How are we living?

A stolen hour with a book.

There's something quite abrasive about the shift from late summer into early autumn.

Daily life in our household has moved from leisurely starts to being punctuated by rigid new timetables, early wakes, and elusive sleep (for me). I find myself holding the maternal weightiness of my daughter traversing the chasm between primary and high school. My son has abandoned the group pack belonging of a school uniform for the more individualised independence of sixth form.

I feel a little unmoored. I often ached for the freedom of no school runs, yet when the house is emptied of chaos at 8am, I find myself feeling a bit discombolulated. Change is a constant, right?

I've found myself cushioning the nervous system jangles of this fresh new term feeling by early morning dog walks and a stolen hour this weekend reading a new book in the glow of September sunshine. I'm not religious but it felt kinda holy.

And as I contemplate growing my coaching and consultancy work, I've been perpetually nudged to consider how to cultivate the conditions for sustainable growth, without losing the depth I'm afforded by not working at break-neck speed or slipping into increasingly transactional ways of being. There's a place for practicalities, but I made a quiet contract with myself some time ago to live in alignment. 

I was reminded of this yesterday by a post from Sally Walters on LinkedIn about productivity, availability and open door policies. She reminded me of how I was captivated by Cal Newport's book 'Slow Productivity' which explores a more natural rhythm conducive to creativity and the knowledge economy. It seems we are still living in an outdated legacy of the Industrial Revolution, and we've shoe-horned conceptual, knowledge-based work into a production line approach to outputs and efficiency.

I read a lot on socials about the unease within creaking and straining institutions, shackled by cultures that are so focused on the 'doing'; pivoting policies and over-writing old transformation strategies in the kind of blind panic that is a continuation of the same old scripts. It screams of Einstein's quote: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

These musings also reminded me of Bronnie Ware's reflections in 'The Top Five Regrets of the Dying', which often make me wonder why we haven't learned from the unequivocal themes shared when human beings are faced with their mortality; number one being that people wished they had lived a life true to themselves, instead of what others expected. This is closely followed by regretting working so hard.

While hard work is often part of our career (and life) trajectories, are we creating enough space to step back and consider how we are living?

I've leave you with this short video reflection, because it's one I'm sitting with more and more. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts, because these are the kind of curious conversations I want to be part of...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NIXL8tGvdWw