When I dance, I take steps forward, sideways, backward. I follow a rhythm. I coordinate my movements and rhythm to those of other dancers and the music surrounding me, and I love the creative experience.
When I work, I make a plan for moving forward. I set a pace and resent interruptions or obstacles that require me to slow down or take sideways or backwards steps. I want everyone else to match my rhythm and I expect the surrounding circumstances to offer only support for my intention and achievement. I hate when things don’t go my way; I resent and resist.
The question occurs: Is this why I love to dance and hate to work? Is it just a matter of my expectations? Is it just that I have a misguided understanding of how work should go?
Yesterday, I was trying to move a project forward.
It seemed that at every turn, I was presented some new obstacle. The domain name transfer would not go through for 5 more days and there was nothing I could do to make it happen faster; the files would not upload to the server and I had to spend un-planned-for time moving, choosing, deleting other files to make room. I was telling myself that tasks were taking three times longer to complete than they ‘should.’
Then, in the midst of it all, I found a different response to the obstacles. When something appeared that blocked my forward momentum, I’d laugh to myself, “Well, that’s typical!”
Somehow, reminding myself that this was really how things normally go, helped me forget to feel thwarted.
I stopped taking the twists and turns of the day as a personal affront. My work day became a creative, collaborative dance – rather than a frustrating experience of obstruction and stalling. I felt like I was exercising creative power rather than resisting and resenting the world of circumstances I was encountering.
I woke up this morning with a completely different feeling about the to-do list. Ready to dance. Flexible, light-hearted, eager to engage.