Iām not a fan of rollercoasters. That slow crescendo to the top, that gut-out-your-mouth rapid descent, repeated several terrifying times is not how I choose to seek thrills.
My kids love them, and while Iāll gladly roll down dunes getting sand in my knickers, I canāt do a rollercoaster. More than happy to hold bags and catch vomit.
Yet, I know from my own experience and from people Iām coaching, that many of us are experiencing that rollercoaster feeling (on a daily basis sometimes) these last few months. While this can feel stressful, itās actually normal for life to feel like this.
People often think their lives are driven by emotions and thoughts, believing theyāre abnormal if life isnāt a constant even keel.
Even if we learn that we can manage emotions and thoughts in a way that doesnāt have us screaming in terror, rollercoaster jowls flapping in the G-force, and that a less chaotic way of lurching from drama to drama is a better way to live, life still comes in waves. It just does. Like grey roots during a global lockdown.
Yet we feel a failure if life isnāt a flatline. But what medical insight Iāve gleaned from 11 seasons of Greyās Anatomy is that a flatline represents death.
With all this talk of ānew normalā as lockdown is eased, we forget that the āold normalā wasnāt actually normal at all. Weāre not meant to work at warp speed, so run ragged juggling work, family and home that we canāt draw breath. Itās far more normal to have periods of advance, retreat and pause.
The goal of living well is not that there are no ups and downs, but that we ride them to our advantage.
After an initial flurry of frantic lockdown lunacy - where I carried on my usual pace of work, took on home-schooling 3 kids, heaped on business-pivoting strategising, while absorbing the general low-level anxiety thatās as virulent as the virus at the moment - without taking stock, I hit a slump.
Thankfully, itās in the slump, not the uber-uphill manic-ness that we catch our breath.
I recently had to make what felt like a stressful decision to reduce business visibility to āpivotā and create something more adaptable to this changing environment that Iāll launch in September. It feels stressful because of all the āshouldāsā buzzing round my head like pesky flies. It means #Holding Firm to use this opportunity to pause, even step back, reassess, re-energise myself and come back blaringā¦ rollercoaster jowls flapping in the G-Force (pilates notwithstanding).
Iām also taking advantage to slow down in other areas of life too because I know thereāll be plenty of manic times ahead. That extra morning hour in bed because thereās no school can be spent in a myriad of manners. Those āshouldāsā (journalling? yoga? prepping the slow cooker?) harass me before my eyes have even opened, but Iām learning to swat them away because sometimes itās ok to use that extra hour in bed to do nothing.
The rollercoaster of life can terrify us. Or we can use it to live a wide array of paces and spaces to create or curl up, be motivated or be mulling over, scream or be silent, push forward or pull back, switch on or switch off, because the key to life is not an even keel; the key to life is respecting where you are at this moment.
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