Life is 'Simply' Fearless...

Dear Fearless Friends,

In my career as a management consultant, I was usually asked to lead complex projects that needed urgent crisis management, or new processes to be created, or enhanced capability within the team, or even a different strategy or vision  – usually on a global scale with multiple departments, stakeholders and dependencies involved, and often with serious financial, people, or reputational impacts at stake. Needless to say, each project presented different challenges, and I relished the opportunity to create something new, something better, and something of value in so many diverse and meaningful situations.

Many years ago, I realised that essentially what I was asked to do was to help the organisation go from where it was to where it would love to be, and it was very fulfilling and materially rewarding to be able to do this.

As I grew in my career, it dawned on me that was I was really paid to do was to simplify:

…Simplify a message so that more people could understand it. 

…Simplify a strategy so that it was easier to achieve. 

…Simplify a process so that it would serve people and not the other way around.

…Simplify a crisis so that we could deal with it one task at a time.

It’s no different to what I do now as a coach or trainer. My job is to help people simplify the problem at its core, so that a simple solution to be found. 

And yet, in my own life, it is often easy to over-complicate things. Even coming from our best intentions, we often want to give more, do more, be more, or manage things better, or ensure the best outcomes...and in our fear of not being to do this, give this, be this, create this…we end up complicating things and losing the ease and impact that comes with simplicity. Things get tough when we complicate them.

Case in point…I complicated what I wanted to say to you these past weeks, so much so that I paralysed myself into saying not very much at all! Here’s what happened…

I had started to receive a lot of feedback from many of our Fearless Club members on how these emails were really resonating with you, and that they were helping with a shift in your own lives. Instead of simply receiving this wonderful feedback and simply carrying on as I was, I extrapolated a complicated meaning:

That what I was doing wasn’t enough, that now I had higher standards to live up and therefore I had to give even more value! (Not one person ever said this, by the way!)

And that with everything that has been going on in my life recently (including some hard-hitting realities of the Covid crisis in India), I needed to write something complicated and special and extra meaningful and profound in order to make it worth your while to read! I believed that a ‘simple email’ just wouldn’t do, given the gravity of what I was experiencing. (Again, not one person ever said this to me – I made it up!)

And so I would start writing to you, and stop. Start writing again, and stop. I made it so complicated to simply communicate what comes most naturally to me. I ended up not only stressing myself out and paralysing myself into inaction, but not serving the very thing I wanted to serve better!

All I really needed to do was to simply write to you, tell you what I am going through, and ask you to join me in our Facebook Group where I am sharing (more simply and more regularly).

We human beings like to extrapolate meaning - and we often believe that ‘more means more’...

…The more we give or do, the better we are. 

…The more complicated something is, the smarter we are. 

…The more we throw into the mix, the more resilient we are. 

…The more we worry, the more we will be able to control the world around us.

…The more we are upset, the more we are entitled to demand our way.

And so we fear that letting go, doing less, keeping it simple will hurt us. That we will not be seen, or appreciated, or loved, or successful, or even healthy if we let some things go, worry less, or do less in this one moment. 

In reality, the more we complicate things, the more they slow us down, stop us and even drag us down mentally, emotionally and physically. Simply put: complicating things hurts us…as well as what we want to serve.

Even in our toughest moments or challenges, the simple question to ask ourselves is: “What are we making this about, and what are we afraid of?”

(I was making it about ‘impressing you’, because I fear that I am not good enough, wise enough, or credible enough to simply touch your heart and perhaps inspire you, just by being me.)

Our journey is living fearlessly is really a journey to simplify our lives: To discern what is really necessary for us to hold on to, do and care about…and to let go of what is just an unnecessary distraction because our fears want us to hold on to more.

Life is ‘simply beautiful’. Even the most complex phenomena of love, joy and beauty, at their heart, lie in the simplest of things. And the most complex results are born of the simplest of intentions and processes. So why ever would we want to complicate anything? 

Sometimes we have to go through the muddle to figure out what really matters. That’s okay too. As long as we find our way back from the ‘muddle of muchness’ to the serenity of simplicity.

With love,

Stuti