Let's stop putting pressure on ourselves to flourish all year long

Wintering, amirite?

I had quite the tricky start to the year.

I lost two clients just before Christmas.

I felt demotivated, helpless and unproductive.

I had a major crisis of confidence.

Not to mention the weather, which was so grey and cold it made me not want to leave the house…ever.

I felt the pressure to be looking for new clients, a yearning to be creative, but my confidence was on the floor.

And then, March came along. The sun shone. The birds chirped. All of a sudden, the green shoots of my inner garden finally started to bloom.

No two years are ever the same, but as a blanket rule, we need to stop putting pressure on ourselves to be productive all the time.

As it happens, this year, January and February were particularly fallow months for me. After a knock to my confidence pre-Christmas, I found myself going into a very grey, very cold new year, two clients down, with no motivation to find new work. I felt as though I was wading through treacle without hope or purpose; nothing I did was moving anything forward. I felt stuck and unmoored all at the same time.

It would have served me well in that moment to be reminded of the ebb and flow of the garden as the seasons change, or the trajectory of a wave as it twists and turns to meet the shore. Nothing in nature blooms all year round, so why do we expect humans to do the same? Do I blame the pansies when their colourful heads start wilting and falling away, or the hydrangeas when they turn brown and lifeless? No. I accept that this is the natural rhythm of things. I tenderly trim and cut and prune, coaxing and cooing, readying each plant for her moment to shine during the growing season.

I am learning to replicate that process for my inner garden, too. When sub-zero winter temperatures and grey skies decimate my motivation, I can choose to lean in to a slower pace instead of fighting against it. I can choose to accept that, like the plants and the trees and the flowers, I need space and time to droop, to wilt, to be still.

Whichever season I find myself in, whether I am waxing or waning, I do still need to pay my mortgage and bills. I can’t just, you know, stop working when I feel like I need a rest. But I think there’s something radical, something deeply loving and accepting, in allowing ourselves to just be for a while, to stay still rather than constantly trying to move forward.

We are all observing the same seasonal rhythms, a familiar cadence that has followed the same tempo for millennia, but the world we live in now demands something very different from us. Our modern lives are characterised by an expectation of movement and progress, not dormancy.

I think we often forget that it’s OK, beneficial even, to prioritise rest over productivity.

We cannot flourish all year long. We cannot live our lives in pursuit of constant achievement; we must find contentment in the quiet mundanity of the every day, too.

I have to remind myself of this time and time again, when I’m feeling stuck or frustrated or uncertain in my career and in life. Maybe it’s something that you needed to hear today, too. I hope it brings you comfort (and an excuse to cancel your Friday night plans in favour of a pizza delivery and a Friends marathon).

Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate you almost as much as a Friday night Friends marathon (and that’s a lot).