Hey, Laura here. Today I wanted to talk to you about something that happened last week, and it just blew my mind.I was talking to a client and I said to her in the middle of our session, “We could be recording this and playing this for my podcast and I think almost everyone would be nodding their heads in agreement that they’ve experienced what we’re talking about as well.”So I thought, let me share it with you because I know that this will be helpful to almost everyone.So here’s what happened. I was working with this client. She came to me because she had that dreaded question, “What do I want?” Right? “I’m making some money, I’m able to pay my rent, do well in my life, get career traction, but what do I really want, right? What is that thing that will bring purpose and fulfillment into my life, not just financial gain?”So we worked on that conversation, “What do I really want,” and most of my clients come to me specifically with that point of frustration. It’s such an annoying question to answer because we’re taught to ask ourselves, “What am I good at? Or what should I do with my life?” But we are not very good at figuring out what wewant.As soon as she started to talk about what she wanted, the junk food thoughts, as I call them, all the “can’ts” and “shouldn’ts” and judgements and the self-inner critic, all those thoughts, all that stuff got in the way.So we worked through all of that, we cleared out the things that were standing between her and her ability to articulate what she wanted. Then, boom! This mission statement came out of her. It was amazing. She told me exactly what she wanted, she set her goals, we worked on the brass tacks stuff:What are the three things you are going to do over the next month? What are your priorities? How do we set all up? Right?I was feeling great, we are on track, things are going in the right direction. She came to me, she wanted help, she’s getting the help she wanted. Then she said to me, “I’ve got to tell you, I didn’t have the best week,” and I said, “Why?” She said, “Because I feel like this sense of calm in my work even though I’m finishing a lot of stuff,” and I said, “Well, that’s great. That’s what we wanted was a sense of calm and accomplishment.” She’s like, “The truth is I fear I’m losing myedge.” I was laughing and I said, “This is the greatest conversation ever.”
Because, right? What does it mean if you’re actually getting a ton of stuff done and you feel relaxed, you feel calm, you feel like you’re in a flow state?
Her brain was doing what all of us were trained to do; question, “Well this can’t be hard work. Hard work has to feel a certain way. It has to feel stressed out. It has to feel miserable. It has to feel really like we’re in flight all the time. So that’s what we started to talk about. You’re taxing your adrenals. You’re in a flight mode at all times and yes, you can grind and you can focus and you might have that little extra charge of energy. But it catches up, and your mood goes, and you start getting headaches, and you feel terrible later. If not later, you drink extra coffee and then you switch over to alcohol. You’re not getting enough sleep because your mind is reeling and reeling at night.
Although you feel like you have an edge, the truth is you’re really just in a chemically induced flight state all the time, which is what this woman had experienced. So you get this shot of productivity, but then what? It’s not sustainable and you feel terrible. So she said to me, “Well, here’s the thing, if I’m happy, why would I work? Because I think I’m working really hard to be happy.” I said, “There it is.” This is this dreaded box that we’ve placed around the idea of meaning and purpose and what we do. We think of it as happiness. We think, “I’m going to work really hard to be happy.” But what about just being happy while we’re working?
You’re not supposed to work to be happy. You want to work to feel fulfillment. Happiness is ice cream, dogs wagging their tails, a day at the beach. They’re pleasure points, it’s great. But fulfillment is that sense of calm, focus, flow, commitment, attachment to what you’re doing. Time passes by quickly, you get a ton done, you don’t even know how many hours you’ve been sitting there. That’s flow and that’s amazing. The irony is, that’s when we’re most productive. So I asked her, “When do you feel you’ve gotten the most work done in your life?”
Do you feel like you get a ton done when you induce that sense of urgency and edge and aggression? Or do you just feel stressed when you do that and your mind is distracted because you’re so busy beating yourself up to focus, and to pay attention, and to work harder, and to meet the goals, and to check off boxes, and get more done, and get through this list that never seems to end? And you walk out at the end of the day and you’re stressed and in a bad mood? Or tired and fatigued and you want to go home cry? Or you just want to curl up in a ball and watch television, right? Is that what we mean by “edge”?
She said, “No, actually I get the most done when I’m in a certain state.” I said, “Right. When you feel relaxed. When you’ve actually got yourself that cup of coffee that you want and you’re sitting back listening to some music that makes you happy or in the right space where you work best,” right? Everybody’s got their different situation. For me, having a playlist that works really well with my work and noise-cancelling earphones and a nice computer screen and an orange LaCroix, it tends to work for me. So what helps you create that flow state, and how do you relax into the work and allow the time to pass and to focus on what you’re doing and feel awesome about the accomplishment?
We got to the end of this conversation and I thought, “I’ve got to share this with everyone.” Because this idea, this idea of losing your edge and “why would I work if I’m not stressed out? I’ll just be lazy. I’ll go sit on a beach.” It’s ridiculous. Who knows where we were taught this. It seems like it’s everywhere in our culture though. You will get more done when you’re in a state of flow, when you’re happy, when you’re feeling good. So try it this week. See if you can lose that edge a little bit and see if you gain a ton of productivity.
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