Are You Left Holding Your Old Wheel?
Chatting to a member of the LeanMind network today, a CEO and founder, running a business isn't life or death, I said.
Until it is.
Well, often times, less life and death. More the reverse....:
Death and life.
Or, more specifically, death and rebirth!
This might be relevant to you. Not because you're dying - well, I hope not (or not too soon anyway!).
Are you at your death rebirth threshold?
How might this look for you?
Back in 2008, running my then company, we won a contract equal in size to our previous five years turnover. A transformative event, to say the last; money, organisation, reputation, global footprint etc, all transformed.
Sitting down to the first planning meeting with my then business partner, and I remember this clear as day, a thought popped into my head:
Maybe my work here is done.
Maybe my work is done?!
Disorientating, to say the least.
Fortunately, I did what all right thinking men do - I ignored it, stuffed it back into the box marked 'unwelcome' and 'unnecessary' and got on with the important work of running the company. Which I did for a further eight years, until the call could be ignored no longer and I tumbled out.
The truth is, it was less a thought and more a seed, a knowing, a glimpse into an alternate path. A revealing, no less.
My work there was done.
Don't be left holding the wrong wheel.
Signs and signals come in many forms. Often dressed as loud whispers. Like mine above. Maybe you've had similar - an 'is this it?' thought / moment / realisation, as one friend described his. They come in other forms too, other loud whispers: the slow grinding flatness of life without joy, meaning or full of drift, for example, perpetually annoyed at home or work. Nice.
These are signs that you're left holding a wheel already turned. A sign that something new is trying to birth through you.
Your Death And Rebirth Moment
Worry not, you have a choice. You can keep holding the wheel while it keeps turning, until of course you can hold no longer.
How to know?
The volume will go up on those loud whispers, until they can be ignored no more. As happened to me. Who knows that form yours will take...:
An illness, perhaps?
Redundancy?
A failed business?
Or a collapse of some kind - the project fails, your relationship crumbles, the metaphorical house falls down, casting you out / away....
...leaving you flat, empty, broken.
Do you hold on... or let go of the wheel?
The loud whispers are pointing to something different. They're an invitation to your own death and rebirth moment.
First, what needs dying, ending?
Into this, go all the old roles, habits (of mind), responsibilities which shaped and informed your Act I. These are hard to let go, underpinning as they did everything that made you successful. Your ability to navigate to the top of your work tree, and maybe your company to the top of its tree, the habits, ideas, judgements, holding tightly onto these as you probably are, that's the flatness you feel, the drift, the 'is this it?' wonderings.
In short, you're full and fat (literally? Metaphorically?). Stuffed full of ideas and stories whose time has run.
You need to wriggle free, my butterfly friend.
The Birth Begins Here
Three words:
Clarity
Simplicity
Impact
This the Act II invitation, the rebirth.
Cast your mind back. To your own birth canal moment.
The memory might be murky but we've all been there. Dark, narrow, fraught with risk, swimming free from the safe, dark cavern and venturing to the light.
This what's at play for you.
In the hospicing, you leave behind all that no longer fits, you simplify and clarify, and connect instead to that purest version of you; you doing the work which most inspires, energises and excites you, in service of people you respect, and are deserving of your help.
Yes, there are risks.
But what choice do you have?
Life is short. And made for living.
Sure, you can keep holding on, tighter and tighter, wishing only forward to the next release or relief, a holiday here, a fleeting joy there, or you can choose life.
There's a lovely phrase courtesy of Jungian psychoanalyst, James Hollis:
Life demands you to always be defeated by ever larger things.
Not holding tighter, playing smaller. But bigger in joy, meaning and impact. And much else besides.
What does mean for you?
The invitation is not to burn your house down. Although that might be necessary. Kids, if you have any, are old skool, liking a roof and food on the table. Your material responsibilities are real. Within that, though, options are many.
Over in LeanMind, we work with four questions; questions which work at parallel levels, shaping and informing the big arc of your work and life, the next decades, perhaps, whilst also giving rhythm, root and structure to your day and weeks. here and now.
These are :
What is your intention?
What is in the way?
What are you cultivating?
What will you do next?
Chew on this:
The LeanMind network is a container too, a Chrysalis of sorts, a modern day birth canal, with more jokes thrown in. Although I might drop that metaphor. It's kinda weird.
The change isn't though. The death rebirth invitation is real.
If you're feeling flat or drifting and wish you weren't, can sense you have more to give. Email me. I'm running a little workshop for people like you.
If you'd like to join the workshop, register here.
And meantime, if not, reflect on those four questions. Paint a vision, a story of where you want to go, and practise letting go of the controls. This an important one for you, duped into believing you're in charge. Whilst there is of course truth to this, the big wheels of change are bigger than you and me. You didn't direct you down the first birth canal (sorry, last reference). There was trust and faith and slipping into something bigger than you (eek, sorry again).
Trust in yours.
Change isn't something you do.
Cut away what no longer fits.
Cultivate trust and faith.
Learn to let go. Even just a little.
And if you'd like to join that workshop, do so here.
Until next week.
Ben