Overwhelmed? Over-capacity? Exhausted? Depleted? Noticing a negative mood that's creeping into more areas of your life? We've all been there and KNOW that to continue at such a pace over the long term is a sure fire recipe for disaster, personally and professionally. Yet any solution we come up with for dealing with the overwhelm seems unrealistic, impractical or too risky.
I was working with a senior executive who was two years into a senior level promotion running a global team. The job required her to travel weekly between several regional offices in four countries. She was also in a masters program, a long term committed relationship, and on the board of an international not-for-profit. Between the travel and workload she was way past the point of over-commitment and exhaustion. And, there was family and friends to tend to and her health and her aging parents. Lots of things were falling through the cracks, but mostly her own sanity and sense of well-being.
Together, we explored several strategies for dealing with the overwhelm in her life. We discussed what commitments that she had already made that she could renegotiate or revise. Conversely, we discussed what it would be like if she just leaned into the work load and put her non-work commitments on the back burner -- for a short and specific amount of time.
We also talked about the notion of wholeheartedness that David Whyte, the poet and author speaks about in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea, Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. In the book David writes that "the antidote to exhaustion isn't rest, it's whole-heartedness." Often we are trying to be too many things for too many people and choosing not for ourselves but to satisfy others' expectations of us. We find ourselves not being fully present to what we are doing. David goes on to say, "You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know what that is; I don't have to tell you." With my executive we explored what, in her life, brought her aliveness and how to let go of the things that did not.
There was, however, an additional strategy that I introduced to her that most struck a chord; one that is rarely, if ever, talked about or considered. It is what I call "laying fallow."
That's an uncommon expression, often associated with farming, as in letting the land lay fallow. It refers to letting a field go unsown for a period of time in order to let it rest and restore its fertility. In Hebrew the term means release. I was introduced to this phrase by a colleague who said that in some Jewish traditions, every seventh year Jewish-owned food-producing land has to be allowed to lie fallow, as a Sabbath for the earth. She went on to say that after working for 30+ years, her own Rabbi had encouraged her to let her life lay fallow for a year, to rest and replenish in preparation for what might be next.
What a radical antidote to the constant bombardment of requests and demands for our time. Those nagging, persistent demands to do more, to be more, to have more leads to exhaustion in body, mind and spirit. It's the kind of exhaustion that isn't addressed through a week or two of vacation. Culturally we eschew the notion of rest and restoration, the very things that we know (and neuroscience confirms) is required for creative problem solving and innovation.
Personally, I was so struck by this notion of laying fallow when I first heard it that it inspired me to take a 30-day leave of absence from my corporate job. While not a whole year, it was replenishing to the bone. It was a revolutionary move and one that my colleagues didn't understand or agree with. I did it anyhow and it changed the trajectory of my career and life for the better. I took time to be quiet and to listen to what my heart and soul were yearning for that I couldn't hear over the daily din of others' demands and my own expectations.
Of course the idea of letting our own life -- our thinking, our striving, our seeking -- lay fallow for a while is absolutely foreign in our culture, if not terrifying. The inner critic will worry and raise objections: Who will I be if I stop for a while? Will I be forgotten? Left behind? What will others think? What if I don't like what I find in that void? What if I can't get going again after stopping? Etc.
This kind of exploration is counter-intuitive and counter cultural at a time when every aspect of our lives, individually and collectively, seems to be speeding up and demanding more from us, on every front. This kind of exploration requires courage, vulnerability, openness. But, what if this kind of exploration is exactly what's needed to recover our capacity to generate new thinking and new ideas?
In the case of the executive I was working with, she is, at present, courageously exploring what she wants to lay fallow in her life. Nothing is off the table for consideration, not even her job.
And, what about you? Does this idea of laying fallow intrigue you, even in small measure? If so, I encourage you to enroll a thought partner to explore this with you, since all your reasons to justify doing more of the same will surely surface and potentially immobilize you. And the point isn't to do more of the same but to replenish your sacred ground for the sake of designing an even better future.