Learning from Life's Interruptions

When breaking consistency helps...

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."

Winston Churchill

This week's newsletter is for anyone whose project is stuttering.

It's part of our human condition to feel as though we have failed when we falter or fall off course.

Remember, missing the mark does not signal an ending.

To falter is simply part of the process.

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I’ve recently experienced this with my podcast.

I’d powered up to 19 episodes following a fortnightly release schedule.

And then I missed it.

It was hard to do so because I pride myself on consistency.

No, pride is the wrong word; I consider it a Value of Self.

Missing it, however, has proved an unexpected opportunity.

We turn our schedules into tyrants.

And while it is useful for our lives to have a backbone, we can squeeze the living from the living itself.

Too often, we consider an interruption to our goal a failure.

It’s why many of us are useless at New Year’s resolutions.

We fail less because of the scope of our ambition.

But rather because our consistency is ruptured.

As Lennon said, “Life is what happens when we’re busy making our little plans”.

The point?

Life will always get in the way.

So rather than berating ourselves, why not accommodate a little humanity into our expectations?

For me, the first quarter of the year has been one of experimentation.

Of starting a new project, writing songs and trying to find a more even balance between my working and creative life.

Yet life in the creative arts is utterly unpredictable.

It is part of its joy and part of its capacity to, well, terrorise us.

A schedule helps bring order to the ever-looming threat of chaos.

And yet, it’s the nature of chaos to want to unleash itself.

In the last few weeks, I found myself in a desperate juggle, and something had to give.

It was a useful exercise.

Why?

Because not every aspect of our lives can be regimented.

There is no opportunity for space when things are constantly spiralling out of control.

I’ve found it helpful:

To become conscious about the areas of my life where I can allow a little give.

After my disappointment with faltering on the podcast, I realised that’s exactly where I need to reassess.

Yet, does the choice need to be binary?

Must we give up or continue dogmatically?

Here’s how I’m thinking:

The Podcast brings me too much joy to lay aside.

Yet, keeping up with it often brings pandemonium to my week.

Sometimes, it’s a prudent choice to set aside a passion project to make more space for your central mission.

That is the nature of niching down.

Yet, my deepest aspiration as a human being is to live holistically.

To niche up.

The podcast is a valuable part of that.

It helps me in:

• forging new relationships and connections

• deepening my understanding of a variety of subjects

• giving me the opportunity to contribute to the journey of others

For me, it’s a compelling mix and one I hope to pursue in the long term.

And yet, our hobbies or goals need not come at the expense of ourselves.

Paradoxically, missing my schedule brought my podcast back to me.

It gave me a weekend to tend to other areas of my life.

And the opportunity to spend more time researching my latest episode which I filmed on Wednesday with a wonderful band called Amistat.

Allowing self-forgiveness brought me to a deeper place within myself and gave me the time to better research my new episode.

By doing less, I could do it better.

It highlighted two things for me:

First, the modern world prioritises doing more rather than doing it well. Often, this comes at the expense of our mental health.

Not a good deal.

Second, giving in is very different to giving up. If there is one certainty, it is that you are going to fall off schedule sometimes.

Let it go.

Allow for a little self-forgiveness.

Being kinder to ourselves improves the likelihood we’ll keep with our goals.

Consider it a breath, not a rupture.

You are doing far better than you think.

It takes more courage to go lighter on yourself than to lacerate yourself.

Instead, why not just pick it up from where you left off?

A broken continuity, but continuity nonetheless.

Who knows, maybe what you found in the space was the very element that was missing?

See you next week,

Jim

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