A Natural Sign of Life
There are problems to solve,
and there are tensions to manage.
I remember hearing this from a speaker many years ago while I was working at Northwestern Mutual. It was one of those perspective shifts that stick with you.
At the time, we were preparing for our summer internship program.
There were problems to solve, like putting a plan in place to hit our recruiting goals.
But there were also tensions to manage: things that, no matter how hard we tried or how many solutions we implemented, would always be a bit messy. Tensions that would arise as a natural result of adding 20+ new twenty-somethings to the firm at the same time. Noise levels would be different, for example. Conference rooms would fill more quickly.
There were problems to solve, and there were tensions to manage. This mindset shift helped us acknowledge that each needed to be approached differently.
Today, I continue to find new examples, new arenas in which this problem to solve vs tension to manage distinction is both helpful and true.
This past week, for example, I had a conversation with a high-achiever, a creator and founder. I’ll call her Rachel.
Rachel had sold her business earlier in the year and, after a period of intentional recovery, was in the early stages of building something new.
I asked her, “How do you know when you’ve come to the end of something?”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, her answer was not steeped in logic or strategy. “There’s just an intuitive calling to what’s next,” she replied.
Rachel went on to acknowledge that this recurring pull toward “what’s next” has its inherent pros and cons. “There’s a battle that exists within me between a desire for simplicity/contentment and my ambition.”
From your perspective, Subscriber First Name, is this inner battle a problem to solve or a tension to manage?
On one hand, we know that life only ever exists here, in this moment. Here is where we find joy, presence, satisfaction. Here, we find gratitude for all that we’ve created, achieved, and been given.
And, on the other hand, there are times when somethings else, something more tugs on our sleeve. A restlessness, a deep knowing rises to the surface and asks us to listen and follow it toward something or somewhere new.
Gratitude and restlessness.
I’ve been re-listening to one of Rob Bell’s audiobooks this week. In it, he describes this as a tension, “less a problem to solve and more of an invitation to turn all of it into an ongoing work of art.”
Not something to be eliminated, but something to be still with, listened to, and followed.
Gratitude and restlessness can sit side by side. Your heart knows this. Your heart knows that both can be true, that there is no problem here. It’s your mind that gets tripped up in the tension. There’s a natural, normal period of disorientation (described here) as your mind catches up to your intuition.
Reframing this as a tension to manage rather than a problem to solve reminds me that it’s all part of it.
Gratitude and restlessness. Side by side. A natural sign of life.
It’s all part of creating a life you love.
You hear the same sentiment in this quote from Suzanne Eder: “There is no destination, no end point. There is only creating and experiencing, creating and experiencing, creating and experiencing, in endless unique ways.”
