Can You Be Productive Without Pushing?

So today's little exploration is about whether or not you can be productive without pushing.

If you'd asked me that question a few years ago,

It would have been a categorical no.

There was no way on this planet that I thought I could get anything done without pushing myself really,

Really hard.

How that played out in my life was a to-do list that pretty much got crossed off every single day,

And I mean everything on it,

And a me who was very,

Very hard on myself if I didn't get everything crossed off that list.

This meant that I worked very,

Very,

Long hours,

Especially when I was a primary school teacher and head teacher,

But then after that I definitely worked ridiculously long hours in my business.

I sat at this desk,

Probably this very desk,

In this room for hours at a time,

Hammering away,

I think,

At my business,

Trying to make it be what I wanted it to be.

At one point I was distributing content across about 10 platforms on a weekly basis.

I thought I had to do a lot to create this elusive thing called success in my business,

And I thought I had to push to be productive.

But here's the truth.

What I've seen recently is that it isn't the amount you do that matters,

It's what you do.

I had been using busyness as a way to feel good about myself,

So my productivity wasn't always very useful in my business.

It was just noise.

It was me trying to fulfil myself,

To try and make myself feel better by doing more and more and more stuff,

Throwing more and more and more stuff at the wall in an attempt to make something stick.

Productivity was so tangled up in my sense of self-worth that I couldn't really see it.

I had no idea that's what was happening.

But then,

Over the last few years,

During my exploration of the three principles,

It's become more and more apparent that that was just some habitual thinking,

And therefore some habitual ways of being in the world,

That I needed to be busy,

That I needed to push hard.

But maybe there's a chink of light coming through now for me in seeing that that doesn't have to be the case.

So can you be productive without pushing?

Well,

You can if that productivity comes from a completely different place.

My productivity used to come from my busy-mindedness and a habit that I probably developed many,

Many years before that.

If you've heard from me before,

You'll know that I identified at a very young age as being a high achiever,

That getting stuff done and making myself successful was really,

Really important to me.

But here's what I've seen about this recently.

What I've seen is that,

As my mind has got quieter,

And that has been a consequence of less pushing and less productivity,

There has been direction that has come through.

So what used to happen before was,

I followed my busy mind and my thinking and just did lots and lots of things.

Now,

I still do quite a lot of things,

But there's a different feeling to them.

And here's how it looks to me,

That when I follow my intuitive nudges,

Things seem to fall in place to support me in going in that direction.

Dominic Scafidi quite beautifully said once that the universe knows what you want before you do.

So when we move in the direction of those intuitive nudges,

What we see is that things start to fall into place.

So where we might have had to do lots and lots of work before to get things done,

To be productive,

As we follow those intuitive nudges,

We have to do less things.

Maybe where we would have had to do lots and lots of different content,

When we follow our intuition and land on a platform that really,

Really resonates with us,

One that we really love,

One where we light up every time we go near that platform to share our message,

We won't need to do nearly as much work because people will find us there.

People will align with that beautiful energy that we've turned up with to share our message.

That's just one example.

And I've seen how this works.

And I guess as I've seen how this works,

A bit of trust has come into play.

Because I don't think for a long time I trusted myself to be productive without a gun to my head,

As my lovely coach says quite often,

Don't have to live life with a gun to your head.

But I thought I did.

I thought I had to be hard on myself in order to make myself be productive.

Something that's really important in this session today,

In this conversation,

Is the feeling.

When I was pushing to be productive,

I felt terrible.

I don't think I knew how terrible I felt,

Actually.

Because I feel so much better now on a day-to-day basis,

So much calmer,

So much more clarity,

So much more at peace.

I was so far from that for so many years that it just wasn't clear to me.

You know,

As I record this,

I'm very close to the 11-year anniversary of my burnout.

That was actually yesterday.

And today is the 10-year anniversary of my resignation from my 20-year career in teaching.

In the run-up to that burnout,

My goodness,

Was I productive.

I was doing a lot,

An awful lot.

Not just in my career,

Not just in the management of my home and my children's lives,

But I was doing an awful lot of socialising and being out there.

And,

You know,

I think I thought I was looking after myself by doing that.

You know,

You've got to have balance.

You've got to go out and do things,

Not just work all the time.

So I was very,

Very busy and very productive.

And when I look back to how I was back then,

I think I was just,

I was fizzing all the time,

Like there was a fizziness about me.

I guess something akin to anxiety that I carried with me all the time.

And I was so used to that pushing style of productivity that I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

And,

You know,

There isn't.

I don't want you to be listening to this or watching this and thinking,

Oh my God,

There's something wrong with me.

That's how I feel.

This is terrible.

We all have these habits of thought.

This Three Principles conversation is just helping us to see those and helping us to see the suffering that they're creating.

And perhaps at some point,

We just fall away.

What I've noticed recently is that I spend a lot more time in a good feeling.

And from that place,

I just tend to put different things out into the world.

That doesn't mean that I don't get busy sometimes.

It doesn't mean that I'm not productive.

But the energy of that is so different.

I guess it's something that lots of us are looking for,

Which is flow.

We're looking for flow,

Aren't we?

We're looking for that feeling,

You know,

When you get engrossed in something and time just ceases to exist and you put your head up and you think,

My goodness,

Look what I've created.

And then there's an excitement to that when we've,

You know,

We've created from that place,

It feels very different.

And I think that's the most important thing that I want to share here is that the way to know whether we're being productive through pushing or whether we're being productive from a place of flow,

From clarity,

From alignment with our wisdom,

From our intuition,

Is that it feels so different.

You know,

I've done some research to decide what kind of subjects to talk about.

There's been some work gone into preparing to do this video.

But right now,

And in the run-up to it,

There's been a good feeling.

There's been peace in my body and my mind.

It doesn't mean there isn't something to do.

It doesn't mean there isn't something to organise.

But there's a different feeling.

And I think that's how you can know if you're pushing,

You'll feel like you're pushing.

You'll feel maybe like you've been pushed around.

It won't feel good.

Whereas we can be productive from a better feeling place.

And that is available to all of us.

So I really hope this little three principles exploration has been helpful.

And the answer to the question,

Can you be productive without pushing,

Is of course,

100% yes.

Take care.

Lots of love.