Push the Pause Button

“If the bamboo is carefully tended, watched over and nurtured, in the first year it grows two inches, in the next year it grows two inches, in the third year it grows two inches, in the fourth year it grows two inches, and then in the fifth year it grows eighty feet!” ~Mary Manin Morissey

I was thinking about the question, “How do you work smart?” when I remembered this quote about growing bamboo. You tend it, water it and wait. You don’t dig in the dirt, and pull the roots, or pull the top of the plant to make it grow. You tend it, water it and wait…

Coming from a family of doers who value productivity and tangible results, I was conditioned to work hard which led me to burn out a few times in my life. Why? Because I thought that my value was in the doing, the working, the long hours, and in truth, the suffering of no sleep, no social life, no pleasure. The more I worked, the harder I worked, the more value I had. One of the things that changed my life was a lay off from a job, and an illness that led to more time for meditation and writing. I had to stop and see all of the ways I added in busyness, when what I really needed was something else.

The magic of life started to appear when I learned to push the pause button and create space for daydreaming and wandering. I learned that you can’t push the river, there is a time to climb the mountain, and…