Love, Will and Choosing Direction for Our Lives and Work
I almost feel like I'm waking from a dream.
A dream with several parts.
A physical dream: a virus that shifts our awareness of the world and our habits so much that to return to normal feels alien.
A social dream: a break from work, allowing relationships to function and flourish differently.
And a professional dream: what is it to pour so much energy and willpower into projects, over the course of several years, and then see them complete? Four books released. 100 podcast appearances in a year.
At five years into my business I felt like I had achieved the things I had set out to achieve. A functioning, thriving business that essentially feeds itself. Not so much money, in the grand scheme of things, but enough for me, now, in my life. Work with amazing people.
But it wasn't quite finished. There were some projects imagined but not completed, for reasons that weren't entirely clear to me. That took me just over two more years. Until 'The 12-minute book' or 'I Wrote This Book in 12 Minutes' had made its way into the world in a way that served it. And had been given a platform from which to flourish.
And now what?
For several years I have used James Clear's Warren Buffett story to focus my year. And yet, even the idea of creating the lists required to complete that exercise for 2023 feels wrong.
From my reflections and after coaching from Daphna Horowitz and Myles Downey, it feels clear to me that this is a new phase. And, as many people have said in different ways, a new phase requires a new way of thinking. As we become more successful, our problems get more complex. What got us here won't get us there.
Myles talks in his work about the two polarities, Love and Will. Others might call them different things. I once heard Karen Kimsey-House call them the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine. But for a modern Westerner, Love and Will probably have more of an intuitive feel. (Although it can be powerful to slow down to reflect on the masculine and feminine energy in each of us.)
Love: a more intuitive, receiving, flowing polarity.
Will: a more choice-led, forceful, direct polarity.
Two powerful ways to decide something are:
What is most interesting?
and
What is most important?
Love: following interest.
Will: following importance.
The last few years for me - maybe the whole of building my business - have been on one level an act of Will. Particularly, the phase - inspired by Rich Litvin's Hell Yes vs Hell No and the Clear/Buffett activity - was an incredibly powerful and massively productive act of Will. Choose what is most important (or interesting, that's not really where the Will comes in) in a given period of time and then use Will to do those things and only those things.
And then. So much Will. But what about Love?
Love has been present for me. In training myself to listen to my intuition. In letting things flow through me in my coaching and my writing.
And yet it feels almost impossible now to summon Will. Waking up from those dreams, it feels obvious and clear to me that the next phase - whether that is six months or longer - is a phase of Love.
We need both of the polarities. I have trained myself and practised for many years, to work with Will. That will never cease to be a powerful advantage: work well done. Setting my mind to something and keeping going with it for six years has been one of the most powerful works of possibility in my life.
And yet now, my new year reflections - and fulfilling them - will be an act of Love, not an act of Will.
How about you?
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Read the archive of the 12-minute blog here.
The 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, is out now!