Momentous immersion
Do you find yourself running around like a chicken with its head cut off — some — or most — of the time? Do you look back on your day and wonder what you did with it? You know you did something — and your to-do list appears to have tasks crossed off—but it feels like your day is blank, and now long behind you? Do you have days of serial interruptions? Do you procrastinate between interruptions, because you know you’ll be interrupted again soon?
I wonder what would happen if we experimented with bringing back a culture we’ve lost — a culture in which being is as important as becoming. Such a culture is not new, and it’s not been lost everywhere, but it appears lost in circles whose battle cries are:
- Make Your First Million Before 30
- Work Hard, Play Hard
- The Cult of Failing Fast
- Get Up Before 4 AM to Do All the Things
- Get More Done in Less Time
I wonder what would happen if we stopped trying to be Better, Smarter, Healthier, More Productive. What if we stopped that, if only for a few minutes a day?
Would we be less scattered, less anxious, less likely to allow ourselves to be interrupted? Would we relax into what we are doing and who we already are?
What if we said to ourselves, from time to time during the day, “At ease, soldier”? (I do wonder what battles we’re fighting — and who the enemy is, but that’s a post for another day.)
What would happen if we relaxed our shoulders, our jaws, breathed fully out, stopped bracing and came fully into where we are in time and space?
I call this ease and this letting go “Momentous Immersion”.
What is it? It’s being fully present with an experience, whatever it is, be it one of pain, joy, boredom, worry, anxiety, etc. It can be being late, or waiting in line, or receiving bad news, or enduring someone’s anger, or receiving something you’ve longed for. Being fully present with the experience and letting go of judging, fighting, resisting, trying to please (yes — trying to please!), trying to fix or change it (or ourselves). Simply entering into it — for a moment or five minutes or ten.
I’ll give you an example.
When I gave birth to my second child, 15 years after the first, I chose, as I had with the first, to decline pain relief. Childbirth, as you know, is one of the more painful experiences a human can endure, and yes, maybe I was crazy. I was only in labour for 12 hours or so, with the final hours being, of course, the most powerful.
Having endured intense pain years before, I made a conscious decision with my second child to be present with the pain and to feel it, rather than to resist or fight it. With each contraction that paved the way for my son’s arrival, I didn’t brace in anticipation of the pain but entered into it (some speak of this as “riding the wave” — I entered into the wave).
It is hard to describe how it works, to enter and “be present” in pain, but it is a sensation of letting go and being with.
Fully immersed, my experience of giving birth a second time could not have been more different from the first. My body did not reject or fear the experience, and I was fully focused on feeling every part of it. In the end, I was alone in the process of giving birth, my husband sleeping beside me, the doctors and midwife in another room (as they trusted my body to do what birthing bodies do). When my son started to crown, I gently woke my husband to tell him it was time. Within one to two minutes, he was holding him.
Let me close with the momentous part of Momentous Immersion:
momentous /mə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəs/
adjective — of great importance or significance, especially in having a bearing on future events.
I posit that the more we pause for a minute (“at ease, soldier”, breathing fully out) and fully immerse ourselves in our experience, the less scattered and anxious and crazy we will be and the more direct bearing we will have … on our futures.
This post was inspired by:
When we allow ourselves to have immersive experiences — through meditation, focused periods of work, painting, doing a crossword puzzle, weeding a garden, and many other forms of contemplative single-tasking, we’re not only more productive, we actually feel better. — Jay Shetty
If you are interested in learning more and experimenting with concepts such as Momentous Immersion (my term), I’d love to hear from you. Reach out to me at julie[dot]harrisguiader[at]gmail[dot]com.
I also highly recommend reading the works of some of today’s thought leaders who daily inform my own work: Jay Shetty (Think Like a Monk), Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (Make Time), Charlie Gilkey (Start Finishing), Greg McKeown (Essentialism), Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks), Nir Eyal (Indistractible) and Cal Newport (Deep Work).
