Maybe you’re not lazy.
The doubt comes in many forms.
Am I just lazy?
Can I afford to waste time?
What if I commit to something new and don’t love it?
What if it doesn’t work?
Maybe I should just keep my head down. Work hard for another ten years. Earn enough money. Then I’ll write. Ride. Paint. Travel. Play the instrument. Become the person I keep promising myself I’ll become.
Why am I even doing this, anyway?
I’ve had every one of those thoughts.
Arriving home one morning after an early gym session, I stepped out of the car to find a cat batting a mouse around the garden path.
The cat wasn’t hungry.
Or in a hurry.
It wasn’t even trying particularly hard.
The mouse would make a dash for freedom, only for the cat to lazily flick out a paw and bat it down.
There was no urgency.
No real intent.
Just the half arsed replaying of a game it had once been brilliantly designed to play.
I remember looking at it and thinking:
You look bored.
Not tired.
Not incapable.
Just strangely uninterested in the game you’d spent your whole life becoming good at.
And in that cat, I saw me.
For years I’d approached life the same way I’d approached everything else.
Think harder.
Work harder.
Solve the problem.
Climb the next mountain.
It had worked.
Until, somehow, it didn’t.
Not because I’d stopped being capable.
Because I was no longer convinced I wanted to keep playing the same game.
There's different language for it: first mountain / second; Act I to Act II.
This I like.
Act I rewards certainty.
Figure things out.
Solve problems.
Get better.
Keep climbing.
Many of us became very good at that game.
Then, somewhere along the way, something shifts.
The mountain we’ve spent years climbing suddenly feels flatter.
From the outside everything still looks successful.
Inside, less so.
So naturally we reach for the only tools we’ve ever trusted.
More thinking.
More planning.
More analysing.
More trying to solve ourselves.
Every lap around those questions cuts the grooves a little deeper.
Because solving problems is what got us here.
So why can’t we solve this one?
I wonder whether it’s because we’re trying to play a new game with the old rules.
The Monday morning after I finally, formally, left the company I’d co-founded, I did what I’d done almost every Monday for the previous 25 orr so years.
I opened my notebook.
Picked up my pen.
And went to write my to do list.
Except…
I had nothing to write.
Well, I had plenty I could have written.
Emails.
Admin.
Small jobs.
Stuff.
Noise.
But none of it felt like the thing.
I remember sitting feeling somewhat lost, looking to grasp something no longer there.
Looking back, I don't think I was drifting.
I think I'd reached slack water.
The point between tides where the sea appears to stop.
The old current has gone.
The new one hasn't yet arrived.
Nothing seems to be happening.
Which is precisely why so many of us mistake it for failure.
Very slowly I’ve come to realise these changing tides ask something different.
Not certainty.
Attention.
Not another grand plan.
Small experiments.
Not forcing clarity.
Creating the conditions for clarity to emerge.
Less believing there is a right decision.
Trusting more...
That, I think, is the work of Act II, of the changing tide.
Over the years, there are a number of ideas and practises I return to, helping me move more freely between these tides. Fighting them less, controlling them less.
Over the coming weeks, I'll explore these more.
They're not principles to believe.
Practices to live.
Cultivate new soil.
Retrace your threads.
Practices over principles.
Releasing.
Creating.
Trusting.
Repeating.
We’ll take them one at a time.
Because if there’s one thing I’m slowly learning, it’s this:
The confusion isn’t usually the problem.
Believing you should already have the answer often is.
Perhaps the questions aren't:
Why am I struggling?
How do I fix this?
Perhaps they're simply:
What's this changing tide asking of me now?
So, tell me: what is the changing tide asking of you right now?
Hit reply. I'd love to hear.
And if you know someone fighting their tides, feel free to share this with them.