When I was about 15, I started swimming laps with my dad in the winter.
The swimming pool was on the ground floor of a very 1970s apartment building a few blocks away from where we lived. It was a smallish pool, but it was free and it was heated—a pretty important feature for a swimming pool in Montreal in the dead of winter.
For about an hour, we’d lap back and forth, side by side.
What I loved was the silence of it. All I could hear was some splashing and the sound of my own breath. Everything else was muted by the water. My brain or whatever worry or mental chatter I had zipping around in my head got really quiet.
When I got back from those swims, I could always finish any homework I had quickly.
In this week’s episode (#56) Dennis and I talk about how we can get more done by being still. In our culture, the assumption is that in order to be productive, we have to constantly be in motion and checking things off our list. Learn why periods of stillness can actually enhance your productivity, how to cultivate stillness, and how to incorporate it easily into your life.
The free Group Frequency Calibration® (GFC) at the end of the episode is the most important part – it will help you begin to clear the distortion patterns that keep you from accessing these periods of stillness.
Without clearing these distortion patterns, we can easily get burned out or feel exhausted from doing too much without gaining that much return.
Here’s to creating more by doing less!
Until next time,
Karen
SUMMARY:
• When we deliberately set periods of stillness into our day, a gestation period is created. When we come out of it, we can be more productive and what we create will have a higher resonance—and therefore a greater impact.
• Most people have a problem with stillness because we’re so conditioned to moving all the time and so mentally active—especially with all our digital devices running the show.
• Physical immobility is not required in order to experience mental stillness; in fact, many people can more easily experience mental stillness through motion. Swimming, running, dancing, walking—the flow of physical activity allows the mental space for stillness to come through.
• Using your senses allows you to become more present and kills mind chatter. Notice the color of the leaves, the smell of the air, the rustling of wind. That mental quiet allows a reset—allows ideas to come flooding in.
• How can we allow our minds to experience stillness? The first step is to make time for it. Recognize that stillness is as critical as doing, and schedule it in.
• If stillness is scary, allow yourself to move. Take time for an activity you enjoy and use your senses to quiet your mind chatter, even if it’s just for a few seconds at a time. Catch your mind when it becomes active and still it again by focusing on your senses. With practice you’ll be able to enjoy longer and longer periods of stillness.
• Distortion patterns cause our minds to speed up. The more you do frequency work, the faster you’ll be able to remove distortion patterns and cultivate longer periods of stillness.