Making Work Beautiful
For as long as I can remember, work has been a rush. I was always late for school, and then always late for work. In my own business I was always right up against deadline, putting things off until they had to be done with all the other things that also had to be done. Always pushing and striving for more, never really doing what I was doing in the moment but a few steps ahead.
I wanted a more beautiful kind of work. I use this as an example a lot, but as I was transitioning into self-employment my desk job daydreams were of morning yoga and fresh coffee in a pot and an idle drift toward the desk, pastry in hand, where I would create.
None of those things have ever happened. For most of the time I’ve worked for myself I’ve actually dredged myself up out of bed an hour later than I’d ideally have liked, made a quick tea and got straight to the laptop feeling like I’m already sliding down the sand of what I had to do that day and need to climb back up.
And because that was what happened, I didn’t try to make work beautiful. If it wasn’t that yoga/coffee/fresh bread/linen-wafting kind of beautiful then there was no point – it was that or nothing. So, I had nothing. I worked at a messy desk in a messy room without breakfast, in a rush.
I believed “beautiful” could only be one thing, so I didn’t look for what was truer.
The thing is – hold the front page – I’m not a morning person. So, yoga and exercise is something I can only really do in the evening when I’m not so stiff and semi-conscious. It was never feasible that I would be making pastries or bread as the sun rose. I also never really fancy coffee first thing in the morning. So everything I thought I needed to have a dreamy, beautiful work morning were actually things I didn’t really want.
It was accepting this that unlocked the door to more truly beautiful work. As soon as I removed the pressure of what my morning should look like there was all this space to realise that my morning was already what it needed to be. That the beauty was the simplicity of the gentle tending of needs with tea and affirmations; the beauty was in understanding that there is a discomfort threshold in starting creative work and I just needed to sit with that instead of panic. These were the things that made work calm, and that made it beautiful.
I have been using the example of the morning routine because that was the one I seemed to hold the most expectations around, but making work beautiful goes beyond the morning routine. It also goes beyond what it all looks like. As I glance around at my desk I see an empty crisp packet, scrap paper, tissues, a dusty planner. Mine is not a Pinterest work space, I’m not about to get a magazine feature.
But this doesn’t mean the work is not beautiful. Because what happens at that messy desk is daily writing, conversations about ideas, creating new things. What happens is closing the laptop to go do something else when I’m ready. What happens is trustful listening to my energy, embracing my natural chaos and turning it to work for me, the constant reconnection to truer goals, confidence building, and calm, inspired action. And that is more beautiful than any morning routine.
(Want to create Your Beautiful Creative Process? Find out more…)
