Sometimes Doing Nothing is Doing Something

​I spent this past weekend at Top Knot.

Didn’t accomplish much.

And that might have been the most productive thing I did all weekend.

There are always things to do at the cabin. That’s just part of owning a place in the mountains. Wood to cut. Things to fix. Things to clean up. Projects I started three years ago that I still walk past and think, “I really need to finish that.”

They’ll still be there next weekend.

This weekend was different.

I built a fire.

I watched the birds and the critters.

I watched the clouds roll over the mountain.

I sat and looked down the valley.

And when it got dark, I looked up.

That’s about it.

And it was wonderful.

I’ve spent a lot of my life believing that being busy meant I was being productive. There was always another goal. Another project. Another job. Another place I needed to be.

Maybe that’s part of how I’m wired.

Maybe some of it came from spending so much of my life feeling like I had something to prove.

Probably a little of both.

But I’m learning something as I get older.

Rest isn’t the opposite of resilience.

Rest is part of resilience.

We talk a lot about being resilient. About getting back up. Pushing through. Weathering the storm. Taking the next step when life knocks us down.

And all of that matters.

But you can’t spend your entire life standing in the storm.

Eventually, you need someplace to get out of the wind.

For me, Top Knot has become one of those places.

There is something about sitting in the mountains that slows everything down. The phone isn’t quite as important. Whatever problem seemed enormous on Friday afternoon somehow doesn’t seem quite as big when you’re looking across miles of Montana mountains.

The mountain doesn’t care about my schedule.

The stellar jay certainly doesn’t care about my schedule. He just wants the peanuts.

And the fire doesn’t need anything from me except another piece of wood every once in a while.

There’s something pretty damn healthy about that.

I’ve been talking a lot lately about resilience. I’ve even built a keynote around it—Stand Through the Storm.

The more I talk about resilience, though, the more I realize that resilience isn’t always about standing.

Sometimes it’s sitting.

Sometimes it’s sleeping a little longer.

Sometimes it’s watching clouds roll across a mountain.

Sometimes it’s staring into a fire.

Sometimes it’s watching a chipmunk and realizing that, for the next five minutes, absolutely nothing needs to be accomplished.

We tend to treat self-care like it’s something we earn after we’ve worked hard enough.

I don’t think that’s right anymore.

Self-care is maintenance.

We wouldn’t expect a piece of equipment to run forever without shutting it down, servicing it and giving it what it needs.

Why do we expect that from ourselves?

This weekend I shut things down for a little while.

No grand revelation.

No life-changing moment.

Just mountains.

A fire.

A bird and other critters.

A sky full of stars.

And some time to recharge.

Monday still came.

The work was still waiting.

The problems hadn’t magically disappeared.

But I was a little more ready for them.

Maybe that’s the point.

Resilience isn’t just about having the strength to keep going.

Sometimes resilience is knowing when not to.

And sometimes the strongest thing you can do is sit by the fire for a while.

The storm will still be there tomorrow.

For tonight…

I’m staying by the fire.