Freedom… The Other Side of Productivity
Last weekend, away from busy business…
the whole world sighed with us, as we spread our baby-soft blankie on the clover-rich grass.
Above us, the wheeling gulls, hovering on the clifftop breeze.
We’d earned this rest. We’d climbed the steep, green meadow overlooking this bay; this Charmouth. Our Place of Dorset Cottage Retreat.
A precious Long Weekend. With friends who’ve mellowed alongside us over many years.
Looking down on a sea as blue as any in the Med, we soaked and wallowed in the peace of it all. Meanwhile, we unpacked our quintessentially English picnic (adorned with a selection of European cheeses and unquestionably exotically foreign fruits).
Scanning this Jurassic coastline, beloved by gambolling children and rambling parents…
It’s hard not to be struck by its sense of timelessness.
The sense that we’re just specks of Passers-Through…
Fretting about our frettings… in this place where the centuries are counted in millions.
You see, building and leading a business is a draining affair.
Not matter how exciting.
No matter how much is being checklisted, achieved, rewarded, celebrated.
When we keep a-straining and a-striving…
We ignore the natural rhythms that can generate our genius and creativity.
We ignore how we’re designed to function at our best.
We ignore the patterns by which our whole physical, mental, emotional, spiritual system flourishes.
Our life-sustaining heart is designed to teach us.
Powerful beat (ba-doom)… Rest.
Powerful beat (ba-doom)… Rest.
With that ignoring we suffer personally.
And when we’re in LEADERSHIP roles… our ignoring causes OTHERS around us to suffer.
When we insist on squeezing Maximum Productivity from Glorious Living Beings.
When we insist on squeezing them as if they’re mechanical.
As if they’re Artificial Intelligence.
We miss the point.
Leadership fails when it ignores the fountain of Individual Genius…
And strives mainly for Collective Productivity.
We need the rhythm of climbing hills… then resting to soak in the wonder of it all.
We need the wisdom to see what is Trivial Fretting… as opposed to Infinitely Impactful.
This is Leadership today.
This has always been part of Great, Inspiring Leadership.
It’s just that sometimes (often?) we forget what it was like to be blissfully alive… when we chase the numbers.
We forget our Cottage Retreat, and how it retaught us what was truly important.
Thankfully, it’s there.
Waiting for us to return.
Waiting for us to offload whatever is jangling our nerves.
And help us find Peace.
At Soul Millionaire we love to set aside (1-2-1, Pro Bono) time to really LISTEN to Financial Planning Leaders. Helping them to offload.
They tell us that we help them to think More Clearly, More Courageously, More Creatively.
(It’s called ‘Coaching’. And the results can be life-changing!)
You can book your private Listening Time – your 1-hour Discovery Conversation – right here.
No pressure. No obligation.
Just time to catch your breath. And think!
