walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
The last 10 days were a marathon of income tax preparation–never my easiest work, as numbers aren’t my gift. I felt I really had to stay at it and finish it for a number of reasons, which meant that even though I was not feeling at all well I wanted to push through to completion.
Today I’m writing to you from my bed. I’m dancing with the flu. But that’s just background info, not what I want to talk with you about.
Something quite interesting happened in the process. Usually when I’m tired and working with numbers, I reach volume overload. When that happens, the numbers I’m looking at and directions I’m reading stop making sense to me. I sort of hit the wall.
When this happens, and the task isn’t urgent, I stop and rest, or do something else. But as this deadline approached, I couldn’t stop if I was committed to finishing the return, even though I wasn’t feeling well.
In my spare time, or when I’m waiting somewhere, I often play games on my iPhone and iPad. I have an app that lets me play many different versions of solitaire. Some of them require me to think several steps ahead and persist to see how to solve the problem of the game. I used to avoid those versions, but eventually I wanted to try them. Interestingly, practicing those games helped me stick with my taxes. Sound weird? Hang in here with me.
A while ago I realized that I had an issue with persistence. I had learned to give up too easily; to decide, “This won’t work. I can’t do it. It’s impossible.” This tendency was blocking my ability to create the results I wanted.
As Donald Shimoda says in Richard Bach’s book Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, “Do you think that maybe if you say impossible over and over again a thousand times that suddenly hard things will become easy for you?”
Sticking with a game until I was proficient enough to discover new strategies eventually expanded my capacity to persist through confusion and that I just can’t do it feeling.
So on Monday, when words and numbers on the page began to become unintelligible, I was able to be gentle with myself, rather than feel stupid and frustrated. I let myself go much, much slower and kept my focus on the work a little at a time, instead of giving up.
One caveat: this approach should be used sparingly with your work life. It can become too tempting for us workaholics to push through any time there is work on our desks, (which, let’s face it, is most of the time).
Next time you find yourself up against a critical deadline and you feel like you just can’t complete the task, try this:
Be nice to yourself first.Go get a cup of tea, or some nourishing drink. Stretch. Use the bathroom.
Come back and sit down with the intention of slowing way down on what you’re trying to do, and focusing on each phrase or operation, one by one. If it doesn’t make things clearer, you definitely need to stop. If it does, congratulate yourself and go a bit further.
Finally, and this is the most important part, when you are finished, reward yourself with rest, a good meal or fun entertainment.
If, like me, you are actually completing a task while you’re sick, when it’s over completely surrender to rest. That’s what I’m going to do right now.
The Secret to Getting It Done and Letting Go
Thursday, April 16, 2015