act, rest, repeat
on finding the right doing-being balance
The date—September 3rd—stares back at me from the top right corner of my notebook. The first day back at school. That’s what this day will always remind me of: that nostalgic feeling of getting my supplies together and my agenda ready, packing my bag, stewing in the nervous excitement of a new year starting, half-knowing what is coming, and half-not-knowing what to expect. It feels nostalgic now—familiar, but distant. One of my clients joked to me that I only like this time of year because I was a good student. He might be right, but I think the tender energy of new beginnings is available for anyone in September if they want to access it.
I’m in a coffee shop now that I don’t often come to, though I may be the only one here who falls into that bucket. Everyone seems to know each other. They are talking about their kids, about what it was like to drop them off at school this morning. There is a lightness, a friendliness in the air. It’s sweet, warm, comforting—an energy that can sometimes feel hard to find in a busy city.
I spent the weekend in the woods with my friends. The scenes were extraordinary and the moments precious. Paddles hitting water, canoes flipped onto shoulders, backpacks bursting at the seams, sun shimmering on a crystal clear lake, sunscreen radiating on golden skin, instant coffee evaporating into the morning air. It felt so good. Almost overwhelmingly good—to be so unplugged, so disconnected from the way that life in moves so fast in the city, the way everything feels so instant.
When you are camping, you need to walk over to the lake to fill your pot up with water, then come back and boil it on a tiny portable stove to make your coffee. It’s slow, but sweet. Here, I walk into a darling café with comfortable seating, the inside appropriately heated or cooled depending on the time of year. I get presented with a wide selection of perfectly golden-brown fresh pastries, accompanied by any milky-coffee-configuration I could want in seconds. On dishes I don’t have to clean, no less! When you’re in the forest, you have none of that. And of course, it feels amazing.
The convenience we are so used to is bred out of the necessity for speed that city life entails. For the trade-off of receiving instant everything, you’re expected to produce instant everything. This presents a bit of a challenge when your “product” is the kind of thoughts and insights I write about here, which are brewed slowly in the quiet stillness that exists in the absence of the haste and pressure the city is so good at nudging us towards.
I’ve been exploring this tension quite deeply lately; the balance between the sort of gentle, useful pressure that catalyzes output, with the patience needed to let an idea properly ripen. This balance between slowness and speed, between allowing and controlling, between exerting and resting, is something I have been wanting to properly write about for some time now. Now feels right, because I’m finally seeing that the more I put these two polarities into focus, the more I notice that the best things only happen when they exist in the right ratio. In an effort to distill what I’ve learned, this post is about what it might mean to find the right recipe of doing and being.
inner sovereignty
A sovereign energy has been rushing into my life lately. Taking responsibility for things reminds me that I do have control over more than it can sometimes feel like. But this sense of control is manifesting differently than I expected, in subtle ways that speak to a deeper shift. My handwriting is getting neater. I am sitting up straighter, answering messages more often, handling problems with more ease, less thought. I am more assertive, more direct, less apologetic, more forgiving. I am open to what is opening up to me. I am suddenly not trying so hard to control the Result. I am simply doing what is needed, and then loosening my grip on what happens next. The paradoxical result of surrendering control over the uncontrollable is that I feel more in control than ever. Because we are never in control of everything. And when we spread our attention across everything, including what we cannot control, it feels much harder to accept what is happening. By focusing on what you can control and surrendering to the rest, you reclaim your energy in a much grander way. Your inner world begins to finally settle into a state of harmony, of ease. You embody a sovereignty, a wisdom, about what life genuinely needs from you, and a willingness to stop there, to not over-extend yourself past its demands. You learn to focus when you are needed, and relax when you are not. You learn to rest, as well as act.
control the controllable, surrender to the rest
There is a humility—a freedom—in accepting that you are not the Controller of All Things. That you are simply a force, that, when properly directed, can control many things, but not everything. When I write that out, my brain is like, well yeah: obviously not everything is under your control. But there is still something so uneasy about those moments where I want to be in control, but I am not—where I am clawing at a situation I have no real influence over. That habit of falling for the illusion of full control causes all of this internal drama of resisting (and resenting) what is happening outside of your control, which only exhausts you with no real reward.
As much as this all makes perfect intellectual sense, embodying this lesson has been its own journey. Figuring out this delicate balance between wanting to JUST GET THERE ALREADY! and the knowledge that there is no “there”, really, and that the point of the journey is to enjoy every aspect of it, including the patience needed to let your actions ripen with time.
treating rest as mission-critical
I used to think of rest as purely indulgent. As though it was a luxury I didn’t have “time” for, didn’t need. This conditioning was definitely formed in a time where I genuinely did not have time to rest. Where I had taken on far too much at once and had no time to take care of myself. The results of this caught up with me later (as they often do). In this vacuum of rest, I would develop issues that wouldn’t get noticed because I was too “busy” with everything I was doing that seemed so urgent at the time (though in hindsight was not all that important, and certainly not as important as my overall well-being). But when you’re living in fight or flight — when you are so preoccupied that you can barely sense your body’s desire for rest — you will continue to bypass what you actually need, for what you think you need to do.
These phases of “over-doing it”, are what create this notion that rest is a luxury (not a necessity). And because our body can sustain this dynamic for a short, intense time, we might then look back on those phases where we were over-doing it but still performing well and say: hey, I don’t really need rest! Look at that time where I did all of those things without ever taking a break! But these phases are not sustainable or healthy. Burning our body out — the vessel which takes us through life, that shows up for us constantly (even when we do not show up for it) — is simply not worth it. Our body was built to handle temporary peaks in exertion, but problems are created when we push the limits of our stress allowance consistently, forcing ourselves to over-exertion repeatedly without ever taking the time to recover.
Lately though, I’ve noticed that the “effort” portion of any project is actually enhanced by adequate rest. It’s as though I’ve finally just arrived at the (personal) realization that rest is a mission-critical component of any successful complex process. We always hear these stories of great thinkers who came up with their best ideas on walks, in the bath, when wandering, when resting, and yet, when we feel stuck, our instinct is still to PUSH HARDER, to be unrelenting in whatever part of the process we are in. But rarely do we need more effort when we’ve already exerted ourselves generously, and feel stuck. Typically, what we need is space, time, and above all: patience.
act, then trust
I’m learning that rest, that patience, is a necessary ingredient in any process of creation (much like dough needs time to rise before it gets baked to its peak form!). I’m learning that the moments when I want to put in more effort are exactly when I need to take a breath, slow down, and let myself rest.
All I need to “do” in those moments is nothing at all. Simply let my mind and body recover, slow down, and acknowledge what I’ve already done. Then: zoom out and notice what is or isn’t working. Exhale, reflect and when I’m adequately rested, re-enter the cycle of effort gently, with intention, focus, and ease, instead of with blind, brute force, unrelenting effort.
There is always something more you could be doing, but it’s not about just finding anything to do. It’s about finding the right things to do in the right moments, having the energy to do them well, and then pausing before the next sprint. And not throwing your energy recklessly at the infinite things you could be doing just to feel a jolt of that oh-so-coveted progress we all seem to crave. That feeling of being useful, and indulging in the illusion that usefulness somehow makes us worthy: two concepts that are much more independent than most of us were conditioned to believe.
recalibrating mind and body
When our mind gets too content doing its thing (literally, doing its thing), we can forget to also listen to our body, to start being, as well as doing. We let our body atrophy in service of what the mind has decided is needed. But when we recalibrate this dynamic and put our body and our mind on the same plane, we can see how we need to listen to both of them to enjoy life—and to get things done!
We shouldn’t burn out the body by over-indexing on what the mind wants, and we can’t abandon the ambitions of the mind to tend to the body constantly, or we will feel guilty for stewing in inaction! It truly is a balance, and both polarities can be addictive and enthralling in their own way. It is up to us to identify and keep ourselves on the fine-line between doing and being, allowing and controlling, exertion and rest, effort and ease that works best for us.
Because the more we approach this dynamic with awareness, patience, and wisdom — instead of the frantic, need-to-be-occupied-with-a-task-or-else energy that we can sometimes bring to the things we really care about — the more likely we are to do what is genuinely needed, instead of just taking action for the sake of it. With the right balance, it becomes easier to live effortlessly, to do what you care about most, and to take care of your biggest responsibility: caring for yourself! That is the path of reclaiming your inner sovereignty. Knowing what you are responsible for, and living that out. And recognizing that your responsibilities do not only include action, exertion and effort, but that they also include listening to and honouring your body’s needs for rest. At least, that is the shift I’m noticing these days: that the more open I am to both sides of the effort wheel, rests and sprints, the easier it becomes to complete things I’m proud of, and take the time to rest and enjoy my life before moving on to the next thing. Like nature, we cannot be in bloom all the time. We must let ourselves blossom, shed, and then regrow. Rest helps us blossom with more vitality and colour in each new cycle. And without it, we risk losing our ability to bloom at all.
If you want to identify and take action on what you truly want, while honouring the needs of your mind and body along the way, learn more about working with me 1:1.
Learn more about From Men to Kings, my 1-1 program designed to help men cultivate more balance, presence and ease using the four archetypes of mature masculinity (King, Warrior, Magician, Lover) as a lens for self-understanding.
Sign up to learn more about Creative Liberation — a virtual course I teach on unblocking your creativity, conquering your avoidance, and expressing yourself freely.
Related essays you might enjoy: embrace the exhale, one thing at a time, on slowness, taste and living well, slow down, being in bloom. Follow me on Twitter for my daily thoughts.
Great essay as always Isabel, I think it's good to push ourselves and go through seasonal sprints but then take time to completely disconnect and recharge for the next one.
It reminds me of the whole idea of "work/life balance" - Most people want to focus more on balance than actually putting in the work and it inevitably prolongs the time until their desired freedom comes.
This is exactly what I needed to hear and read. Thank you so much for writing it!