There’s a sense that if you don’t act on an idea immediately, you will lose it forever.
The story is that if you don’t act immediately, you may miss out on your golden opportunity. Even worse, you risk being branded as a procrastinator, or lazy. Perhaps you are falling victim to the resistance — Steven Pressfield’s fancy word for fear.
What if you’re not any of those things?
What if you’re honoring the natural creative process?
Any great work requires a period of incubation, a time of marinating.
A woman carries a baby for 9 months before giving birth.
Fine wines take years to cultivate and come to market.
Seeds need time to take root below ground before they sprout from the earth.
This incubation period is more effective when it comes without the side of guilt and shame associated with the belief that you’re lazy or procrastinating.
Everything in life and nature happens in its season. Our task is to listen for the wisdom that tells us when the time is right.
In Sabbath, Wayne Muller writes:
We do not gauge the value of the seasons by how quickly the progress from one to the next. Every season brings forth its bounty in its own time, and our life is richer when we can take time to savor the fruit of each.
What if you trusted that everything will happen in its proper timing? That you will not miss the golden opportunity?
What if you set down the need for immediacy in action or results and allowed yourself to be in — even appreciate —the process?
When you rest in trust of nature’s timing, you will find that you can accomplish more with less force. Your work will cease to feel like an uphill battle. It will emerge with more power. Because you’ve reserved your energy — your life force — for the important parts. You are no longer draining yourself with the chase.
Muller writes:
When we know the seasons of things, we can feel their timing, their readiness. There is less pushing, more waiting to see what is necessary.
One of my favorite quotes is from Lao Tzu:
Nature does not hurry, yet everything gets accomplished.
What if you could trust this divine power that is greater than we are?
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