Letting Good Material Go
It’s been quiet on here. Summer came and went by (too fast). I travelled (Crete, Croatia, Corsica - my big „C Trips“ taught me different lessons that might be worth a blog) and enjoyed the beauty of Austria.
Swimming nearly every day for one hour was a fixture during the hot months. The warm water, the colors, the sun on my skin, the smells of summer make my soul truly happy and my whole being content. Swimming is my big joy, my mediation (yes, mediation between me and the water), my practice of presence.
I am back in LA (where Summer Preservation Department fights hard to keep fall beyond the Californian border). It’s time to move HWell forward, although I am still not quite sure what shape it will take. We shall see.
Recently this feeling of overwhelm has sneaked right back into my life. There are so many things I am interested in, so many things I want to do. I have difficulties to focus. Thank you Instagram and all the other distractions I have allowed to become part of my life.
Time to re-calibrate has come. The question is how. How do we set our priorities straight? How do we choose what’s really important to us in a world that has so much to offer? There’s always something, a new shiny object, an interesting podcast, a new book to read, a TV show to watch, a workout to try, a project to develop, and and and. I personally don’t really know how to keep up with all the information that interests me. Sometimes I have real FOMO.
That “and and and” feeling is very real and truth to be told sometimes exhausting. Am I the only one who has this struggle? Might I need a better system for keeping up? Probably not. These days it seems impossible to be on top of everything. There’s more excellent content published in a single week than anyone could take in over a year. So the question shifts from “how do I keep up?” to “what do I really want to focus my time on?”
So, I was thinking (yes listen #notetoself) maybe there’s an approach that brings a sense of ease. What if I didn’t treat the list as a to-do-list but as a menu? A queue of 80 podcast episodes feels like 80 unfinished tasks. Ufff! A menu is so much more fun. It’s something I choose from when I am hungry, and of course I don’t feel guilty about the dishes I didn’t order. What a reframe!
There’s also always things we are working on. What if the current work was the foundation for some choices. I have recently been doing research on hormones, methylation, and homocysteine for a client. A podcast episode that covers these topics pays off immediately, because the information is truly useful for me right now. The same episode six months from now is just interesting. Content that meets a live question sticks better; content we consume “to be informed” mostly evaporates. What is it for you?
I can also have my mood and intuition help me choose. Science podcasts when my mind is fresh, audiobooks for my long walks (love!), inspirational stuff when I need a lift. Political podcasts are worth a hard look: they often take a lot of energy and give back mostly agitation, these days especially. I am now looking into a short weekly summary that may serve me better than daily listening.
Only recently I gave myself the permission to quit. If an episode hasn’t grabbed me after 15 minutes, I stop. That’s curation. That’s smart decision making. Why should I force myself to sit something out I don’t really like? And lastly, follow your bliss. Do what you love and love what you do and make joy your priority as often as possible. That’s an important one for me in all areas of my life.
My gifts and my challenges are the same thing - in my projects and my interests: I am interested in almost everything and see connections everywhere. That’s a strength, I believe.
Maybe the better question to ask is: What if the real challenge is more in letting good material go than finding it? Accepting that there will always, always be limitations and choices to make? And guys, I am not good in letting go. Making a decision always implies saying good bye to alternative routes we could have taken. That’s hard for me.
But then, I remember many years ago on a retreat a woman said to me: „If you can’t decide, you don’t have anything fully. If you say whole-heartedly yes to one thing, then it’s fully yours.“
💚 Gaby
Follow us on Instagram