Force vs. Surrender

I've been thinking a lot about force lately and how embedded it is in our society. It can be seen in phrases like "push through the pain" and "sleep when you're dead." It's visible in how many of us work while we're sick even when we have sick days available and how we anxiously open Slack the moment we see a notification, even when it's not working hours. It's in how we assume profits and the economy should always climb higher and blame and shame when they inevitably go down, how we believe better technology simply means you should be able to produce even more than before, how most employees pushed into totally new positions are told to sink or swim without training, how the professional world tells you to ignore what's happening in the world during working hours as if you were were a Lumon employee on Severance.

The worst part is, thanks to all that conditioning, we often practice excessive force on ourselves before anyone else ever even has to.

When I wrote my last post, I talked about how I expected to start applying to jobs at the beginning of March and how I felt paralyzed when that time came. I gave myself a little grace that it took an extra week. I worked through some uncomfortable truths.

And then I posted it, assumed I had worked through everything I needed to work through, and now I had no excuses not to have an answer or take action.

What followed was a period of extreme self-shaming and trying to force myself into an answer. My mind started looking to outside sources for direction since I couldn't provide it myself. I started posting things on social media that had good intentions behind them, but ultimately were attempts to attract attention so I could feel like I still mattered. I started to force the idea of creating revenue streams that felt off because they were the easiest way to generate what part of me still sees as the ultimate source of security. I criticized myself for sitting at home doing nothing (aka not making money) and scared myself with the idea that if I didn't act now, I would never earn money again and I would be totally screwed.

But despite all this, something deep down told me it still wasn't time. That I needed to wait. And what I was doing was trying to force a timeline because the uncertainty and the perceived external judgement were so uncomfortable.

I've been thinking long and hard these last few weeks about what the difference is between not taking action because you're scared and not taking action because you're not actually ready. Because it's true that sometimes fear does prevent us from taking action. But it's also true that sometimes we force action simply because we're scared of what it says about us if we don't.

Greater society would tell us that you just need to do something because a lack of momentum is the most dangerous thing in the world. It means you've turned into a lazy freeloader who needs to have all securities removed because insecurity is the only motivator powerful enough to get you back on track to being a good, productive citizen again. It ignores the why behind the pause and focuses only on the outcome (which is continued contribution to the economy).

I'm also not saying that waiting is automatically the better solution, because obviously you can wait forever for something to feel right and find a reason to reject every opportunity that comes your way. I've been on both sides – acting without discernment because of the immense pressure to do something and questioning everything that comes my way. Neither method did me any favors.

Personally, I think the answer is more nuanced. It's less about which strategy is going to bring better results and more about getting out of your mind and into your body to make the decision of how to approach your next step.

And to get there, you need to be still.

I was just watching this interview between Angela Benton and Amanda Miller Littlejohn, and in the clip at the top of that page, Littlejohn talks about how all the answers we need are found in stillness. How she devoted herself to stillness and that brought an important and life-changing shift in what she was doing.

We're so used to seeking answers from other sources: books, podcasts, AI chatbots, social media, astrology apps, tarot cards, the opinions of friends and family, advisors. Anything we hope might provide us certainty. Those sources can inform us, absolutely, but none of these can actually know what's right for you. Other sources of advice will always contain biases, different life experiences, elements of chance, and/or their own motivations. Only you can connect to the answers fully meant for you, and you can only find them in consistent, devoted stillness.

My hypothesis is that the way we work and the world works is going to change drastically over the next 5-10 years. The tried and true advice we've received for decades isn't going to work anymore (assuming it already doesn't) and no one is going to know how to find the safety and security we were promised once upon a time if only we followed the right formula. It's going to be a guessing game.

That can scare the hell out of us, or it can serve as a relief that no one else knows better than we do, so we might as well become our own best source of guidance. Because that is where our ultimate source of creativity and alignment lives, and those are critical in times of total uncertainty.

So for the last week, I've finally surrendered to surrendering. Instead of trying to force an answer, I've accepted that the answer is somewhere inside of me and it'll come forward when it's ready. That's the hardest part – trusting that my body has perfect timing for when it delivers answers. They might come a couple of minutes after a question pops into my head, or they might come two months later. There's no way of knowing. But the answers are in there. I just have to be willing to get still, be patient, and keep listening.

My prayer right now, in case you are a praying person, is:

Give me grounded clarity. Give me the patience to wait for grounded clarity. Give me the courage to act once I have grounded clarity.

I'll likely be talking about other topics besides my "what's next" the next few weeks as I wait for answers. If you'd like to get those and updates on the tools I'm using on my journey, subscribe to receive them to your inbox.