let go of control: body leads, mind follows

I have intentionally reduced my commitments over the past few months to allow life in, in a way it hadn't been before. There’s a cost to this though — lost productivity, lost progress, lost income.

I’m sitting with my back cushioned against the headboard of the bed I call my own for this month. When I left Mallorca I chose a life that would exist in a state of flux for a while. The first 5 weeks in a small village in the north of England, now a month in a market town in the mid-East, then a month in London, and after that, possibly Asia.

Still in my pyjamas at 4.30 in the afternoon, I am getting to the business of my work: emails, admin, articles… finding my flow amongst the tasks that tether me to the physical world more than anything else. I enjoy the familiarity and comfort of it.

Yet…

The truth is I haven’t felt much like working for a long time now.

Since April I find myself a season of life that is asking me to allow rejuvenation by ‘not doing’. Some seasons are imbued with unparalleled productivity and abundance and some seasons are fallow.

I have intentionally reduced my commitments over the past few months to allow life in, in a way it hadn't been before. There’s a cost to this though — lost productivity, lost progress, lost income.

I have this feeling that maybe this season of not knowing how life is supposed to look like is a fragile invitation to discover how life wants to be lived.

People talk about thriving inside a busy life. I don’t want a busy life. I want a slow life. I want an empty life. I want a life that I can fill with ordinary passing-by moments that only I can witness. A squirt of lemon juice fired in the wrong direction. A single butterfly seeking shelter in a bougainvillaea. A patch of grass, soft and cool, under my feet. I want a life that is pregnant with stillness.

So… I have let go of control: body leads, mind follows.

I act from the advocacy of my body’s wisdom and while systems are necessary and valuable, at times they get in the way of what wants to land.

Even the structures I used to pin my productivity on have fallen away.

Binding my tasks to the energy of the days of the week which I infused into my Plannher stationery brand has naturally dissolved, for now. Showing up to specific timelines and time zones is relaxed and limited until I find a new flow. I pay attention to my cycle and endeavour to have fewer commitments around my menses and am more available for social and travel engagements around ovulation. And that is it.

There is very little planning happening in my life right now.

I am allowing life to move me.

It is an enormous privilege to be able to do so.

It is a privilege to be able to disentangle myself from the hyper-productive capitalist world we live in and to be able to take a step out of that. To surrender and wait and hold out for where life is wanting me to go.

It takes courage and determination and trust and willingness to let go.

It is clear to me that the more controlled life is, the less it is actually in control. The more out of control we feel the more appealing the illusion of control becomes. That the way to gain control is to let go of control.

Allowing ourselves to let go isn’t a revolutionary solution to everything that ails us. Instead, it is a process and a practice.

To let go is to let life wash over us. To let it redirect us and renegotiate the timelines that we exist on, to teach us things we otherwise could not see. Things, feelings and experiences we cannot access when life is tightly contained and managed.

Letting go of control — letting your body lead and mind follow — is about opening up space. It’s about allowing another dimension of life to open up for us to slip into.

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