Do you feel it?
What does internal rush mean to you?
Where does it come from?
What is creating it?
Yesterday, as part of my Time to Think Practicum I had the good fortune to speak with the wonderous Ruth McCarthy and we had the opportunity to talk out loud about a lot of things. It was joyous.
For a time, our ‘gaze’ rested upon the Thinking Environment Component of Ease – discarding internal urgency. Our musings developed the theme and circled around a sense of ‘internal rush’. We considered the feeling evoked by the description and to me it felt like a lot of the people that I have recently spent time with, would recognise the feeling of internal rush all too well.
Fast forward to today, the 3rd anniversary of lockdown and I can’t help but consider the link.
At that point when the world ground to a shuddering halt and we all looked around and asked ourselves what now, Bev and I had a thought about the ‘pause and the pendulum’ and I recorded a 4.5 minute video based on my thoughts. You can watch it here….
In my final thoughts, recorded in April 2020, I mused about what the world might be like when the pendulum was released once more, “flying forwards with added vigour, renewed energy and a shared insight into a remarkable shared experience.” You can see the excitement and optimism in my eyes.
Has it gone too far?
I’m currently wondering about another shift in energy is needed to quell some of the internal rush?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Responses
Meep! Meep!
Couldn’t resist ;0)
On a more serious note…
I think that challenges that have emerged following the pandemic and the attempts of organisations to recover their position have caused people to choose to take waaaay too much action.
Orgs have been weakened financially and the workforce is depleted.
Action looks like the answer but action without the taking time to take notice of reality and to build in the time to think before leaping into action is leading to individuals feeling overwhelmed, with unrealistic demands on their time and attention.
And that causes them to take more action to fix the overwhelm.
More processes and tactics, more action and doing. It all looks like the answer.
More efficiency.
More productivity.
More performance.
More revenue.
More marketing.
More stretching themselves too thinly.
More sacrificing their own health and wellbeing for the sake of their work, because it seems like everything is a priority NOW, and that we SHOULD be able to make these things happen, and someone somewhere is unreasonably demanding that we move heaven and earth to make things happen.
And then I’m noticing the pressure people are applying to themselves to be more, do more, make more happen. And that’s often even BIGGER than the external forces!!!
What if ‘not doing’ for a short while is where it’s at?
What if having the answer is overrated?
What if we stopped ‘reacting’ to the external stimuli as if they were an actual physical threat?
What if we thought more about what we’re creating, moment to moment?
I’m all about the pauses!!!
Pause I say!
Pause now…….14 minutes of pausing. That’s 1% of the day.
BE STILL.
Start from NOTHING.
That was quite the rant….and I’ve more in me I think…..but I’ll pause and see who else wants to chime in at this point.
What do you think?
I can’t comment on the org thing particularly, having been out of the corporate environment for a few years, but I do see a backdrop of all you describe in society. The shadow frequency of complexity is deep within us, it pervades our collective culture
and humanity. The more we try to improve, fix, achieve, blah blah, the more complicated we make things. And because we’re deluded by a belief we are in control, we don’t slow down, pause, or stop until we’re forced to, i.e. lockdowns! We’ve only to look at the natural world to know that we’re not really in control, and that too much human intervention reeks absolute havoc and devastation. But like the pearl in the oyster, there’s a gift within the shadows and all of the complexity we see now is the irritant that will ultimately form the pearl. The answer, for me, is simplicity. And that’s a whole other topic ???? but of course requires us to slow the f*** down!
Thank you Bev and Kate, for the thinking your post has prompted…..
Internal rush…I like that as a description. I’m happy to say I rarely feel that anymore and yet it’s taken a fair bit of energy, intention and attention to get to this point. Action and doing are interesting aren’t they? As I reflect on my ‘wintering’, its’s not that I necessarily ‘did less’ (though I have been doing less for the past 3 years), it’s about the energy, intention, and attention I mentioned. The principle of Wu Wei is interesting to contemplate and Alan Watts describes it beautifully. It’s a principle of action without force, allowing action to occur in accordance with the natural rhythms. Much like the snow melting, and the grass growing; they don’t ‘do’ anything and yet look at the wonders they ‘achieve’.