We Get to Live in the Overflow

I was looking at a swimming pool the other day and noticed how cloudy the water was. It looked less than appealing to swim in and there was no sign of the bottom of the pool. It turned out the water wasn't flowing over the sides, so it had become stagnant.

The pool guys came to fix it and once they got the pumps working properly, the water started moving and flowing over the sides. Before long, the pool was crystal clear and the bottom was visible again.

That really hit me. How often do we become a little stagnant in our own lives because we've stopped allowing things to flow?

I've been thinking about this quite a lot this year. I've stepped back from many of the things I'd been doing in my business. I've been much quieter online. I've listened to very few other voices and spent more time asking myself what I actually think, what I want my work to look like, what still feels like me and how I want my business to naturally flow. Which is probably why that swimming pool stayed with me.

What does overflow mean to you?

I've been thinking that it isn't necessarily about wanting more or having more but allowing things to move more freely. Receiving things, saying goodbye to things and moving through life in a way that feels more natural to you.

Because many of us aren't particularly good at receiving. We don't want to be greedy. We don't want to desire too much. We tell ourselves that what we have is enough. And sometimes it genuinely is, but sometimes I wonder whether "enough" can also become a way of not admitting that we'd actually like something to be different.

If things seem fine, how do we justify wanting change? What is too much anyway? And why do so many of us learn to push down the things we really desire?

Even something as simple as receiving a compliment can feel uncomfortable. Someone says something lovely and before we've really taken it in, we're explaining it away or minimising it. But this doesn’t mean receiving is about saying yes to everything that comes our way either.

An opportunity might look wonderful from the outside and still not be something we want, even though we can feel pressured to want it. Part of receiving is being open enough to notice what’s being offered, while trusting ourselves enough to know whether we actually want it.

But for me, flow isn’t only about receiving, it’s also about letting go. When did you last let go of something that was familiar but you knew it was no longer needed? An idea, an expectation, a way of working, or an old identity. Something you'd been doing for so long that you'd stopped asking whether it still worked for you.

When we hold onto things that no longer fit, there can be very little space for anything different to arrive.

Imagine someone at work has a new project or opportunity they think you'd be perfect for. They look at your calendar and see that every minute is already accounted for, so they don't even ask.

Our lives can become a little like that too. When there’s no space, how much capacity do we have to notice something new, let alone explore it?

I've personally realised that creating space doesn't always look particularly productive from the outside. For me, stepping back this year might have looked as though very little was happening. At times it felt that way to me too and I've thought about why I haven't had much to say, why I didn't want to write and why things that once seemed relatively easy haven't interested me in the same way.

But I’ve learnt not all periods of apparent stillness are stagnation. Sometimes we need enough quiet to notice what's actually going on underneath all the noise.

This reminds me of an old radio. You can be listening to one station for so long that you almost forget there are others available. Turn the dial and there's classical music. Turn it again and there's hip hop. Turn it again and there's jazz. The other stations were there all along but you just weren't tuned into them.

Do we do something similar in life? We can become so accustomed to paying attention to one way of doing things, one definition of success or one idea about who we're supposed to be that we stop noticing other possibilities. Sometimes changing what we're paying attention to allows us to notice things that were previously hidden in plain sight.

This can be an idea, a conversation that makes us think, something we keep thinking about, a desire we've been dismissing, or the realisation that something we've been doing for years doesn't actually suit us anymore.

This is what I'm beginning to think overflow really is. It’s less about having more, and more about allowing things to flow more naturally. It’s receiving without automatically pushing things away, giving without continually running on empty, allowing things to leave when they no longer fit and making enough space to notice what might want to come next. And sometimes, it’s being willing to question something even when there hasn't been a crisis forcing us to.

The pool didn't become clear because extra water was poured into it. It became clear because the water was able to move again. There are times in our own lives when we don't need to try harder or add more. We simply need enough space to notice what's happening, breathe and ask ourselves:

What am I ready to receive?

What am I ready to release?

And where might I be ready to allow a little more flow?