Finding A Sustainable Pace For Life

I first started to practice yoga in my twenties when I discovered Bikram Yoga. For the non-yogis reading this, Bikram is a form of hot yoga practiced in a room heated above 40 degrees. I remember my therapist at the time, who was desperately trying to open my mind to the power of slowing down, suggesting I should take up yoga. I recall proudly telling her ‘but I already go to yoga two or three times a week’. She was no fool. ‘What yoga?’ she asked. When I told her she replied: ‘of course you do – no normal run of the mill yoga for Fiona’. It was not a compliment I promise you.

I took up running in my thirties. I was travelling extensively for work and the trainer in my gym suggested I start running as it would be easy to get a quick run in regardless of where in the world I was. It was an inspired suggestion. I have fond memories of running through the streets of different cities to relax after a day of meetings or defeat the dreaded jet-lag early in the morning. I was relatively fit when I started running so the running itself didn’t prove to be a problem. The biggest challenge I faced was learning to run at the right pace. I always set off too quickly and burned myself out after a few kms.

Both stories are representative of who I am as a person. Pace is something I struggle with. How I practice yoga and running may sound inconsequential in the greater scheme of things but patterns in your life matter. How you do anything is how you do everything.

Photo from an afternoon run in Singapore in 2015

Finding A Sustainable Pace For Work

In a strategy session in the early days of planning the business, one thing that emerged clearly was I wanted to build a ‘sustainable’ business. What I meant was I wanted to develop and grow the business in a manner which was sustainable for me. To set a pace which was challenging but enjoyable; one in which I got the balance right between time in the business and time away from the business. A pace that would allow the business to grow over time while allowing my personal and professional life to feel full but not unnecessarily busy. This approach was important to me as it was in sharp contrast to how I had worked before that. Long hours and consistently taking on too much had been part of my previous approach to work. I knew I wanted to operate in a different way.

My propensity to overwork had, of course, been encouraged by the level of urgency culture which prevails in modern society. We celebrate ‘busyness’. I have noticed since I became self-employed people regularly ask me if I am busy. What they mean, of course, is ‘is everything going well?’ But it is worth noting that an affirmation of busyness appears to imply success. Urgency culture is now so embedded globally that we don’t even see it. We behave like everything is important and urgent. But when we make everything important, it means nothing is important. We lose the ability to understand what having priorities actually means. It is little wonder we have created such unsustainable business practices for the natural world when we can’t even prioritise sustainable practices to care for ourselves.

Realistic and elongated timelines are a standard purpose-led business leaders and people have to set. Why? Purpose is always a long-term endeavour. To be truly purpose-led asks us to be realistic about what can be done and when with the resources we have. We are most impactful in life and work when we pace ourselves to reflect that reality rather than believing faster is better. As a proponent of enabling greater purpose in life and work, it was a standard I wanted to set for myself.

The Speed Devil Lives Inside Me

While I am openly critical of urgency culture, I am also part of my problem. The speed devil, unfortunately, lives inside me. Regular readers will know I have written about this a number of times. My life is a constant practice of speeding up, recognising it, and then slowing down. Greater self-awareness helps but simply understanding this about myself has never proved enough. I have to put practices in place to keep myself at the right tempo. I am the version of myself I want to be when I am move at a more sustainable pace. Life is more easeful. I make better choices for the business, my creative work is better and I am happier.

Creating A Practice For Living

Over time, my yoga practice has migrated from Bikram towards more contemplative versions of yoga such as yin yoga. It is not because I don’t enjoy other versions of yoga but because I recognise the power of having a practice. The practice of slower, more intentional yoga radiates out into other areas of my life. It helps me connect to the version of myself who wants to live life with greater ease. Likewise, I have been running for nearly a decade and I still set off on my run Saturday morning at, you guessed it, too fast a pace. In this too, I have a practice. There is a corner I turn near my house less than 1km into my run. When I reach this spot, I check my pace and, invariably, it is too quick. This little check reminds me to relax into cruise mode and run at a more enjoyable pace. Without this practice, the change in pace would never happen.

It is the same in my work. Letting go of meaningless deadlines has become a practice too. I wanted to finish this piece on Friday, but my inner creative goes on strike when I try to give her deadlines she doesn’t like. Thank God for her. Friday was a great example of a meaningless deadline. I had some fairy-tale idea that if this article was in everyone’s inbox by Saturday all my subscribers would read it with a cup of coffee over the weekend. In reality, you probably had better things to do. I really hope you did. So, here it is on Tuesday morning instead. Perhaps you still get to enjoy it over a coffee. Either way, I waited a few days and the world continued turning. No one died. I got to enjoy my weekend instead of trying to find the time to publish it sooner. It turns out, everything is still OK when I give myself permission to pace myself.