Everything goes stale, eventually, and then what?

The last few weeks I found myself surfing some incredible waves. I’ve been coaching more inspiring leaders than I ever have, with more depth than I’ve ever experienced before. And then, after a few weeks, this weekend to be precise, I felt deflated. Like a balloon where air seeped out until it was flat. Or coming off a wave, that, as all waves do, eventually subsides. 

What was so confusing for me was that nothing was “wrong”. Quite the opposite. I had accomplished more than I’d have let myself dream of just a few weeks earlier. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, my favorite publishing house emailed me out of the blue to ask if I’d like to explore writing a book (I know!). 

Yet my head was dizzy, my body flat and my mind confused. And then, in a session with a dear friend, who I’m so grateful for, he asked me this: “Well, those were good weeks, but why don’t we get to know this part of you now. What’s it like to feel dizzy, confused and flat?”. And that’s what we did, for a whole hour. I learned about my dizziness, my confusion. It was saying “You’re doing great, I just need a bit of rest, a bit of slowing down, nothing is wrong. Can you help me with that?”. And I did,  I imagined being in a cozy cave, with a thousand cozy cushions, blankets, and furry rugs to walk on. In the embrace of loving people all around me. Wow, what a joy it was to rest, to just let go, to surf that wave, a much gentler one, a calmer one. One that just slowly lets you drift onto shore in the evening sun without much active energy. 

The strange experience of meeting life moment to moment is that change is the only constant. And yes, what a cliche “change is the only constant”. And at this moment as I’m writing this, it is the most extraordinary, true, and experiential sentence I can come up with. 

The reason even the most eloquent, even the most inspiring and deeply precious moments, paintings, weddings, poems, experiences, you name it eventually become dull, boring cliches is because we can’t keep them. We can’t hold onto them. Life keeps going, life keeps moving. 

Sometimes, leaders who want to explore working with me come to me and say “Leo, you built a big business, $20m in revenue, wow, I want you to help me do that!” or they say “Leo, you went and lived in a monastery, should I do that too, how can I do it?”. Most of the time I tell them a variation of this: these moments have already passed. The circumstances have already changed and most importantly, that was my dream, not yours. It has all gone stale already. What is it that you want, today, from this moment? And what would it take for you to make that come alive in you and then outside of you?

As soon as I open to that new experience, that new moment of life, I can let go of the past. I can meet life again, with curiosity. In guided meditations I’ve given before, I’ve shared the image of being curious about life in the way a toddler can be curious after finding a seashell on the beach. Stopping, picking it up, looking at it from all angles, and thinking “huh, what is that?”. I believe that if we can go through life like that, then it will be joy, love, openness, and connection. If we can meet our deepest hate, our darkest fear with the same words that my dear monk friend uses, saying “Why don’t we get to know this part of you?”, life opens up in front of us. 

And eventually, this moment, this article, this insight I just had, like every other moment before will go stale and we get a new opportunity to open up to the next one. To ask like the toddler on the beach, holding up the seashell with kind curiosity “Huh, what is that?”