Take courage –no obstacle is insurmountable

Sitting here answering a never-ending flow of emails, pouring in in their hundreds by the day, sometimes by the hour – the way I do it, is give it an hour or so first thing, half an hour or so at the end of the working day and whip through the interim flow between other tasks whenever sitting writing pieces, recording beats or so on – something I’m so used to now, I’m able to field each day’s inrushing tide with relative ease. But it wasn’t always thus – there was a time, facing a vision of an infinite digital tidal wave that would only grow exponentially and eventually overwhelm me, I seemed to be confronted with a choice between a nervous breakdown, spending my whole life replying to emails or changing my identity and escaping to the Amazon to start a new life.

I make light of it but at the time – this was about 7 years ago – I was truly daunted and shaken to the foundations by the prospect of everlasting electronic bondage. I’d tried having an assistant to answer them all but that just seemed to slow it down and generate even more traffic. I’d listened to well-meaning advice from all quarters on creating standard template answers but anyone who knew the sort of pain people shared with me, the help they wanted, on the one hand and the particular nature of the business type emails I’m dealing with on the other, would know that standardized responses wouldn’t work.

So I decided to do a radical reframe. I stopped resisting it. Instead of seeing it as a tidal wave to brace against, I started letting go of the resistance in my body to it – I started relaxing my chest and belly and breathing more freely about it – I started seeing each email as the Tao sending me a drop of absolute love-water. I started giving thanks for the privilege of being connected to the tribe in such a far-reaching way, and thanks for having something to contribute, to serve by – and I stopped believing I had to rush through them all to get them out of the way and instead be willing to relax about the velocity.

And most of the time, it works – all’s well – in fact I love it – gets a tad tricky around the edges when I’m away from the screen for a day or more, say when doing an all-night gig somewhere else, running a workshop, doing marathons at the studio, or even very occasionally taking a day out and then come back to a thousand of the little buggers bouncing around impatiently in my inbox, but mostly it’s all fine and wonderful and life goes on.

Which only goes to show you how what looks like an insurmountable obstacle is often merely a chimera that can be swiftly resolved by seeing through it to the absolute love informing it.

Swift resolutions to you.

Love, D