Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
Choose the book. It’s a simple enough idea. Especially in shelving stacks.
It’s no less valid when the choosing happens on your sofa or at your bedside. Just because the book, part-read, is there doesn’t mean today you have to read it. Choose. Read it, or don’t read. The book will wait for you. Put the book down, or don’t. Knowing you can stop, for now, just stop can be a great gift to yourself.
Stopping isn’t quitting.
Stopping is just…stopping.
Stopping simply means: ‘not now - my attention is elsewhere.’
Short stops are called pauses.
Pauses can linger, forming…habits.
Habits endure, until they don’t because the circumstances or you yourself have changed.
What’s at stake in stopping?
Life consists of activities that are high stakes, low stakes or somewhere in between. The stakes that an activity has is not a free-for-all. Reality has a hand in the stake-status. Take: breathing.
I can’t breathe is not negotiable when a cop’s knee presses a person’s neck. The knee is robbing the person of the capacity to freely breathe. The knee is decidedly placed to prevent the person from dis-placing the knee so as to reclaim breathing capacity. Breathing capacity is a most fundamental of human rights. It is, biologically and politically, basic. Deprive a person breath and you risk killing them. Perception has nothing to do with it.
I can’t breathe is negotiable when the symptom of breathlessness is somatic but the cause is not embodied.
When I’ve said — as an innovation leader — ‘I’m taking this project outside this ecosystem because inside I can’t breathe,’ I’m referring to a somatic sensation arising within me in response to organisational cultural dynamics. My soma is alerting me to how much creative and strategic thinking within my project may be compromised by a lack of oxygen.
When I’ve said — as a peer collaborator — ‘I’m taking myself out of this meeting because there’s no oxygen for my thinking,’ I’m acknowledging that the meeting guidelines have put me into a parking space too cosy to maneuver. That doesn’t mean I can’t think. It means I can’t think here, under these conditions, as they’ve been constructed.
I can leave the meeting without stopping the collaboration.
I can quit the ecosystem without stopping the the project.
When stakes are moderately high to high, I find it useful to take a nuanced view of the differences between leaving and quitting. They may have nothing to do with stopping and everything to do with carrying-on in the best possible way afforded by the widest set of circumstances. Leaving and quitting might serve preservation and continuation.
The gift of stopping
Nancy Kline teaches us to stop interrupting others, so they have time to think for themselves. How well do we understand the ways we might, unconsciously, be interrupting ourselves?
Stopping is the best way I know to give myself incubation time. Let’s look at this.
Continuing blindly, without consent, can be a form of interruption.
That which it interrupts might be:
the gestation of understanding.
the incubation of new, or nascent, ideas.
For example: The best thing I did for my novel-in-progress was stopping work on it September 2019-July 2020. I went cold turkey. Turned off work, like it was a tap.
One of the blockers for me in its development was understandable concern about how my daughter would respond to the narrative (it’s a family story about an unhappy marriage). Her turning 16 brought changes within her that transform the conversation between us about this book. As it happens, it also gave me time to learn about a practical philosophy that has long resonated with my outlook. The new knowledge comes from my ears and eyes and travels downwards; making it a resource for my writing in a way that gut instinct couldn’t in itself provide. For both these new gifts, my work is now far richer.
Trusting in stopping as a valid choice
Stopping can be a little experiment. A momentary way of being. Transitory.
I love this about stopping. It’s a suspension of activity.
I am very cautious about who I admit into my personal reflection space; because what people think about my habits, tendencies and choices is sometimes more a reflection of their mental models and ways-of-being than my own.
I don’t love runaway stories. And I now understand why my late father held a candle for reunion (both in his love life and in mine). Reunions are stops that restart.
When it comes to others, I am a radical about possibility and a conservative about personal change.
Noticing you’ve stopped isn’t the same as not knowing how to re-start
Just like ballroom isn’t Lindy hop, knowing how to stop and noticing you’ve stopped isn’t the same as know how to re-start. Here are some thoughts about making space for writing in order to start and maintain a writing habit (3-min read).
I call it protection; because making space is about protecting space (and yourself) for the chosen activity. The three stages — defining, securing and using — are key. One without the others may lead to a fragile habit that easily falters.
Another time I’ll write about how much securing space relies upon resources that come from other places and people. Perhaps this will help people notice the ways in which life redesign is about connecting in new ways, not simply disconnecting.
With this in mind…
I invite you to see how quitting, leaving and stopping overlap and are also distinct, as concepts. And to see what becomes clearer or more possible in your life when you give each its scope and due consideration.
I encourage you to seek a framework for thinking about quitting. Sarah Weiler has just shown me hers 💛💛💛 . It’s called Quitting Quadrant and I can’t wait for Sarah’s framework to be more widely available. 💫
Sarah won my heart when she explained her concept of Carousel. She’s the first to name how I live, and my belonging-ness quotient instantly climbed when we met. ✨
Fun fact: Sarah uses ukuleles in groups to kindle connection and creativity…and we learned during our very first exchange that we both went to Union Chapel in London — back when going out was a thing — the very same night to see Amanda Palmer’s remarkable show, There Will Be No Intermission.
Turns out, there was an intermission, but if Sarah and I bumped elbows or did the ladies-in-the-loo shuffle, we don’t remember. Synchronicity only got us so far….It took Writer’s Hour and the patron-only London Writers Salon community to ensure we clicked.
Don’t know A F-ing P? Start here.
Music not your thing? Here’s AFP’s Ted Talk on her book (that changed my life).
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