You may already know that our family has lived with chronic illness and disability for decades- my wife Holly has had that as part of her physicality in different ways since I’ve known her.
I got to experience it more vividly for myself last week. I was supposed to be on vacation, but instead my low back went into spasms, I spent the evening in the emergency room, and then two days being unable to get out of bed.
Thankfully it was entirely muscular, no skeletal or nerve damage, and I’m recovering quickly. And I finally ordered that standing desk converter that had been on my “meaning to” list for some months.
From the earliest days of Heart of Business, many of our clients have had their own struggles with various types of disability, including chronic illness. And it can be incredibly frustrating, maddening at times, to have a vision, have relatively straightforward projects and tasks that need to be followed through with, and yet one’s physical body keeps the pace WAY slower, and more inconsistent, than one would like.
I’d like to turn this frame on its head, for some much needed compassion and relief.
The body has certain rights over us.
The Sufi spiritual teaching is right there: your body, my body, our physical bodies have certain rights over us. It means that the physical body has priorities that need to be attended to before any dreams and ambitions. This includes food, sleep, urination and defecation, as well as exercise as is possible.
Our modern culture is a death-denying cult of obsessive productivity. Unrealistic amounts of ongoing work, fantastically short timelines to completion, and completely out of rhythm with the seasons, with the sun, with our moods and physical needs.
It’s a major reason why so many of us are chronically ill, in addition to all the toxins we’ve put into our environment.
Your timeline is actually the healthy one.
It’s incredibly hard to hear this, much less believe this, but I want you to know that the timeline you’re on, that your body has slowed you down for, is actually the healthy timeline.
It’s not that things can’t happen quickly sometimes. I bet sometimes things go quickly for you, too.
However, it’s not realistic or healthy for that speed to be what happens all the time. When I observe nature in my part of the world, there’s a long period of resting and preparing in the winter, then in spring there’s a furious sprouting up. Summer continues the growth, but at a slower, steadier pace, and then goes back into a rest cycle in the fall.
That’s one big growth spurt per year. Not constant growth and productivity year-round.
Kindness has wisdom in it.
If you can, please trade in your self-judgment for kindness, acceptance, and celebration of who you are and what you are walking with.
Clients that have been slowed down, either by physical constraints or other factors, generally find great treasures in that. Not just in the ease that comes in, but also they often discover that moving more quickly would have meant doing unnecessary work.
More than one client has gained great clarity about their business and preferred audience during a slowed-down time, which made the development of a program, or a website, much easier and more clear. If they had rushed forward on their original, uncompassionate, unrealistic timeline, they would have had to just redo it anyway, with the later-found clarity.
Kindness to yourself is actually a profound way to access truth and wisdom. Be kind.
With love,
Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.
Today is the early-early bird deadline for Surrender, Sovereignty and Strategy.
The 4 day deep-listening intensive I’m leading in September is starting to fill as folks jump in, as they do, on a deadline. If you feel drawn to do this, please read about it, then reach out today, so we can make the early-early bird price available to you, even if you don’t get registered until after you and I get a chance to talk.
There are a limited number of partial scholarships available, so feel free to inquire about that as well, when you do.
Read: Surrender, Sovereignty and Strategy
A four day virtual intensive, September 19-22, 2022
Today is a great day to start the inquiry process.
