I’ve always been forced into action, usually for straight up survival reasons. If I didn’t make money, if I didn’t generate income, I’d be screwed.
Often the things I did ran their course, and it was time for me to move on. There was no choice about it.
For the first time in my life, I’m not in this position. I’m in a very comfortable place, yet I’m extremely unsatisfied and have a burning desire for something else.
I know what its like to hustle and bootstrap my way to a goal or objective. But how does one achieve that next goal if there is no need to hustle?
I could do nothing and be ok.
I’ve found this challenging.
The way I’ve always gone about it isn’t going to work this time, so I have to find a new way. An effortless way, because if there is effort I’m just not going to do it.
When I was younger I would pound the pavement, I would force myself to have conversations I needed to have. I’d walk in cold and speak to whomever it was I needed to speak with, because I had to, my life was on the line.
I had a recent thought that if I were to look at this as a graph, the quicker I need results the more hard action it was going to take. Let’s call “Effort” as the X axis.
However, if I don’t want to take that hard action, because I don’t have to, then I have to look at what the Y axis is – Time.
The further the Y axis is, the lower the X axis becomes.
I have to give myself permission to extend the Y axis.
If I do this, the math will work.
Every previous business I’ve started has taken 3-5 years to hit its stride. As much as I wanted or needed instant success, everything took longer than I wanted. This is just a way of reframing that and using it to my advantage this time around.
Part of extending the Y Axis (Time) this go around is instead of wasting my effort on pointless work, I’m using the time for personal exploration of what effortless is for me.
Writing the 100+ articles for this blog was effortless, I genuinely enjoy it, but it’s also taken 2 years to accumulate that material.
Completing my memoir last year was effortless, but it sat unfinished for 10 years, until it became the most important thing to me, and then it automagically completed itself.
All of these things take work, but they happen in such an effortless way it seems like it was magic when I look back at it.
I’ve made several decisions about how I want to life my life currently. One of those is without social media, from a decelerated place. Well, then I have to consider the extended Y-Axis (Time) in the result.
So now I’m in a place of waiting for these opportunities to present themselves and complete them in the most effortless way possible.
It’s a new way of living and I’m curious to find others like me figuring this out.
How might you use Time in a way that allows for effortless work?
