We all know about FOMO – the fear of missing out. But I wonder if I’ve just created another acronym – FONT…
For those of us who are Quiet Disruptors, I’m not sure the fear is of missing out. Or if it is, it’s not the main driver.
Being OK in our interior world, perhaps we don’t have the same anxiety about doing what everyone else is doing. Or of missing it. Usually, we are relatively comfortable creating our own path. Not that we are anti-social!
Perhaps our default anxiety is that we might not be ‘enough’. That in creating space to be, there’s nothing there. Or our sense of something important fizzles out when we give it room to breathe. And all our thinking and reflecting produces nothing of substance. Like water through our fingers.
And that’s really difficult for us because our identity, our sense of personhood, is bound up in that internal space.
So what if it’s just empty?
FONT – the fear of nothing there…
Our generous space
Our world is so full and full-on all the time, that in reality, we don’t know what ‘empty’ means. Very few of us have genuine solitude and stillness. So even though we crave space and quiet, we often don’t know how to inhabit it.
Quietening the chatter in our minds is hard and we are accustomed to feeding our neural habits with external stimuli. So stopping takes time and practice. And not a little trust that it’s worth the effort.
But what if there’s nothing there…
Paradoxically, sometimes we just have to be empty before we can have anything to give. We have to let go, to release our hold.
So creating generous space starts with us. Giving ourselves permission to be empty. To face the fear of there being nothing there – with a smile. It’s OK. Because it’s actually not about us.
We’re just not very used to being in this kind of space. Where we recognise that we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves. When we stand on ‘sacred ground’. And wait patiently.
In the emptiness, we will start to see the threads and hear the echoes that deep down we’ve always known were there. But had lost sight of along the way.
Sometimes creating that generous space is as simple as naming our fear and stepping into it anyway.
Like writing about Quiet Disruptors every day…
Thanks for reading
Sue
This week
It has been a privilege to write this week:
– Monday: Where’s the stillness?
– Tuesday: The art of fresh thinking
– Wednesday: What catches our attention?
– Thursday: Step by step – change is not a guarantee
– Friday: The spaciousness of wisdom