I saw a tweet the other day from Anna Kendrick that said I guess I’ll never be able to lie to myself about all the shit I would do if I just had the time. And while the tweet itself made me laugh, I made it pretty clear in a previous blog post that you don’t have to use this time productively. It’s totally fine if all you can do is survive the days.
But there is a pretty interesting side effect to this whole thing. I’ve experienced it once before–just after I left my business in 2017. I did it on purpose, a mission of sorts. Where I introduced a whole hell of a lot of white space into my life. I allowed myself time to get bored. To think thoughts. To explore creative nudges.
You see, I’d lost myself in the busy-ness of things. With so much to do all the time, I lost the ability to determine if I was ever doing anything I wanted to do because I didn’t have a grasp on what I actually wanted in the first place. If you’ve listened to even just one of my podcast episodes, you know this already. This isn’t going to be new information. But it is information that we need to be reminded of regularly. Because life is cyclical. We are always always going to get back to busy, even if that’s hard to imagine right now.
While this whole thing is hard, there is something good that can come from this. Even if it’s something as small as getting reacquainted with yourself.
We turn self-discovery into work. And I know, I know. I’m 100% guilty of it myself. Because under normal circumstances, it does take work. It takes a conscious effort to choose and prioritize the discovery. The busy-ness doesn’t typically just stop and create a magical opening. Except, right now, for many of us, it kind of has.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely recognize that for many, this time of quarantine is packed full of chaos. If you have small children, you have my prayers. I’ve joked more than once that man, what a time to be childless. But on the real, I can hardly even imagine. And I know every day must be a struggle to think a single thought. So I don’t want what I’m about to say here to put any additional pressure on you–whether you’re an overloaded parent or not.
But this time of quarantine has done something many of us have been longing for–it’s induced a slow down. I can’t tell you how many times in the last several years I’ve lamented the loss of front porch sitting and neighborly chats. And yet just the other day, I sat on the front porch and spent hours chatting with passing neighbors. It’s the quarantine, my neighbor said. It’s brought back our desire to connect. Really connect, without a screen.
And my neighbor, he’s not wrong. But what I realized is that now we make that kind of connection a priority however we can manage it. And we have the time to get creative.
There’s only so much TV one person can watch. And as we crawl weeks deep into this thing, we’re probably wearing out our arsenal of entertainment. And that’s when we find ourselves bored. Do you know what a privilege it is to be bored? What a wonderful thing boredom is?
Boredom is the key that unlocks self-discovery
This is why so many of us struggle under normal circumstances. We are never bored. We never stop long enough to bother to get to know ourselves. Whatever discovery we’d accomplished before our lives entered warp speed would have to be enough. But I don’t know about you–I am not the same person I was back in 2009–which was probably the last time I was unintentionally bored. And creating the space to be bored under normal circumstances is really hard work.
But these days, maybe you’re starting to feel a little differently. Some space is freeing up. You’re finding that the TV is no longer holding your attention; and you’re fed up with the game you’ve been playing on your phone (looking at you, two dots). And in that space, you’re able to do something unique: you find out what bubbles to the top.
I find whenever I have a little extra free time, I feel inspired to write. To really write. I dive back into reading books. I crave a good long walk. These are the pieces of me that make up the person I truly am. But these are also the pieces that are the first to go when I’m busy.
And in the years that I have been coaching, I’ve discovered it’s a lot the same for many of you, too. Deep down, we know the truest desires of our hearts. But we ditch them with reckless abandon any time life picks up pace.
So, I’d like to encourage you to lean into what bubbles to the top during this time. Use this time, if you have it and if you have the desire, to pay attention to what’s craving your attention.
What we’re all experiencing is just wild. We are actively living what kids will study in history books in years to come. The last time I can remember feeling even remotely similarly to how I do now is in the weeks following 9/11. And strangely, outside of NYC, I feel like we rebooted life pretty quickly after that. Things looked different, sure. But for the most part our day-to-day lives went pretty much back to normal.
I don’t know what normal will look like moving forward. None of us do. But what I do know is that experiencing this has brought my priorities screaming into focus. And I hope the same can be said for you, too.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re safe. I hope you’re well. I hope those you love are taken care of and have a safe and healthy place to wait out the storm.
Until next time, friends.
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