The next step; on pitfalls, letting go and trust

Image by minkymonkeymoo

This is not your regular ho-hum weekly review. It couldn’t be, because we’re well over three weeks into this month and I have yet to publish a new post. So much for weekly…

Why have I been silent for so long? To be short, for three reasons:

• Ski Trip in Switzerland
• Self awarded extended break from blogging
• Family outbreak of Norovirus

The Norovirus wasn’t a lot of fun… Patient zero was my son, followed after two days by my wife and another six hours later I fell victim too. Along the way we infected some other people as well, so we quarantined ourselves for the recovery period. Being sick with all of us at the same time was challenging, some things you don’t want to take turns in I can tell ya!

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.” - Lao Tzu

Taking the extended break

Anyway, I liked being away from the blog when I was in Switzerland to such a  degree that while driving back to Holland I decided upon extending it for another week. Not that I’m contemplating to stop or anything, I just liked the mental distance from writing. Sometimes the best way to go forward is to stand still first. So that’s what I decided to do, stand still and just let the blog be the blog for a while. It was liberating and very refreshing.

I’m thinking about how to express what that period did to me, but I’m finding it hard to find the right words. It did not designate it as time to think about the blog, or as time in which I did not have to write, or in which I tweaked design or coding or something like that. It was purposeless, and that’s what was great about it. The blog just existed, it just was there, without my attention. Maybe it’s about letting go, maybe that’s the next step. I don’t know, but I think it might be. That week was about letting go, I did not have to blog, have to write, have to achieve goals, have to be accountable. I just was, and the blog just was.

The Norovirus was a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to extend that period even longer. And it deepened the experience as well. That virus hit me hard, to the point where I just felt like I couldn’t do anything. Not even read or watch television, just sleep or be awake (and care for my wife and son every now and then). My mind did something wonderful though, I started to process. Not think, just process. Without effort from my side, no conscious effort anyway, things fell into place, patterns emerged and creativity started to flow. My mind was doing spring cleaning it seemed (and my body was too). And the virus kind of forced me to undergo this.

Because doing wasn’t getting in the way of thinking, and thinking wasn’t getting in the way of feeling, there was room for just feeling. Don’t know if feeling is the right word, but because I wasn’t doing or thinking, a space opened up in me to see and connect to my path, my legend. There was room to realign. Not consciously realigning, it was an unconscious process. I realize this sounds vague, but that’s the best way I can describe it. It was refreshing.

Emerging patterns

One of the patterns that emerged was that I focused too much on the ‘getting’ part. So much that I lost connection with what I originally wanted. My goal of getting to 2500 subscribers is a great example. I was focusing so much on getting the subscribers, that I lost connection to what’s really important. Making a connection, being valuable, provide meaning, learning and sharing genuinely, growth! Those were are my motivations for this blog. On a tangent there are other motivations, like earning a buck, personal branding and so on, but they are secondary.

The thing with those motivations is that they are not directly quantifiable, and as such hard to measure. So you look for tangential metrics to measure progress, or give you a hint of your progress at the least. I found it’s important to keep connected to the original motivations, because if you fail to do that, the metrics and the goals are going to lead their own lives and take over.

This insight came to me last week. I have to focus on my original motivations that revolve around giving and growing, and be open to the getting part without focusing on it. I need to let go of the getting.

Trust

When the virus hit me last week, I was forced to let go too. I had to hand over my recovery process to my body and trust that it would do okay and that it would tell me when I needed to do things. My body was in control, and I had to trust it. That’s letting go, and it only feels good when there’s trust.

Letting go and keeping peace of mind at the same time, requires trust.

• I trust that when I let go of focusing on getting well, I will recover anyway.
• I trust that when I let go of focusing on the getting part, I will get it anyway.
• I trust that when I let go of being in control, I won’t be out of control.
• I trust that when I let go, it won’t be gone.

I feel I just made a big step.