The Balance between Wildness and Structure, between Form and Flow!
For the business owners, for the creative folks working a 9-to-5, and for the ones building their agency high.
Dear reader,
If you are anything like me, structures may feel constraining to you. Rules and regulations may feel suffocating. And every time you hear a little “you HAVE TO”, “you SHOULD”, “you MUST”, you may want to run away.
And yet there’s a part of me that loves structures and forms. It’s almost like I appreciate living by some rules. I love some discipline around time-management. I appreciate consistency, for myself and for others. I am known to be a perseverant little woman who hardly gives up or gives in.
I was speaking to S who had this dilemma. Working with her business coach made her feel pressurized into knowing every little thing she had to do, micromanaging every little detail, being disciplined everyday and feeling like a robot. She finally took a break for a couple of weeks and felt relaxed, and felt like herself.
This relaxation is something everyone requires once in a while. Most people in 9-to-5 jobs balance it out by working really hard and mechanically on the weekdays and relaxing totally on the weekends, doing nothing, worrying about nothing.
But people in business may not be able to sustain this lifestyle. Nor do people who want to put creativity in their daily lives, despite how hectic their 9-to-5 job is.
Similarly I’ve observed people in very high positions don’t work in the same manner either. They incorporate relaxation in everyday life. They incorporate wildness in everyday life.
So maybe, my letter is for these three kinds of people - the business owners, the creative ones, and the high-achievers.
Speaking to S made me realize it’s true that the more I relax, the more I manifest bigger things easily and effortlessly because then my actions are inspired and aligned. And yet, there are days I may feel like doing nothing in the name of relaxation, and in those days, discipline comes into play. Because it is too easy to think we are relaxing while we are actually being lethargic. Because if our mind is constantly thinking or overthinking, we are not really in a relaxed state at all.
You can write your creative piece in a state of flow, but it’s discipline that makes you sit at the table and turn on the laptop to write.
It’s flow that makes me oscillate in writing this newsletter from Friday to Sunday, but it’s discipline that makes me publish it during the weekend, nevertheless.
The thing about flow is that we enjoy it too much. And that also makes us delay things and postpone them for a future state when we believe the enjoyment would be back and we don’t settle for anything less than that. There are weeks and months I operate totally from a state of flow. But when that flow gets missing due to some unforeseen circumstance, there’s a chance of waiting for a long time, in vain.
With each passing day, I am in an attempt to marry discipline and flow together. To ensure this newsletter goes out every Friday at 6pm, to not make a lack of flow an excuse to slack. To ensure that I write this in a state of flow nevertheless, to not make discipline an excuse to be too mechanical and too logical.
Because the best words come from the heart. Because the best timing is divine timing.
And yet, all we humans do in between is try - to put efforts, nevertheless, and dance on the line between divine and human, flow and form, wildness and structure.
With love,
Sanhita Baruah
(Reply to this email for business enquiries or just to send a Hi. In fact, I was wondering if anyone reads this newsletter at all, until I got a reminder last night on Twitter to publish this one. What I mean is- I love receiving your replies and comments. It makes me realize someone else is reading this letter too.)