One day, it’s all going to be easy.
There will come a time when everything will be in its flow.
It’s not going to come with a trumpet, or even a ping in your inbox letting you know. One day, you will just look up, and realise that everything is in its flow.
You will realise that you are the general of a wind-up toy army, and all the toy soldiers and cars and dinosaurs and ducks, will be doing exactly what they need to be doing.
They’ll still need coaxing from time to time to keep them pointed in the right direction. But the gears will be turning, they will have their own steam, and your job, your only job, is to sit back and watch it unfold.
This will come after a lot of work and planning and preparation. You will have been applying yourself for so long, that you won’t really know how to sit back and watch it unfold. It will feel foreign and unfamiliar to you.
But this is the new challenge in your life. To learn the art of light touch control.
Maybe it’s like the theatre director, who having trained up his actors, now has to get off the stage and let the actors them do their thing. All he can do is watch it from the lighting desk, heart fluttering every time an actor nails their line.
In time though, this state will start to feel familiar to you as well. It will become a relaxed way of being. You will trust in your systems and your people, and you will be amazed how easily things come now – things that used to feel hard will now have a lightness to them, and you will know the joy of applying your talents to cool things, just now without any of the stress.
And it will be lovely.
I think it’s a very elevated state. Not all that many humans achieve it in the West.
In time though, you will start to get a little bored. The novelty of contentment will wear off, and you will remember those days where you had your nose to the grindstone fondly.
You will start to think that, perhaps, it’s time to reenergise things. Grow the business, build the empire, tackle bigger more ambitious projects, challenge the dominance of Facebook.
But don’t rush this stage. Make sure you honour the work and the journey by taking time in that beautiful valley of easiness. Let it recharge and replenish you, and let it become familiar. Let it become your default expectation of how productive activity flows.
Now maybe your reading this and it all feels a long way off. That’s ok. It is for everybody at some point. What I’m describing is not something you can just click your fingers and make manifest.
This is about being a carpenter learning how to work with the timbers of life. There are different grains, different qualities. There’s dozens of tools in your shed.
It takes a while to get to know it all.
But it can happen.
And right now, if you find yourself slogging up the mountain of getting sh#t done, you should know that there is a valley of easiness on the other side. This slog-fest doesn’t last forever.
Just keep this in the back of your mind. Just know that one day you will wake up and everything will be easy. All your toys will be on the march. No worries.
And if you want to call it in, as fast as possible, try this. Wake up every day and say to yourself. Maybe today is the day I will come to the valley of easiness. Maybe today is the day that everything will be in its flow, doing exactly what it needs to do, and I’m just going to have a lot of fun.
Maybe that’s today.
Do this every day, and one day it will be.
Promise.