Slow Dance Poem

Yesterday, I was reminded of this Slow Dance Poem printed in the book by Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week.

I recall reading this poem when my company was gaining momentum in sales and gaining territory each year. They were good times! Our nurses had more work than they needed, and everything was going to plan.

Adrenaline-pumping, high-achieving me was saying, ‘ More, do more, work harder’. I was also meditating and an avid reader of all kinds of leadership books. One book I read was The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. The poem titled ‘Slow Dance’ was towards the back. I read the words.

Then I sat quietly, looked up, looked around, and tears flooded my cheeks. I switched off my computer, picked up my work bag and keys. I called out a general ‘see you tomorrow’ to the team, and walked out the office door to head home.

The Slow Dance Poem

Have you ever watched kids, on a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain, slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading light?

You’d better slow down, don’t dance so fast. Time is short, the music won’t last.

Do you run through each day, on the Fly? When you ask: ‘How are you?‘ Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, with the next hundred chores running through your head?

You’d better slow down, don’t dance so fast. Time is short, the music won’t last.

Ever told your child, ‘we’ll do it tomorrow’? And in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die, ’cause you never had time to call and say, ‘Hi’?

You’d better slow down, don’t dance so fast. Time is short, the music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere, you miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life is not a race. Do take it slower.

Hear the music, before the song is over.

David L Weatherford, Child Psychologist

On my next coaching call to Leanne in Canada I focused on my vision for the company. I talk about this in Resolve.

Hearing the Slow Dance Poem again this week reminded me that the poem was connected to my decision. I resolved to make some big decisions for the future, for myself, or, really, everyone involved in that company!

I had choices to make. I could keep going and building. In my heart, I knew I would give myself the gift of setting it up for sale. I would walk away to find what else there was for me in this one life we have.

I recall saying the words ‘I will sell’ with certainty and it gave me goosebumps. It was a knowing and the right decision for me.

So I set about focusing on the business being sale-ready. A professional, quality-assured business. Maximised for sale.

Timing-wise we hit unprecedented tough times in the nursing industry for the next 18 months. A new State government made changes that devastated nurses’ jobs and suppliers to that industry, as we were. Amidst that chaos, personal tragedies tore my heart open. My father was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma, and we lost him six months later. One of our family’s young men died in a highly publicised man-overboard incident and was never found.

Whilst the tumbling walls of the nursing industry distracted me, and my personal life was full of disbelief, love, grief and shock, I somehow found a new level of exquisite clarity and calm.

Yet, now that I think about that, I feel that clarity and calm were with me even as a child, establishing tactics to avoid my brother’s abuse.

Even then, as children, we do know what is important. I hadn’t seen that at the time. Looking back perhaps the resolve and courage of child victims is the beginning of development of our strengths, knowing what’s important and establishing our values. What are your thoughts about that?

As the business owner, I became focused on what was important. That was a very short list compared to what I used to think was important! I could see what was not necessary any longer. I easily, without emotion, could see what had to go, be sold, stopped or changed. I asked far more worthwhile questions than I’d asked while owning that company.

The business was sold 2 years after that chaotic time ended. I’d turned an impending bankruptcy around. I had chosen to let go of our beautiful home as part of that process. It had to be one of the things that no longer mattered! That’s another story.

I stayed focused on where I wanted to go. Our sale agreement had precisely the figure I anticipated selling the business for when I’d written my coaching notes three and a half years earlier that day of coaching. I knew who would buy it. It was purchased through acquisition by a national competitor.

Improvement is only possible through our capacity to reflect.

I share the Slow Dance poem here for you to read, rather than keeping it for myself, knowing it is powerful. I know many other survivors like me get caught in the busyness, achievement, and burnout cycle because of where we’ve come from.

Where are you headed? Are you worrying and hurrying through life?

• Are you focusing on everything, not on one or two important things?
• Are you distracting yourself by being busy, a high- or over-achiever?
• If you are, are you doing it for you, or deep down, is it to show whom what?

You and I know you can do it. You’re a survivor. Whatever it is you wish to achieve, you can do it. You can do anything as the creator you are in your heart.

What I learned from my experience, and from something as simple as this slow dance poem landing in front of me, is to do whatever feeds your soul.

If it makes you want to smile, or you get goosebumps, or you find your bottom lip being held by your top teeth in that ‘how wonderful’ kind of way, that’s how being a creator feels.

I learned that is all that’s important. To-do lists? They need to become very short!

Believe in yourself for you. Deliver the work you do for you. You come first.

Don’t burn yourself out, because, honestly, no one will care if you burn out, or if your business fails, or succeeds, it’s all a story and will all become history to them very quickly. It’s not their story!

Make your story a beautiful one for yourself.

Shared with love,

Alice

Resolve: A Story of Courage, Healthy Inquiry and Recovery from Sibling Sexual Abuse is now available globally. Libraries and bookstores can order copies. Please follow me on Instagram and Facebook. The audiobook is now also available via over 50 audiobook sites.