Decades In Months

 

Nearly a decade ago, I was at the very first non-religious retreat of my life.

 

Our incredible host, MG, had gone to extreme lengths to make this was a true retreat – a pause in our busy work lives and a time where we could embrace the slow-down, enjoy the fruits of all that we had done and prepare ourselves for what was next in our lives and in our businesses.  We were out in the Canadian Rockies at an off-the-grid retreat center where there was limited indoor plumbing and the internet was shut off at night.

 

It was both beautiful and disconcerting.

 

I wasn’t used to being so unplugged and I had a lot to do during the “work week” days while I was there. 

 

On day one she shared some core principles to guide our time and one of the things she said was that we were going to: “go slow to go fast”.

 

At first, it shocked me, and I wrestled with it.

 

I loved speed.

 

The name of the course I had released a few months prior was FastTrack Sales Systems. I called it that for two reasons: I had been on the FastTrack in my corporate career, and I loved speed.  Being able to go further faster than most people filled my need for adrenaline in a way that I wanted to share. It was fun to show other sales professionals and business owners how they could FastTrack their own results too. 

 

Although I was trying not to be, I was addicted to the hustle, addicted to my work, to pushing, striving, straining to go as fast as I could handle.

 

And here she was, telling me to slow down when all I wanted to do was hit the accelerator.

 

It grated against my nature and really challenged me.

 

But the more I did it, the more I saw how effective it was.

 

Pausing is one of those secrets of the most successful that I’ve watched play out over and over again throughout the course of my life and career.  Those who are truly successful are like farmers who rotate their crops. They don’t plant the same thing year after year after year in the exact same plot, depleting the soil and diminishing the quality of their harvest, they work a field until it has peaked and then they let it lie fallow or they plant another crop that will renew that soil again.

 

Working without ever pausing is like planting the same thing over and over and over and then wondering why the harvest is scanty and tasteless.

 

I was so surprised with how effective this “go slow to go fast” strategy was, that I adopted it into my own coaching practice and have taught hundreds – maybe even thousands of people how to do it.

 

And one of the coolest things I’ve ever observed is that when you can master the art of going slow to go fast, you begin to realize that when you are in period of rest, of recalibration, of reflection and replenishment, when you slow things down so that you have time to learn, to take in new things, to grow, you aren’t going so slow after all.

 

When you do it right, you’re going decades in months.

 

Decade 🡪 Months is one of the slogans at Legacy Leadership Institute and it’s amazing to me how a seed planted in my mind and in my heart so long ago in the Canadian Rockies has sprouted and grown into this mighty idea and it’s taking new form in the business I’m newly leading.

 

What idea is germinating or transmutating within you right now?  Pushing you to your next?