Rediscovering the Art of Being
What’s the right blend of doing and being?
There’s no one right answer to this question.
Doing is all the tasks that take your time, energy, and focus in a given day.
The meetings to prepare for, appointments to schedule, kids to drop off or pick up, groceries to order (and 1,000 other things that you do to make your world keep turning).
When we’re working full time, raising a family, managing a household, possibly volunteering on the side, hitting the gym occasionally, having a social life - doing consumes most of our time. When I was in a corporate role, I spent about 90% of my waking hours doing.
I grabbed my phone first thing when I woke up to check on messages and slacks and emails. I urgently needed to see if anything had ‘broken’ overnight. What breaks in a credit card company…we’ll keep those stories for another day.
I multitasked while sitting in meetings. I tried to maximize my travel time by planning to write presentation materials while on a flight.
Any little disruption had a ripple effect because my schedule and life were so tightly packed. It felt like there wasn’t room to just be, or if I tried to sit in quiet the mental chatter was overwhelming.
What Happens When You Stop ‘Doing’
Then, I took a sabbatical. My pace of life went from 100mph to 0 overnight. My phone stopped ringing.
I was still urgently checking it in the morning but there was never anything that required my attention.
Unceremoniously, I flipped into being mode. This is when you are unplanned, and don’t have an agenda. You are simply existing.
It was winter in Minneapolis and there wasn’t all that much going on. For the first time in years, I didn’t have anywhere to be. I wasn’t running my life by calendar and to-do list.
I intentionally decided to not commit myself to anything new for at least 6 months. No ongoing volunteer gig, no new role, no board position. I wanted to experiment with being because it was so foreign.
Over time, I got to know what structure worked for me. I experimented with the Miracle Morning set of practices. I did yoga every day for a month.
I iterated.
My quietest period - literally - was the 10 days I spent at a silent retreat. I thought the extra dose of stillness would lend itself to an a-ha moment. That didn’t really happen but I did have a big dose of being with just my thoughts.
Easing Back Into a New Normal
Over time, I started testing new ideas about work and initiating projects. I dipped my toe in a few things and worked with a few clients. Not full-time because I wasn’t ready to land back in the place that I was before the sabbatical. But enough to feel like I had a balance on both sides of the equation.
Now, I’m fully immersed in work that I love and spend just as much time working as I did before I left the corporate world. But this work is less heavy and doesn’t consume my energy in the same way. I leave the office (which is my guest room of course) happy. I physically see the impact I’m making and that fuels the whole equation.
I’m not back to 90% doing like I was before, but the mix is more than 50%. I make a point to carve out time to go for walks and stare at the ocean, or sit quietly in the morning. The practices that helped me along the way are sticky.
Your rewire story might look different. Your mix of being and doing will certainly shift along the journey, and the beauty is experimenting until you find the perfect balance for your next chapter (or at least something that works better for you than where you are today!).
Wherever your rewire journey takes you, we are here to support your journey. If you are looking for resources, tools, and a community of women walking this path, check out the Rewire Collective.