Psychiatrist: “Do you hear any voices in your head?” Voice: “Tell her no.” Patient: “No.”
There has been a theme this year about the difference between “doing” and “being.” In short form, doing as in “action,” and being as in “showing up as the authentic you.”
I’ve seen opinions about the importance of our “doing” at least getting into balance with “being.” One clever writer said, “…it’s moving in the direction of “do-be do-be do-be.” I couldn’t help hearing the refrain of a Frank Sinatra standard, Strangers in the Night. (If you immediately heard “dooby-dooby-doooo” in your head, make a mental note of it.)
In hindsight, one of the constant elements of resistance to feeling or knowing “being” has been the double-duty I have accepted in the “doing” part.
I have not only been in the horserace of life, but, thought-by-thought, action-by-action, furlong-by-furlong, I have been calling the race too. And sometimes with binoculars and a microphone.
It’s a form of the voice in your head (remember “dooby-dooby-doooo”) that needs to say “Okay, that’s done,” when you have completed a task. Or, “Remember to get gas on your way home.” And later, “Okay, got the gas.”
There are lots of paths to “being” and none of them have narrators nor theme songs. Noise fills up the space where the awareness of being can be found. Being is found in stillness.
If you are finding your “doing” is overwhelming your consciousness, and is compounded by the narrator in your head (just in case some stillness could be found) doing the play-by-play of the important and the trivial (with equal weight), consider taking a half-step.
Doing requires thought and action, but narrating doubles the energy expended, and fills all the gaps where some moments of stillness could be found.
I believe that you can at least observe the path to “being” by giving greater attention to the moments of stillness that have been there all along.
Just for today, could you begin noticing when you are both doing, and narrating, and mute the narration?
~Will Keiper, co-author with Steve Chandler of The Leader and The Coach: The Art of Humanity in Leadership and The Well-Being Bucket List
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