What good is good if you’re no good at being receptive to it? If you can’t experience the good when it arrives, what good is it? I ask this a lot. I ask myself if it’s not only about being in the right place at the right time but also having the capacity to receive what’s there. Your vacation is finally here, are you capable of enjoying it?
This is where coaching, drumming and intentional moments of focus over sustained periods of time are extremely valuable. They build capacities. With this in mind, the focal point isn’t necessarily creating something new and acquiring more of something, it’s instead cultivating the skill of feeling it when it presents itself as an opportunity. When rest arrives for you, will you be able to take it into deep relaxation? When space arrives for you, will you be able to experience it as such, as spacious and expansive?
When an opportunity to trust would help you through a situation, will you have the capacity to harness it? We practice for a reason. We practice to build capacities for the experiences that are happening all around us.
The ability to experience the good that comes our way is a skill that we have the responsibility to build. Like any other muscle, we have to work it out to make it stronger and more easily accessible. What good is an opportunity to hear something if we don’t have the capacity for listening? So we practice listening. What good is an empty schedule if we don’t have the capacity to be with nothing? So we practice stillness.
When outcome-based mindsets seduce us into believing that’s the only way to measure our success, I encourage us to consider what maintenance looks like as a KPI: sustaining receptivity as a key performance indicator of our progress.
Capacity training is just like any other training – strength training, mobility training, dexterity training – we have to practice it to get any good at it. How are you strengthening your capacities so when life throws you a good one, you’re capable of hitting it out of the park?