh: Dutch painter

#64: Walking with fear

Just because we want to do something in life doesn’t mean it can’t scare us. Fear might make an appearance exactly because we want to do this thing. But fear is also a broad word that covers a large terrain. Is this thing truly dangerous or are we afraid of the odds and the possibilities ahead? Are we afraid of failure, are we unsure of what to do next, are we lonely in our pursuit, do we wonder if we have the stamina to get to the finish line, or do we fear that life as we know it will change beyond recognition? It can be hard to know what’s beneath the resistance. It could be one of these things or several, or perhaps something entirely different.

We often look away from fear because not only is it hard to face, it can also be hard to understand. It’s complex and a shapeshifter. One day the fear shows us one side of the story and just when we think we’ve nailed it and addressed the cause for unease, it starts reflecting a different shape and color. How much time can one spend trying to understand their fear and resistance? We can live in our minds and keep analyzing till the end of time; it may not help but it will certainly exhaust us. We can’t look away though and keep doing what we were doing. Tuning things out and turning away our attention means we’re resisting the emerging future.

The only real antidote to fear is action. Small, imperfect, sometimes tear-filled and anxiety-ridden action. It’s not to say that another flavor of this exact same fear won’t return but imperfect action is the only way the world and lives are built. We’re all like that little child—first tentative and maybe afraid of the new face in front of us but then as we start interacting with them, the fear dissipates.

Before we act, it helps to look at the fear directly to try and see what part of us it’s trying to protect. This is different from analyzing or problem solving. The goal here is to create a silent space and direct attention to whatever wants to surface today. As it is. With zero judgment. When I’m really fearful though, it’s harder to sit in silence but easier to move in it. A moving meditation like a walk, swim, row, yoga or even slow improvisational dance makes this inquiry more bearable. But we can’t just stay in inquiry-mode; the key is to move ahead and take action holding our fear’s hand knowing that tomorrow, it might tell us yet another story and make us taste yet another bitter flavor.

In my most recent walk with fear, I noted that life is asking me to be a certain type of vessel for its work…and I’ve resisted and crumbled repeatedly. Silence allowed me to pick up those pieces, re-tape them to create that beaten up and patched-up vessel so life can start flowing through me again.

Life will be full of these fear-filled speedbumps, especially when we really want to do something.

“I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation of full growth.”― Maya Angelou: poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

#53: Getting stuck and unstuck

Humans tend to live out a cyclical pattern of getting stuck and unstuck; certainly over the years, months and weeks but sometimes over shorter windows of days and even hours. Our approach to getting unstuck makes a material difference in who we become. Getting stuck and unstuck might look different for each of us from the outside but what is likely similar is the internal environment. 

For me, “stuck” has felt first like a mental followed by an emotional valley, moments where everything seems just a bit harder and solutions don’t come easy but the questions keep surfacing. Where the mental chasm between life’s demands and what I feel prepared to handle might increase a bit. When all of a sudden, in the mornings, the bed feels more magnetic and just a bit safer. Where the recurring internal optimism is met by a faint but definite voice of a cynic that sows seeds of self-doubt, calling that optimist a fool. Where the wiser me doesn’t jump in to troubleshoot because it hasn’t been fed the nourishment of solitude, reflection and self-care. When I find myself in such a space, I often realize that it had been on slow boil and I failed to see the signs and “weed the mental garden” in time, only to now find the mind overrun with aggressive vines. It’s often such a subtle shift at first when the thoughts start marching on a downward trajectory. I have also noticed that this always happens when the connection to self is lost and my actions lose the benefit of oversight from my steady, wise and compassionate internal observer.

Getting stuck for me is an entirely mental thing.

The unstuck similarly doesn’t arrive with a big bang. It often begins with the simple yet hard-to-do act of listening to my body. Historically, it’s has been a challenge for me to pause and tune into the embedded wisdom in the body when the mind is running in loops. My particular internal programming would rather I do all the work first and then anything else. When the stress knots arrive, my tendency is to push harder on the gas pedal as if I could outrun and outwork the knot to make it dissolve. It never does. What does happen is that the tasks become Sisyphean―laborious and ineffective. When the mind is overrun with action, the last thing I want to do is take an active pause; by which I mean a pause to understand the fear that underlies all that action and stress (yes, it’s always fear of some sort). That knot in the belly, the labored breathing, the sleeplessness, the tight jaw are often the physical manifestation of a deeper undercurrent, and it’s hard to wade through the pulsating fear when we’re already overwhelmed. This is where things like journaling, breath work, yoga, and other rhythmic movement practices like hiking, walking, and dance come in. They create a safe silence that allows the spidery fears to start crawling out from the nooks so we can see them for what they are.

All fear―fear of failure, fear of not amounting to anything, fear of not being understood, fear of losing trust and respect, fear of losing physical or mental faculties over time…you name it―is ultimately the fear of being othered, of being cast out of the tribe, of not being loved for exactly who we are. Imperfect, afraid and yet deeply desirous of love and belonging. And these fears don’t just create emotional pain, they turn into physical aches and pains. 

Getting unstuck typically requires some physical shift followed by a connection to trusted others. And the thing that felt so big starts to dissolve and lose its hold.

Our fundamental human need to belong and be loved is often at the root of getting stuck, and that unconditional belonging and love from ourselves and others is often what gets us unstuck to propel us forward. The hardest thing of all is to show to someone that we are afraid and need them. The mental and physical shifts are certainly important but they are a precursor to then asking our trusted humans for support and care.

We can stop the work at the mental and physical shifts and get back to productivity or we can add that extra splash of human care and make the journey both fruitful and worthwhile.

(I am deeply and lovingly grateful to my humans who got me unstuck last week!)

“A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, gradually reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth.”— Marion Woodman