Recently, for my 50th birthday I went to a fabulous wellness spa for four days with my bestie. On this retreat I planned to realign myself after a mentally, intellectually and spiritually exhausting year. I entered this new chapter of my life vowing never again to be overtaken by professional exhaustion. There in the northwestern region of Massachusetts, away from the rustle and bustle of New York City, I realized I was the problem. It wasn’t everyone else, it was me and my lack of boundaries, my fear of saying no, my fear of not being deemed valuable, my fear of missing out and my drive to be the ultimate problem solver. I started my vacation so burned out that I did not care whether “the office” could get by without me, but then there were times I would catch myself checking email and answering a few, until one of my direct reports started texting me with lines that began with “Since you are checking your email, can you approve some payment requests….” I set up the expectation, I opened the door, so how could I get mad if people were walking through that door. So what did I do? I went back into email approved the payments and told my report that anything else would have to wait. I see you shaking your head. But that was a huge step for me.
At this luxurious spa retreat, I took a pottery wheel course. I walked in with the expectation that by the end of the next few days, I will have created, fired, painted and glazed a fabulous vase. Then the instructor announced that due to the lengthy chemical process involved with ceramics, we would not be bringing anything home. “What the hell?” I said in my head, “then why I am here?” The instructor began to explain the spiritual process of using the pottery wheel, of not being tied to a specific outcome and just focusing on playing, just focusing on the process of learning technique with the understanding that there is huge margin for getting messy and having fun. This would involve just being present in the moment. This idea of letting go of the outcome was absolutely foreign to someone like me who creates goals, and then goals for the goals. I am not going to lie, the first 30 minutes was a struggle. And then, I got into the zone, I was hypnotized by the slow rotation of the clay and how just the gentle change in applied pressure would impact the clay. As the clay would become misshapen, I would flatten it and start over again. This error for margin, this space for grace could be carried over into other aspects of my life. This pottery wheel process has become a metaphor for letting go of outcomes and just enjoying the process, the intention, knowing things may turn out differently than expected, but just as good, and that is okay too. Outcomes can be tied to other people’s expectations which can hamper an individual’s growth, pushing one off of one’s own path, denying oneself of one’s authenticity. The instructor told us not to pay attention to anyone else’s pottery wheel, because then you would compare your work to someone else’s, detracting from your own process.
The weeks leading up to my 50th birthday, I had rolled a question around in my head, “Whose race am I running?” For years I tried to keep up with contemporaries, achieving one goal after another, one achievement after another, but the question was whose race was I running?
There were some achievements I was naturally driven to pursue and others that were pursued because it was expected of me. In this next chapter of my life, I am silencing the noise around me, in order to hear my voice, in order to focus on my process, my path. So there are some things I am letting go of in order to make space for the opportunities that truly sing to my spirit. I have vowed to stop being the “go to” person who gets all of the extra projects and responsibilities to the point of overwhelm and exhaustion, just to prove my value. As women of color, we are told from a young age that we have to work twice as hard as our contemporaries. We are told that we have to do “all the things.” However, in the spirit of the pottery wheel, I am going to focus on the things that are most important and immerse myself in the moment, the process. Now this will look very different for anyone else. But for me, it means vowing to no longer tie my worth to the outcomes and to other people’s expectations. Focusing on the process looks a lot like recognizing my experience, my expertise, my authenticity, my creativity and my resilience in an ever changing, always demanding world. Focusing on the process looks a lot like defining professional and personal joy and success on my own terms. At the luxurious spa, I celebrated this new ideology by sitting by the pool for three hours and reading a book, while all of the other resort goers were running off to meditation, Pilates, cooking or yoga workshops. I almost felt lazy for not doing more then I remembered to focus on my pottery wheel and not anyone else’s.
