Please disturb

A client and I recently reflected on how it is relatively easy and instinctive to hold the space for work against competing demands on our time and energy.

By contrast, it is much less easy – and seemingly less justifiable, including to ourselves – to create and protect space for other important but perhaps discretionary things, such as reflecting on what we want and need from work and life at this point.

How much easier to say, ‘I’ve got to work’, than to say, ‘I’ve got to do something for myself which will lead who-knows-where, for which I won’t get paid, and which will take me away from whatever other people want or need from me, without any iron-clad justification.’

Work is habitually and culturally legitimised as a protected space. Of course, this is partly because that's contractually necessary, particularly when it’s paid employment. But we may go well beyond any contractual obligations and make that space almost sacrosanct.

There may also be an element of escape, where we hide in that space, protected not only from others but also from ourselves. We don’t want our habits disrupted by new ideas, different possibilities. We don’t want to grant access to the thought that the thing that’s occupying our protected space – day in, day out – is no longer what we want or need. We do not want to be disturbed.

And so we become stuck and unquestioning – perhaps unwittingly, perhaps wilfully – within our existing boundaries, reinforcing them in the process.

Several decades of work can do that to a person.

Has it done it to you? Would you like to experience some productive and supportive disturbance?

Then just get in touch for a free initial chat if you’re interested in testing the logic of your boundaries and creating some sacrosanct space for sorting out what you want in your life.


Photo by Anne Nygard on Unsplash