Allowing Your Spirit to Catch Up

There was an explorer who was sent to Africa by his company to find a certain tribe in Africa. He was on a very tight time line, so he hired a handful of local Africans to help him carry his equipment. He and his team hurried through the jungle. They raced onward for three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans on his team sat down and would not move. The explorer urged them to get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his designation before a certain date. They refused to move. He could not understand this; after much persuasion, they still refused to move. Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. This native said, “We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait here to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us”. – Author Unknown

In most of the societies in which we live, daily life comes at a hurried pace. There is much to be done in a given day and many roles and responsibilities to fulfill. We are often in a big hurry to finish what we are doing so that we can start the next thing on our schedule and more often than not, we are trying to do multiple things at once to save time.  For many of us, there does not seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done that we want or need to get done.  In turn, we run ourselves ragged, don’t eat properly, don’t sleep enough and don’t spend enough time enjoying the very things we say we are doing everything for are often the first things to be neglected, our self, family, friends, etc.

I like the idea of giving ourselves time to allow our “spirit” to catch up. Some may say that is what the weekends and vacations are for. I would say that for many going to work on Monday is often a relief from the madness of a busy weekend or vacation.

We in fact do need to allow our spirit to catch up so to speak; however the way we do this is not by doing different things that keep us busy, such as a day off or a vacation. In fact we owe it our self, to our personal well being and subsequent growth to make time for our spirit to catch up daily and to develop an awareness of the state of “busy” that we too often find ourselves in. To allow our spirit to catch up as the natives in the story prescribed themselves is not to necessarily stop the activity as much as it is to change our state of being from being busy and hurried to being at peace in who we are and what we are doing. That is we can still go through our day and at the same time not be in such a hurried state of mind to get everything done. The truth is that often when we change our state of being from being in such a hurry we actually heighten our awareness and actually get more done while in a more peaceful and relaxed state.

Most of us have seed the sign that says “the more hurried I get, the further behind I get”. There is much truth to this, think about a time where you simply had to get a lot done in a short time. Chances are you will remember that you made more mistakes as you hurried along which ended up taking more time to complete compared to if you would have been relaxed and able to focus on one thing at a time.

We are on a wonderful adventure, take the time to embrace and enjoy your adventure and always find time in your day to allow your spirit to catch up!