The Relentless Pursuit Of…Less?

It sounds counterintuitive at first. We have been conditioned culturally, professionally, and socially to pursue more. 

More credentials. More visibility. More revenue. More influence. More productivity. 

For many high-performers, the pursuit of more is how they find success in the first place.  It creates momentum, recognition, and achievement.  

But over time we start to become excessive collectors of more, which can contribute to us becoming overloaded, overcommitted, overworked, and overstimulated. This then leads us to be more anxious, more reactive, and more disconnected. 

As we become more disconnected, we start gripping, holding on, constricting, and clenching. We become bound in some aspect to our stuff, our habits, and to our pursuit of more.

Success may require one pace. Sustainability requires another. 

In my work with ambitious professionals, we often uncover a deeply transformative truth: 

The pace that created your success isn’t always the pace that is required to sustain it. There is a need for recalibration, as the strategies you used to help you rise to the top (i.e pursuing more responsibilities, doing more to prove yourself, pushing through your fatigue to achieve more), are the same strategies that are now draining you. 

And most people don’t realize it until they feel burnt out, disconnected, and overreactive, or worse, they have a health scare.   

The Experiment: Do Less

This week, try something different. Take one less meeting. Spend one less hour scrolling. Send one less email. Say yes one less time. 

Not as an act of rebellion, but as intentional recalibration.  When you do this, you will likely find that you are more present in a conversation or meeting, that you are more aware of your breath or body, that instead of trying to optimize your day, you optimize yourself. 

Because if we constantly seek more externally, we slowly deplete ourselves internally.

Less is not lowering your standards. 

You are allowed to be driven and ambitious.  You are also allowed to be regulated, grounded and healthy.  High performance and wellbeing are allowed to coexist.  

If this resonated with you and you are ready to go deeper into this work, I invite you to consider recalibrating the internal standards that are driving your pace in the first place. 

Inside The SHIFT Standard, we redefine the internal expectations that high-performers unconsciously operate from, so that success no longer has to come at the expense of your well-being. Because doing less only works when your standards support it. 

If you are ready to build success at a pace you can actually sustain, Learn more about The SHIFT Standard.