I was blessed with discipline in spades and a passionately fierce willingness to do for myself and not really wait for anybody to get in line to start doing for me. Doing graduated me out of college early. It helped me to start my own business at 20 from scratch and hustle it to regionally recognized and nationally ranked students and ultimately an exit sale. It helped me to get on stage as a bodybuilder, several times. It helped me to stay fit without having competitive goals. It helped me to stay sober even when I was doing everything not to. It helped me to create a rather decorated resume, early.
Doing helped me to push when I had nothing left to really push. It helped me to keep going when every ounce of my heart was shattered and bleeding all over my body. It helped me to change careers – several times. It got me to jump when I was terrified, and to fake it until I started to feel like I was making it.
Until it didn’t. Until it started to disable me from being present in all of my affairs. Until it started to prevent me from feeling – anything. Until it became “you are everything, or you are nothing”. Until physical pursuits became an identifier. Until it neglected the living part of my life. Until it paralyzed me from celebrating what I do have instead of laser beam focusing on what I think I do not.
We are human beings, not human doings. My greatest purpose in this life is not to do, but to be; and in being, I am of maximum usefulness to others. If I am too caught doing, I can’t possibly be serving, because all I am ever thinking about is Alison.
And if all I am ever thinking about is me, I am grossly limiting the space for you and for the greatness that we are right now. I am never slowing down long enough to appreciate what is happening for me, not to me. I am never lingering quietly enough to soak in the amazing that is right now. I am never waiting patiently enough to own the enormity of the abundance that is my life right now – not in the future, not one day hopefully soon – right fuckin’ now.
The idea of being versus doing is tricky. If I don’t do on some level, things don’t get done. I don’t capitalize on the career God has handed me directly. I don’t keep up with my health and the kind of physical fitness that makes me happy. I don’t keep my house organized and clean or pay my bills on time. I don’t prep food every few days and pack it ahead of time. I don’t get to work early and follow-up with prospects and do the things that will make me successful, every day. I don’t read or write or pick up the phone and ask somebody else how they are doing instead of constantly thinking about myself.
I have found that being is in between these dos. It’s checking in to see how I feel. It’s pausing to notice where my feet are and where they need to be. It’s looking ahead in the schedule, but writing in pencil. It’s doing one thing at a time, instead of ten things at once. It’s listening to you while you are talking to me, instead of thinking of all of the great things that I have to say. It’s leaving the phone downstairs at night so I can turn down and off and rest. It’s getting on my knees in the morning and taking stock from head to toe to see what I need most, and first.
And what it really is, is saying no to you, when I really want to say yes. It is saying no to you, because I am really actually saying yes to myself, and to you. if I am saying yes to you, but no to me – we are both losing. But if I say yes to me, that ultimately means I’m more available for you anyway. It means that you’ve allowed me the space to feel safe enough to ask for what I need and that the two of us can keep going – with me available and present for you, and you trusting me because you know I can ask for what I need. I can be honest enough to be where I am, instead of where I think you want me to be.
Yes doesn’t always mean yes, as we hear it, and no doesn’t always mean no, as we think it does. If I stay doing – everything sounds like no. But if I can start being a little bit more in between all of the doing, I start to hear the truth – yours, and mine. And I can start to hear that truth, without the walls of the Universe closing down on me first and forcing me into it.