Being & Doing

How do you live up to your potential without always living in the future?

On the weekend, I shared a solo podcast episode on Out of Hours on what Out of Hours really means - living up to your potential, creating things that should exist and doing things that light you up.

I’d love to know your thoughts. How does that idea of living up to your potential make you feel? Excited and aware of what you could be doing more of? Or a pressure to do more? I’d love to hear more.

Somewhat ironically, in a meditation session I was running (you can join the sessions again in November - sign up here before the end of October!), I also recently shared Jon Kabat Zinn's amazing concept of non-striving: the sense that whatever is already here is good enough, even if it’s not pleasant in this moment it’s enough, and we don’t need to escape from it or fix it.

So, what’s it to be? Should we accept things in life, or change them?

I think these things can co-exist. We can try to create more things that should exist in the world as founders, and then we must also spend time in non-doing - surrendering to something outside of ourself, without needing it to be something else.

The 24 hour of Yin & Yang suggests this. There is always some yin in the yang - however strong it is.

We can create things, and strive to change the world, but also rest in the knowledge that we have done enough. Perhaps even only until the next day.

How do you see these two forces co-existing? Can you live up to your potential, without willing life to be something it is not? For me, it is about being in a state of ‘aliveness’ as much as possible. Sometimes this means resting and not changing things (otherwise we live in a trance of productivity, overactivity and stress) and sometimes this means engaging actively creating a life we want (an absence of this creates lethagy, sadness and powerlessness).

Can we change things while accepting things in life don’t need to be fixed? How do you manage yin and yang, or doing and being? Which do you have more of, or feel more comfortable in?

I’d love to hear more!

And to spend ten minutes in non-doing twice a week, it’s the last week to sign up to the November meditation sessions every week in November, I’d love to see you there.