Last night I read a great interview with Michael Gelb (who is one of my new heroes, as well as one of my favorite new collaborators). At one point, Michael commented “I never get writer’s block. If I start to feel stuck, I take a break. I listen to Mozart, practice my juggling, or go for a walk. Then I come back and rather than focusing too hard on where I just left off, I say, ‘Well, start anywhere’ and ‘What do you have to say about this now?’ I let my mind keep moving, permit the words to keep flowing, and I organize it later.”
I love this perspective and totally relate to it. As those of you who know me well know, movement is my main way of relating to just about everything. I love to move and whenever I am the least bit stuck with anything, I invariably find somewhere else to move or something else to do that gets me moving again.
I just found a quotation from the great sage Jerry Seinfeld, which reads “To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.” So it seems that I am in good company.
These days I find myself on the phone a lot of the time (when I am not at the computer!) and I also find myself wandering around the garden, even weeding, or tasting leaves, or otherwise moving around the garden while I am talking. And I also take walks on the railroad tracks behind the house during phone calls. Something about moving while talking makes the calls more enjoyable and even more productive.
And to balance the intensity and long hours of focusing on the computer and phone conversations, I go to the ocean a couple times a week to let the waves move me, and move myself to dance and martial arts sessions to be moved by music and more.
I find that maintaining good movement practice comes in really handy when things get heavy (not the connotations of “heavy” – making it hard to move). Especially when I find myself bogged down, I remember the experience of moving and, if necessary, force myself to get moving again, usually with support from a class or a group activity (like dance, Yoga, or martial arts) where the teacher and the group support me to move.
Not that I don’t appreciate the power of stillness, but that’s another story!
If you haven’t done so lately – at least, if you haven’t done so purposefully and consciously – I encourage you to move!
Yours in Working for Good,
Jeff
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