We have all had those moments when stopping in our tracks, sitting down, and just not moving anywhere seems like the best option. Whether that’s because we have been overworking, feeling depressed, unmotivated, or just plain disinterested, sometimes stopping allows us to simply catch up with ourselves before seeing what’s next.
That concept may seem counterintuitive to success or progress yet in reality it can make room for a great deal of both. When you are someone who thinks out of the box, you are by nature someone who is always looking at things through a different lens. You look for options that are more productive, unique, or interesting, or even just more efficient. Nonetheless, fighting the tide can be exhausting. “Going along “isn’t easy either, yet there you are in a given flow that is already defined for you.
In working with more and more leaders who are called to create new organizations or groups, or to do ordinary things in unique ways, what I see is that forging new ways of doing things, presenting familiar things in a new format, or even shifting to a new audience, can feel brand new. It is exciting, challenging in a great way, and so very innovative. What that also does is bring out a strength, a side of you that you never realized you had. It supports a vision that you had to grow into in order to recognize its validity and sustainability. That vision, and you, had a great deal of growing to do at the same time before even starting.
Standing up, taking a deep breath, and forging ahead, can easily become a way of life for some. Nonetheless, it works best when you have first stopped long enough to:
- Assess where you are
- Assess where you are going
- Recognize the price you are paying for each
- Be honest about the price you paid to get where you are today
- How have your relationships survived? With yourself and others? Do you know how others define it?
- Do these relationships need to be strengthened before you move forward?
- What about inner peace? Joy? Passion? Purpose? Health?
- Do you know our “Why?” Is it a part or motivator of the new vision?
When all these questions are answered honestly, and dealt with, then you are ready to stand up and move on to the next out of the box thought, dream, or vision that appears.
When they do, you find yourself coming alive again. You find your excitement, your passion, and your child-like joy flowing through you. At that point, with your eyes and heart wide open, you are ready to step into the next stage, the next expansion or transition, that calls you and that vision to expand, to grow, and bring even more creativity into a world that needs so much newness. Bring all the goodness of compassion, integrity, kindness, and absolutely outrageousness you possess. What an inspiration forging ahead in that mindset can be!!!
