Do Nothing

At first, I thought I misheard her.

My massage therapist, who also happens to be incredibly intuitive, looked at me and said, "Do nothing.

I actually laughed.

Do nothing is not exactly a phrase that comes naturally to me, and my guess is that many of you can relate. Doing is a way of being in our culture. We move from one task to another, one meeting to the next, one responsibility to another. We fill the spaces in between with emails, texts, podcasts, social media, and endless to-do lists. We do, do, do, do, do all day long.

So when she said those two words, they didn't compute, and if I'm honest, they still haven't fully landed. So maybe that's exactly why I needed to hear them, and maybe you do, too.

As I sat with her words over the next few days, I realized she wasn't really telling me to do nothing. The message underneath was much deeper. It was about honoring my energy.

As an intuitive, she often shares things that seem to arrive from somewhere beyond the logical mind. You can call it intuition, spirit, inner wisdom, or simply paying attention. I know that sounds a little out there for some people, but I have come to believe that life is constantly speaking to us. Through other people. Through nature. Through books. Through songs on the radio. Through chance encounters and moments that seem too perfectly timed to be random.

Sometimes the message we most need to hear comes through someone else's voice.

This time, the message was clear. 

I was pushing through fatigue. Pushing through a full schedule. Pushing through the subtle messages my body had been sending me for weeks. Instead of listening, I was overriding. Instead of honoring my energy, I was spending it as if I had an endless supply.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how our energy is our currency. The more I sit with that idea, the more true it feels. If you missed it, you can read it HERE.

Most of us are careful about how we spend our money. We think about purchases. We budget. We decide what is worth the investment and what isn't. Yet when it comes to our energy, many of us spend it recklessly.

We say yes when we want to say no. Then add one more thing to the calendar and end up staying up late finishing a project when our body is begging for rest. We ignore the tension in our shoulders, the knot in our stomach, the headache, the exhaustion, and all the subtle messages the body is giving us as it is trying to get our attention.

Then we wonder why we feel depleted. HELLO! 

The body is always communicating. The question is whether we are listening.

Today, after a full day of back-to-back coaching calls, I decided to try something different. Instead of immediately moving on to the next task, I paused for two minutes.

I asked myself: What is my energy right now? How is my body feeling? What do I need?

And then I listened.

Not to the voice in my head telling me what I should do next. Not to my calendar. Not to my to-do list, but to the truth.

I needed space and stillness, and maybe a gentle walk around the neighborhood, not a big, audacious hike as I would typically turn to and push myself to do. 

Sometimes doing nothing is actually the most productive thing we can do, when we stop pushing long enough to hear what our energy has been trying to tell us all along.

So let me ask you:

What is your energy telling you today?

And more importantly...

Are you listening?

I would love to hear from you,