What do we do when we find ourselves perched on the plateau? So much of our lives are lived in the highs and lows of emotion......We're satisfied with this, not satisfied with that.
But, what of the neutral zone? That place where life stalls and we find ourselves leveling out...motivation falls away...no urgency to 'do' anything...nothing pulling at us. We're not exactly content but then we're not disappointed either.
If we are lucky enough to find this spot it may feel a bit uncomfortable at first. We're so used to having too much on our plates. The Christmas break afforded me some wonderful, unstructured time. It was time spent doing what I wanted. Relaxing. Enjoying the Christmas holiday. Preparing meals and treats with my partner, Richard.
When I returned to work this past Tuesday I was surprisingly sensitive to the aggressive energy I felt as I merged onto the freeway. I knew this energy was no different than before the break but somehow my own skin had thinned and it buffeted me around a bit.
December had been a challenging month with my Dad's stroke and my cat losing weight. My emotions were a lot closer to the surface and I felt raw. However, merging onto the freeway, I was not so sure I was ready to put up the hard defenses that I had carried around the past year. What if I just softened my shell a bit and eased into the world from a new perspective?
Everyone needs a certain level of activity in their lives. But there is a distinction between activity and frenzy and aggression. Most of us never find that place where peacefulness settles in. And if we do it seems to create a certain anxiety.
Navigating to a place where peacefulness exists seems to somehow take away the need and desire for action. If we can get to that place we often label it as boredom. But what if we realized that place as the space of pure potential. A space where our energy could be directed or channeled into a creative direction of our own.
The challenge of being in this space is that we don't usually feel like being creative. At least not for a while. We so rarely arrive here that it is as if our body, mind and spirit long for a regenerative rest. In this place we seem to just observe where we are and what we are doing. Our energy lulls and seems to simple sit quietly in a pool of self contemplation.
Last Monday I had the opportunity of spending the better part of the day alone. My guests were gone and my son wouldn't return until evening. I had the wonderful awareness that 2010 might be more enjoyable if I could learn to be more conscious of how I managed my energy.
So, for the remainder of the day I simply observed how my energy felt. When I was tired, I slept. When I was hungry, I ate. When I remembered something I needed to do, I did it. No plans. No urgency. No worry.
As the week wore on, I had more opportunities to observe how I managed my energy. This weekend I found myself sitting on the plateau. No urgency to do anything. I knew there were things I "should" do but I just didn't feel like doing them. I began to notice my energy no longer moved out in front of me. In fact, it seemed as if it were collapsing inward. I noticed how it actually felt better if I moved my energy out into simple activities without any attachment to outcome or achievement. I began to wonder if health was the positive movement of energy that sources from within outward into our immediate surroundings.
Richard had recently expressed the valence of our two energies coming together in the context of a Venn diagram. Where our individual energies overlapped there were at times harmony and at other times discord. If we think of ourselves as energy beings and how we run our energy we might be able to gain more objective insight into our lives.
In that place where we rest on the plateau and the energy seems neutral, we might just find our zone of genius.
