How do you stay calm and present when life is running at full speed?

Last Sunday, my body's whispers turned into screams and forced me to stop. I woke up with a tummy bug that kept me in bed for three days.

For weeks, I'd been squarely back in doing mode. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which means lots of delivery and awareness workshops for clients. Add Nala, our new Rottweiler pup, to the mix and life just started accelerating again. Back on the hamster wheel.

My body kept the score. Even once I got out of bed to do stuff, it reminded me that it still needed time to recover.

Then on Wednesday, Heinie went to London for work. So I pulled everything back. I took Nala back to Anita, her breeder, for a little while, just to give me time to breathe again. She's much harder work than I anticipated. At sixteen weeks, she's already sixteen kilos. She is a Rottweiler, after all.

And something shifted. On Thursday and Friday, I came back into my body. Being present. Moving slowly and graciously. And yet still productive. I didn't stop doing, but I noticed that my doing came from a very different place.

It's really brought back into my awareness the balance between being still and doing, something I first wrote about in January in 'Where do you focus your energy: on DOing or BEing?'

The insane office

Coincidentally, I also watched a teaching on fulfilment through stillness and action by Eckhart Tolle this week, and he has a name for that balance between stillness and doing: conscious doing. It really helped me put my week into perspective. In it, he shares a story about the insane office that had his audience laughing out loud, and it carries an important lesson.

Some offices are 100% insane. Bring stillness into one of those and it's so incompatible with your surroundings that you'll either be dismissed or walk out.

But if there's even the slightest compatibility, if it's 'only 90% insane', change may be possible.

Haven't we all worked somewhere like that? I know I have.

He gives the example of walking into an office, alert. You answer the phone. You go to the meetings where everybody is frantic. And you sit there and listen. You don't decide that everyone's insane. The frenzy is on the surface, and their essence is something else entirely. You're simply there as a still point.

You can still speak. You're just rooted in being while you do it.

And then things can shift. One or two people change through their interaction with you. The energy in a meeting changes. Or suddenly you're the only person saying something meaningful, and everybody listens.

Tolle explains that much of our doing comes from the ego trying to fill a sense of insufficiency. This is the heart of the MOAR Paradox: you're meant for more, and you're already more than enough. Both truths matter. When we forget we're already enough, we keep trying to fill a hole that output alone can never fill. When we remember, we're not chasing more to fill a void. We're creating more because we're already whole.

ROAR in action

To help you stay calm, present and in the moment, try this next time you walk into a frantic meeting:

• Recognise what's happening within you and around you. Is your body tense? Is your mind racing? Is the room running at full speed?
• Observe with curiosity. Notice the urge to rush in, react or judge. Take three slow breaths, feel your feet on the floor, and listen.
• Assert. Be still, own your power, then speak up confidently. Share the facts or ask a question.
• Redirect your energy afterwards. Notice what changed, in you and in the room, and take that calm into the next thing you do.

Finding stillness in the everyday

Tolle reminds us that even if all you do every day is water the plants, make a cup of tea and look around at the beauty like a little child, that's enough. 'And that's enough for a fulfilled life, isn't it?'

So this week, I'm letting stillness lead, and trusting my doing to follow from a calmer, wiser place.

I invite you to do the same.

P.S. Have a question about bringing more stillness into a busy working life? Send me a personal message or comment below. I'd love to hear from you.