Just..., Be.

The Art of Doing Nothing

True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.

— Eckhart Tolle

A few years ago, I wrote and sent out a piece whose main idea was that you should never catch yourself doing nothing. Between then and now, I have recorded a considerable amount of growth in my thoughts and perspectives, as I am sure my readers have, and looking back at that piece, I can recognize how that idea might be flawed if taken literally.

You know how some ideas work for us at certain times of our lives and as we advance, learn more, change jobs, get married, relocate, sticking with those ideas will do us more disservice than serve us positively like they used to.

One of the ideas it is time to grow out of is the idea that you should never be found doing nothing. Conversely in fact, from time to time, you should strive to do nothing. And I'll explain my position.

From time to time, strive to do nothing.

With the meteoric rise in access to high-end technology, we've got a vast amount of options to choose from, tons of things vying for our attention at the same time, so much that it is almost difficult, scratch that, almost impossible not to do something every given time.

Pause and try to remember the last time you just...were. The last time you weren't doing anything, the last time you weren't actively thinking about something, or trying to achieve a goal, perform a task, compete, etc.

No, seriously, just pause for 20 seconds and try to remember the last time that happened. You will be shocked that you won't be able to remember when last that happened.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with the world today. The moment everybody wakes up, our heads and bodies start to work all over again. We lose our consciousness soaked in actions and thoughts every minute of every day, that even when we try to pause, it's so hard. Yes, now it's harder to do nothing than it is to do something.

And you know what has been hiding in plain sight? The art of doing nothing.

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In a world where everyone is going agog thinking all the time, and acting all the time, what will set us apart is our ability to sit still and just…be. Try not to do anything. Thoughts will come at you anyway, just let them run around until they lose steam. This will give you an uncanny, rare superpower.

There is a time for everything under the surface of the earth. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to act and a time to not. We have replaced the time we are meant to not act with actions because we are constantly in a fight with the world, constantly competing, whether with other people or with ourselves.

It's ironic, but the person who wins this 'fight' is the person who learns the Art of Doing Nothing, because what sets you apart is what you are doing differently from everyone else. More specifically, here is how it will set you apart.

You gain clarity

I wrote about clarity last week, how that to be clear is to be King. You will not gain clarity without introspection, and the only way to effectively look inward is to set yourself apart and do nothing. If you are in the midst of the noise, fully partaking in the noise, you become a part of the noise and there is no clarity in the midst of the noise.

However, if you take time to sit and be still, you begin to introduce a little calmness and stillness into your life.

You become more creative

This comes when you introduce more clarity into your life. You begin to think in ways you didn't before, in ways that other people who have been buried in the noise would never think.

It's just like how you find something you have been looking for all along in your room the day you decide to clean up the room. There is a lot of our genius lurking under the dust that has been gathered by our inability to sit and do nothing. Once you start cleaning up, you start thinking up, and then you start moving up.

You find a little more peace.

Imagine you wake up daily and sit for the first 10 minutes and just...be. Don't pick up your phone, don't do anything, just sit still and be. And then you do the same thing 10 minutes before going to bed.

You can call it a 20-minute window where you just exist, and you do it every day for the next year. The quality of your life will sporadically increase because you'll develop a sense of peace that wasn't there before.

Finally, in sitting and just being, just existing, there's a high chance that you find yourself. Why? Because in that window where you just exist, you realize that nothing else matters, not the noise around you, not the possessions you strive to get daily, not even you. In that window, you're simply floating in a giant world. You lose yourself in some way..., and the wisest man who ever walked the surface of the earth once said, the only way to find yourself is to first lose yourself..., or at least be willing to lose yourself and let go of everything.

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The idea here is not for you to give up doing and chasing goals altogether, but to experience not doing in order to get better at doing. Switch off and recharge. Do it deliberately. Most of us are moving through life, exhausting our fumes non-stop. We are scared that if we pause, other people will overtake us, but we forget that if we don't deliberately stop sometimes, we will be forced to stop permanently, and prematurely.

Try it first thing tomorrow morning, and everyday after that. Learn the art of doing nothing and just..., Be.

To your growth,

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨