Clarity Comes A Knockin' When We Step Away
Answers reveal themselves to us when we are in a state of calm curiosity. This is why big insights come through when we are doing things that, on the outside, don’t look like much—watching the tide roll in and out, taking a shower, commuting to work, etc..
These activities give us the space necessary to digest our day-to-day lives. It’s as though clarity is waiting to find us uninterrupted to tap on our shoulders with solutions to the problems peeving us.
Temporary detachment from our daily lives is the key ingredient here, as this grants us with a bird’s eye view of all our undertakings. From here we temporarily stop working in our lives and begin to work on our lives.
To clarify, working in your life includes all of the things you do each day to keep the ship sailing—going to work, getting an oil change, scheduling appointments, etc.. By contrary, to work on your life is to step away to make sure you are headed in the right direction and includes things like spending time in reflection, planning ahead, or sitting in silence and seeing what comes up.
When we weave together both elements—time spent engrossed in the necessary minutiae with time away—shift happens. We no longer need to dig beneath crumb covered couch cushions for answers, because we have the foresight needed to comprehend the bigger picture. The routine daily activities become infused with a greater sense of purpose, as we have stepped away long enough to know why we are doing what we are doing.
And…drumroll please…we stop losing our keys, because, during one of our steps away, it occurred to us that we can order a key finder—a nimble little gadget that connects to a phone and only requires the push of a button to relocate them.
Amanda,
Conscious Ink Staffer