Slow and Steady is Fine if You Are a Tortoise, but What if You Have the Temperament and Constitution of a Hare?
After returning from London, I got a sinus infection that left me with very low energy. I found myself only able to do essential tasks. I rested a lot, watched tv, and read novels. I didn’t even eat that much. I survived mostly on soup that I made in a huge batch and kept simmering on the stove. My husband and eldest daughter were still in London, and fortunately, my youngest daughter is old enough to fend for herself. As I emerge from the experience, I notice how relaxed I feel, and even though I am feeling better, I don’t want to change what I am doing.
As I allow myself the spaciousness of letting go, now I am well, feelings of guilt are creeping in. There are a million things I could be doing on both the personal and the professional front. The list springs to mind effortlessly, but in this moment, the world is not ending if I am not doing any of them. In fact, for many moments put together, the world has not ended with me not addressing my to dos.
For someone who is an experienced and skilled relaxer, my level of relaxation is probably light weight and amateurish. I get sick. I rest — big deal! Now I am better, I can get back to my old ways of filling my schedule to the brim, keeping busy, and always having an excuse as to why it needs to be that way. It is as if knowing that my internal feeling of peace, calm, and equanimity has nothing to do with my outside circumstances gives me carte blanche to put my foot to the floor and push myself to my limits.
It is true that my experience is a reflection of my thoughts and not what I do, but I have noticed that when my mind gets busy, I tend to get busy too. My behavior starts to speed up, and I can go into a spin and look like the Tasmanian Devil.
When I lose my bearings, it looks like being busy makes me feel more important and productive. I buy into the illusion that I am in control of my destiny. Also, I never have to experience boredom, and I feel the buzz of adrenaline in my system. Just like some people kick their sugar habit by doing a fast, having low energy for a couple of weeks has deprived me of my adrenaline rush. Now I have slowed down, and I am feeling peaceful, I don’t want to add the adrenaline back into my system.
It is not that my life is that busy right now, but that doesn’t matter. When I get strung out, it can feel like I have the pressure of saving the planet on my shoulders just trying to fit work, exercise, family, and eating into my schedule.
So, I am enjoying my clarity and relaxed thinking. I recognize that my importance is not measured by how much I do, and I can even see that how hard I work doesn’t necessarily mean better results. My best work whether it be with clients, writing, or speaking usually feels effortless. When I don’t feel like I am working hard, I know I am stepping out the way, and serving as a vehicle for wisdom to express through me.
I am, however, also grateful I am capable of working hard and having a strong focus. I don’t give up easily, and I am willing to persevere. Sometimes I even enjoy the brute force of it. Focused effort is one of the ways I settle my mind, but as Abraham Maslow said in The Psychology of Science, “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Just because I can work hard, it doesn’t mean I need to apply it to everything. I can make a vacation hard work. I could probably even make getting a massage hard work, although I haven’t gone that far yet.
Working hard is not the only setting I have. I actually work best in cycles. I love to push myself, experience a challenge, and then completely relax. What shifted in my life is giving myself a month or two off to rest. I bought into the idea of striving for constant productivity rather than listening to my body and my mood. I didn’t think I could run a business that way. That may or may not be true, but that is how my natural design works. I work best with highs and lows. Rather than accepting that, I have been trying to fit my square peg of variable energy into the round hole of constant productivity.
Even though I am taking it easy now, I don’t want to be relaxing all the time. I love being on fire, inspired, creative, producing, serving, and living full-out, and I also need time to retreat, unwind, regroup, and pull the covers over my head for what might be considered an unreasonable amount of time. Unreasonable based on my judgment, but who am I to argue with the wisdom of my natural rhythm?
Can I accept the ebb and flow of my energy and surrender to the wisdom of my body’s feedback? Sometimes, and when I don’t, I get my ass kicked with a bug like I did when I got back from London. That was enough to snap me out of my Tasmanian Devil spin and bring me back down to earth. I look forward to reading more fiction and getting lots of rest as my mind and body continue to unwind. I will replenish myself and get ready for my next burst of creative output, and if I spin off into Tasmanian Devildom, I know the wisdom of my system will help me course correct. Everything is for me, even when I use my free will against myself.
I would love to read in the comments how you honor your own rhythm in life.
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Spiritual Facts 
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
Rohini Ross
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Clare Dimond
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Barbara Patterson
Michael Neill
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
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