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Stillness. The absence of movement or sound.
I love stillness — in theory. Put me on the top of a mountain, with no human beings in sight, and I feel incredibly grounded. I’d rather hike alone or spend time alone than attend a concert in a crowded place. Absence of sound? As a parent of two young kids, that sounds like luxury. Sign me up.
But the absence of movement feels more tricky to me. I love moving — and my parents say I’ve been itching to move since I was born. I feel strange when I’m not moving forward in my business and my life. But while this itch for movement serves me most of the time, it doesn’t match well with the natural slowdowns of running a business.
When it comes to pacing, running a business can feel like a rollercoaster: Wild weeks are often followed by quiet ones. You may need to sprint to meet your deadlines, and soon after you’ll find yourself with a near-silent inbox. Things almost always pick back up again but for nearly every freelancer I know, seasons of stillness are tricky.
A while back, I saw a tweet that summed up that struggle incredibly well:
Here are the ways that I’ve seen my clients (and myself) avoid stillness:
Jean decided to take two weeks off. But during that time, she struggled to “rest.” Her anxiety skyrocketed whenever she had a blank day ahead of her. So she deep cleaned her house, reorganized her office, monitored her email, scrolled social media, planned a dinner party, and wrote a book proposal.
Emil got used to slow Decembers. After five years of business, he’d come to expect it. But what always caught him by surprise was the panic he felt rising as his workload slowed down. Even though he knew that Januarys were typically quite busy, and even though he’d planned ahead, his brain went into overdrive: “This is a sign your business is failing! You’ll never work again!” Instead of enjoying his slow Decembers, Emil started to dread them.
Eliza had two years of saving ahead of her before she could buy a house. She knew that she needed to set $500/ month aside each month, and she had that plan worked into her budget. But she still kept scrolling Zillow each night. Then she found the house of her dreams — and even though it didn’t make sense to buy just yet, Eliza couldn’t handle the idea of waiting. She decided to jump and put down less money on the house than she’d planned, which meant a higher interest rate. 6 months later, her monthly finances felt squeezed.
Laney was a new freelance writer. She’d worked as a writer at a full-time job in the past, but she still felt a bit out of her depth when it came to pitching story ideas to editors. She partnered up with another friend, also a new freelancer, to hold each other accountable for pitching 10 story ideas each week. And they did! But after three days, Laney felt her anxiety skyrocketing. Rather than sit with it, she decided to email the editors to check in. Three days later, she did the same. Three weeks later, she still hadn’t gotten any responses.
All of these business owners avoided stillness in a number of ways: Asking others for emotional validation, making decisions that felt slightly misaligned, filling rest time with action, and numbing by scrolling, smoking, drinking, and beyond. And I don’t mean to say that any of these folks did anything wrong. In fact, they all responded in pretty normal ways to anxiety-provoking situations.
But there’s also this: At its core, our avoidance of stillness is an avoidance of discomfort. We don’t like to be uncomfortable. Many of us don’t have tools that help us manage discomfort, or we take discomfort as a sign that we’re doing something wrong. This is a very human thing; of course we don’t like to be uncomfortable. It sucks! But it’s also a part of life and business. Still, when the silence stretches out before us, we’re left with open space. In that space, our deepest fears and worries are often given the space to breath.
Many of us busy ourselves as a coping mechanism, a way to hide from what lurks underneath. Stillness works against those coping mechanisms: You take a big gulp of air, look around and think, “What in the world am I doing? How will this ever work? Why did I ever think this was a good idea?”
As Cory said in that meme: Show me the ways you avoid stillness — via coping mechanisms, which we use to try to escape from the emotions and beliefs that lurk underneath — and I’ll show you the patterns that run your life.
He’s right. The ways we avoid stillness ARE the ways we block ourselves from achieving what we want to achieve.
I wish I had a comfy solution, but this newsletter is about getting uncomfortable. So my proposed solution is this: We’re all going to have to get used to being uncomfortable. And, we can use times of stillness to get a clear read on what’s blocking us from what we want.
In stillness, so much is revealed. We need stillness to grow creatively, soothe ourselves, allow our bodies to rest, come into the present moment and appreciate what’s around us. We need stillness. So often, I’ve seen people’s businesses and lives completely change after taking two weeks completely away from doing. When they get enough distance from their work, they can make revolutionary decisions. And frankly, if you don’t opt into stillness every so often, your body will usually choose it for you anyway by getting sick.
So if we need stillness — if our bodies and our businesses require stillness — we must learn to tolerate the anxiety that comes along with being still. This is called growing your window of tolerance. You know how everyone is obsessed with cold plunging? Those people are learning, physically, how to grow their windows of tolerance. And while you don’t have to jump into a pool of cold water to learn to manage discomfort, they’re onto something: The more you endure discomfort, the less uncomfortable you become, the more you can tolerate.
This is the work: Allow yourself to be still, maybe just for five minutes. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable in the stillness. Notice what comes up. Try not to get too attached to whatever comes. (Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way calls these blurts — random thoughts that break through in still moments). Then get up and keep moving. The next time you choose stillness, sit for a bit longer. Maybe eventually you’ll be able to stay still for an hour, then a day, then perhaps a week.
In stillness, there is insight. There’s peace. There’s breath. There’s soulfulness, exploration, and self-interrogation. In stillness there’s the possibility for self-compassion.
The cave you fear to enter so often holds the treasure that you seek.
xo,
Jenni
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with non-linear business building and teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here and follow me on Twitter & Instagram!