Stillness
At both COP16 in Montreal and during New York Climate Week last year, after about 3 days of beautiful, mind and soul filling conversations, connections with friends old and new, I hit a wall. On Thursday of each of those weeks I slept in as if it was Sunday, had a lazy breakfast, and then headed out to the afternoon sessions. Doesn’t sound that revolutionary, does it? It was a breakthrough for me. I’m a super extrovert who used to go hard at conferences, from 7 am to midnight, every day, starting from the day before any such event started right until I boarded my flight home.
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I’m now learning how to be still.
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As I do, I’m realizing how important it is to nurture the space and mindset for all of us to find stillness, so we can create the space within ourselves to shift towards regenerative ways of being and doing.
For decades, 60+ hour workweeks, hitting the ground running on business trips, going non-stop from early morning to late nights at conferences has been a badge of honor for most professionals. Indeed, it was a badge of honor for me. I am now on a journey of unlearning this type of ‘productivity.’?
As I dug deep into building my work around Regenerative Resonance, to support leaders to recenter themselves on regenerative way of being and doing through finding their regenerative resonance, I realized that we, contemporary humans, are a constantly hyperstimulated lot.
Even our regenerative moments sometimes feel frenetic, as we focus on getting our yoga poses right, tumble into our racing thoughts during meditation, worry when we lose mobile networks during nature hikes.
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The data shows it. We need to slow down. We need to find stillness.
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In Gartner’s 2024 survey of Human Resources (HR) leaders, 75% of respondents stated that ‘their managers are overwhelmed by the growth of job responsibilities,’ and 73% say their leaders ‘aren’t equipped to lead change.’ ?Globescan’s Radar 2024 Trends report concurs, stating ‘nearly eight in ten [of their survey respondents] say the world is changing too quickly. Unsurprisingly, human burnout statistics continue to climb, with HBR citing >50% of managers burnt out globally, with other studies (with various country contexts and data questions) citing numbers as high as 85%.
Compounding all this is the fact that we are always ‘on.’ We are increasingly tethered to our devices (this includes me, and ironically, you can access this article because you are on a device).
There is no way that all of this is good for us. Most people I come across know this. I increasingly notice that people around me, especially those who are in impact careers, are taking sick days. I hope partly it’s because we are all being kinder to ourselves and taking sick days rather than ‘powering through,’ as all of us used to do. I don’t think that’s the only reason. Health consequences are a major symptom of burnout.
There is no question in my mind that we need an urgent shift towards regenerative ways of being and doing, for ourselves and the planet. However, if our brains, our lives, our work are so full each day that all we can do is to collapse at the end of the day, we may not even have the space to come out of burnout and pivot towards any other state than the one in which we all currently find ourselves.
Rest periods, vacations, healthcare, exercise, nourishment, and so many other things are important. Yet, often we find that those are ‘breaks from,’ or ‘ways to manage,’ rather than ways to evolve out of our current hyper-stimulated, burnt out states of being.
We all need space to think through what needs to change, within ourselves, the way we live, lead, work, and the way we operate our planet and our society.
This space is currently not the norm for most people. We need to create it.
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So, stillness.
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How do we find stillness?
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First, put the devices away. Even if it’s for 10-15 minutes, put them away.
Next, find a place where you can be with yourself. We may have the most wonderful loved ones, but there are moments to give and receive, to be around each other’s energy. This exercise is about solitude. It’s about being in your own energy.
If possible, find a quiet place. If you find a place in nature, all the better. It can even be nature within a city –a botanical garden, a park, a pond.
Then comes the silence.
Most of us are unaccustomed to silence now. We find it all too easy to turn to a device, read something, listen to something, watch something.
Lean into the stillness, in solitude and silence. Stay within this state a minute longer than you think you can. Once you practice one moment of stillness, try another moment. Stay within it yet another minutes.
When your practice of stillness grows, you will start to sense the space within you to start working on the shift towards regenerative ways of being and doing.
As you begin this journey, keep in touch. I would love to know what is surfacing for you.
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#regenerativeleadership #resonance #regenerative #ecosystems #peopleandnature #withinourgeneration #burnout?
Note: my hyperlinks to Gartner and?Globescan didn't work. Here are the sources I cited:
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Kommunikation. Projektmanagement. Nachhaltigkeit. Gesundheit.
8 个月I'm usually really tempted to listen to yet another piece of awareness-advice from my meditation app. Because it's often insightful and wise. But then I hardly take time to integrate what I listened to. When I do, that feels like stillness: Standing in the cashier queue without looking at my phone, running without listening to anything, eating without reading the newspapers, drinking coffee with just staring in front of me.
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
8 个月??
CEO Core Performance | Vistage & Entrepreneurs' Organization SME Speaker | Master Certified Resilience Trainer | NCSC @NeuroChangeSolutions I Creating high performing organizations from the inside out
8 个月In today's fast-paced society, the concept of cultivating quiet and mindfulness is vital. It prompts us to pause, reflect, and reconnect with ourselves, resulting in better clarity and contentment.