When I Am under Pressure, I Bend
NOTES FROM LIFE
Some people thrive under deadlines, pressure and hard-set goals. I have learned that I move differently: I need to turn routines into rituals and effort into something I can devote myself to.
· 4-minute read
When I am under pressure, I bend.
I do not break. I start looking for ways to ease the pressure, question it, rub against it and try out its boundaries. I am similar to water: when you place a stone in a river, the water does not necessarily push it away. It flows around it until the sharp edges of the stone round off and both can coexist in harmony.
That is me under pressure.
Hard-set goals, deadlines and strength - at least the pushy sort of strength - do not work particularly well for me. When I decide to achieve something and push myself towards it, I find ways to flow around it when I cannot flow through.
In order to thrive, I need something different. Instead of placing myself above a goal and trying to master it through pressure and control, I dedicate myself to it. I enter the process and work with it. The goal becomes something I am creating rather than something I must conquer.
My routines become rituals, and I romanticize the hell out of them. The morning walk necessary to keep my figure becomes Awakening in the Sunrise. Building NOVALISM becomes The Search for My Tribe. Exercise stops being a task I have to complete and becomes part of something I am creating.
This worked incredibly well for me when I was pursuing weight loss. At some point, during a Neurographica drawing I wrote in my notes: My body is my art piece.
I thought, well, I am an artist. I can work with that.
Instead of pushing myself, I create. Exercises become brushstrokes on my canvas, forming it towards the beautiful ideal in my mind. The action may look exactly the same from the outside, but my relationship with it is completely different. One version asks me to obey. Another asks me to conquer. Mine gives me something to love.
I know this is not the only right way. My husband, for example, thrives under pressure. Give him a deadline, and he will prove that it was far too generous. Give me one, and I will prove that nothing terrible happens when I am a week late.
Neither of us needs to become more like the other. We need different conditions in order to do our best work.
This is where the question becomes larger than productivity. Results tell only half the story. The other half is what those results cost us and whether the way we achieved them allows us to continue. Pressure can produce impressive results. It can also produce exhaustion, resistance or a life spent fighting against oneself. Devotion works for me because it gives meaning and beauty to repetition. Someone else may come alive through accountability, precision, play or a clear deadline.
The difficulty begins when we borrow another person’s way and then interpret our resistance as laziness, weakness or lack of discipline.
The principle had been on my mind for a while, but it was not completely clear until I saw the cosmetic line Devotion from Dolce & Gabbana at the airport. I heated my credit card that day... While my card was suffering, my mind was doing something much more useful. The name, the colors and the entire world created around the line gave my mind somewhere to wander. Suddenly, two ideas that had been living separately met: the way I approached my goals and the meaning of devotion.
That is one of the quiet powers of art in our lives. It shows us perspectives we might not reach through reasoning alone. A word, a color, an image or an atmosphere can loosen a thought, move it in a new direction and create an unexpected connection. The principle was already present in the way I lived; the cosmetic line allowed me to recognize it and give it a name.
I do not need more pressure. I need a reason to devote myself.
Neurochange begins with seeking your own path: the conditions under which you move, continue and come alive. I can show you how to look. You do the rest.
Join the Novalism Circle and let me know how you thrive.
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