Speaker 1: Hi. You know, I want to talk about something today
Speaker 1: that people really don't talk about publicly. And that's not
Speaker 1: because of shame, it's not because of embarrassment. It's just
Speaker 1: because we can't find the words. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about those moments when we're not failing. We are doing
Speaker 1: our job and we're doing it extremely well. But those successes,
Speaker 1: they don't feel like anything. They're empty, void, And that's
Speaker 1: different failure when we do something wrong, When something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: that has a definite texture to it, a definite feeling.
Speaker 1: And yet there's moments when we do everything right there's nothing.
Speaker 1: It is void, is empty. It's not burnout, it's not depression.
Speaker 1: If you look at it from a functional perspective, we're
Speaker 1: doing excellently, and yet we feel almost nothing. The day
Speaker 1: becomes moving through a tick list. Tick one move on, tick,
Speaker 1: the next move on. There is no gap between the tasks,
Speaker 1: there is no gap between the completions. Each task is
Speaker 1: tipped on without a moment of acknowledgment, without taking a
Speaker 1: breath to contemplate what we've just done. And by doing this,
Speaker 1: we're training a nervous system that completion doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1: In fact, we give more attention to those moments when
Speaker 1: it goes wrong than when it goes right. So the
Speaker 1: day feels empty. It feels like a vacuum, not because
Speaker 1: nothing happened, but because we didn't give the right things
Speaker 1: the attention. This isn't this is conditioning. This is how industry,
Speaker 1: how work pushes us forward. Is not a character flaw
Speaker 1: within this. So today we're going to dive deeper into this. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Damien, and welcome to the abundance frequency. So why
Speaker 1: don't we take those moments? Why don't we take a
Speaker 1: moment after each task, however small, after each task and
Speaker 1: really just digest it for a second. In my experience
Speaker 1: working with professionals, this tends to be for three reasons.
Speaker 1: There's the illusion of a finite list or pause when
Speaker 1: I get through this bit, but that bit never actually ends.
Speaker 1: We suddenly realize that somebody's added a load of other
Speaker 1: to doos on the back end of our list, so
Speaker 1: we'd better get on with those. Secondly, we can see
Speaker 1: pace as performance, and when we slow down, it looks
Speaker 1: like we're not working hard enough, we're not working to
Speaker 1: our full potential. And Thirdly, and this is probably the
Speaker 1: most subjective one, if we pause, it gives an implication
Speaker 1: of feeling, and that brings in other emotions and there
Speaker 1: is a concerned oh well, we'll get bogged down with it.
Speaker 1: So the momentum of plowing through our list is actually
Speaker 1: partly efficiency and it's partly avoidance. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1: Let me share a story about Sandra. Sandra was an
Speaker 1: operations director. She was meticulous. She did love her streadsheets
Speaker 1: and she was excellent with them. She was reliable. She
Speaker 1: hit every single deadline, She kept every plate spinning. No
Speaker 1: matter what the problem was, she solved it. When there
Speaker 1: was a team issue, she solved it. She was loved
Speaker 1: by the board and she was loved by her team,
Speaker 1: and she came to me because, as she put it,
Speaker 1: she felt like she run a marathon every single day
Speaker 1: but had achieved nothing. And if you looked at her day,
Speaker 1: there was not a space between any of the tasks.
Speaker 1: As soon as she finished one thing, she was on
Speaker 1: with the next. As she just pushed through that day.
Speaker 1: Because as she put it, when she stayed in motion,
Speaker 1: when she kept going, it meant she didn't feel like
Speaker 1: she was falling behind. It felt like she was on
Speaker 1: top of everything. And the way It wasn't from the volume.
Speaker 1: It was from all those little, unrested completions in the day.
Speaker 1: This is what was draining her, this was what was
Speaker 1: eating away at her. So let's try something right now.
Speaker 1: Just take a deep breath, let it go slowly, and
Speaker 1: take one moment to think of something you have done today.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be huge, it doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be significant. Just one thing. And rather than moving past
Speaker 1: it and think, yeah, I did that, stay with it.
Speaker 1: It happened, it was completed because of you, And just
Speaker 1: for a moment, let your attention drift down into your body.
Speaker 1: Can you notice any faint sense of satisfaction, any relief,
Speaker 1: anything like? Yes, just let it come in it's own time. Now,
Speaker 1: whatever you feel, however faint, however much of a thread,
Speaker 1: that's the signal. It's there. That's a felt value of achievement,
Speaker 1: and it's always been there. To take a moment, don't
Speaker 1: don't ticket to move on to the next thing. That's
Speaker 1: the beginning of the counter practice. That's about slowly overturning
Speaker 1: all those years of compression. So what have we just
Speaker 1: done that We we take a moment, and we take
Speaker 1: a breath, and it closes the loop, the nervous system registered,
Speaker 1: something's happened, it's done. We've shifted from the sympathetic and
Speaker 1: orvous system, which I've mentioned before, to the parasympathetic in
Speaker 1: that one moment. Now, if we skip on, if we
Speaker 1: do the next to do, we're leaving that moment open,
Speaker 1: and that creates an accumulated weight, as Sandra described it,
Speaker 1: that builds layer over layer, over years and over the day.
Speaker 1: This trains our body to work on a task level.
Speaker 1: And so by doing this, by interjecting these moments, these
Speaker 1: breaths in between everything we do, our bodies eventually learned
Speaker 1: to close the day as well, which makes sleep easier.
Speaker 1: So we learn when something is complete, when something is done,
Speaker 1: and it only takes a breath, it only takes one second.
Speaker 1: Assandra said after six weeks, at the end of her day,
Speaker 1: now she closes her laptop and there is a part
Speaker 1: of her that closes within a part of her body
Speaker 1: says my day is done, and she relaxes. This doesn't
Speaker 1: need thinking about, this doesn't need cognitive willpower. We are
Speaker 1: training our nervous system to do something a little different.
Speaker 1: We're untraining it from doing the Let's just push through
Speaker 1: keep pushing through, keep pushing through, because by keep pushing through,
Speaker 1: there is no completion, there is no success. We don't
Speaker 1: appreciate what we've already done. We're not recognizing our achievements.
Speaker 1: Your work isn't empty. The feeling you have is caused
Speaker 1: not by your work, but because there is a lack
Speaker 1: of space between the tasks. A breath, a single breath
Speaker 1: where you can digest what you've done and say this
Speaker 1: is complete, this is done, and that space supposed nothing
Speaker 1: in time, and it gives you the best return on
Speaker 1: investment you can imagine. So on Sunday's episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to build that pulls out that one second in the breath.
Speaker 1: So we've got something different to bring back to Monday's desk,
Speaker 1: so when we start on Monday, we can handle things differently.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to You
Speaker 1: don't miss a single episode, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing you on Sunday. M