How I Stopped Pushing
Years ago, in the first year or two of my business, I listened to a podcast episode one evening in the house I lived in three house moves ago. I can’t now remember which podcast it was, or much else that was said on it. But I remember the guest talking about how she had always pushed in her work, pushed for what she was ambitious for, but that now she wanted to be pulled.
At the time I thought “yes that’s it”. It must have been at a point where I was burning myself out on the business-building, because the idea of not pushingsohardallthetime struck a part of me so hard that I’m still remembering its impact all this time later. So I thought “yes that’s it”, but I also thought “how the hell do I do that?”
I’d say that I tried to be pulled instead of push, but the truth is I held it as an intention, or as a standard I wanted to meet, whilst not really doing it. And I don’t think that’s my failing; I think it’s because I couldn’t fathom what it would look like. All I had ever known was pushing, striving, forcing. It was all I saw around me. I got flashes of what it might feel like, to be pulled. But I couldn’t make a plan to stop pushing because I had no parameters: no end point, no steps, no start point.
Then somewhere in the middle, the line went slack. I was neither pushing, nor being pulled. This was the post-break up time, the house sale time, the re-learning who I actually was time. Looking back now I can see that all the life stuff was crowding out my creativity and capacity for work, but at the time I was frustrated at this limp rope in my hands. I wanted badly to be bringing my work up to date with who I was now, wanted badly to know what was next, but couldn’t. I was pushing, but nothing was moving.
It was two nights ago that I realised that since then, more and more, I have been working with a pulled energy. I have, over the last year, done what I felt energised to do, what I felt excited by. I feel, strangely, like I have been led - by my thoughts? feelings? creativity? – rather than I have imposed my will on those things and pushed them in the direction I thought I had to.
Of course there have been times when I’ve pushed, too. I’ve launched products that are the thing I thought I should do to be a sensible business person. Last year I pushed to write a book proposal – I wanted to believe it was ready but if I’m honest it was because I felt I had something to prove to a boy who had hurt me. Shockingly, neither the book nor the products sold. It’s funny that book was supposed to be called How To Know, and there was going to be a chapter about signs; my Substack is now How To Know, my most recent post there is about signs. There’s no way there was enough in that pushed proposal to make a whole book.
Substack has been all pull. It feels like the fruition of all the learning I’ve been doing, unbeknownst to me, about how to do things without pushing. The push version of doing a Substack, for me, is this: figuring out how to game the platform for growth, turning on paid, populating it with as much as I can so it looks bigger, having a posting schedule, having a brand and aesthetic, spending all my time on there trying to network to push the account.
I am fully aware that some or all of that list may be what a person would need to feel in control and confident, so that is not a list of Bad Things you shouldn’t do. It’s just what feels to me like pushing. It is not what sparks joy.
I have always felt certain - even as people ask when I will turn on paid, when there will be new posts, when will there be audio - that how I am doing this is the right way for me. I am taking time and honing. I am enjoying writing and sticking it up and sharing it in a way that feels organic and low pressured. The whole thing feels cumulative, like I am putting one foot in front of the other and things are going to happen naturally just as long as I keep moving. This feels like the right headspace for me.
I do not want to skip over the curiosity and exploration in my rush to attain mastery.
I think that’s what pushing always was, trying to get to a place of mastery before I’d done the work of the apprentice. I wanted to know it all, be it all, have all the things and be the expert because I thought that when you’re up there being the best you are certain and secure and there are no problems. Which isn’t true. And it’s especially not true when you skip the process – because that certainty comes from the body of work, not the follower count or the outside perception of you.
As I’ve been writing this I’ve been trying to think of the takeaway, the key ingredient of switching from push to pull – which is hard when this is not something I did intentionally. The word I keep coming back to is trust; trusting the pull, trusting the time things take, trusting that the funny little idea you’re interested in will be interesting to others too. Having patience and acceptance that end results come at the end, not five days after you begin. Not skipping all this good stuff in the middle; believing all this stuff in the middle is good, and not an inconvenience. And ultimately, I think, it’s a comfort and communion with yourself so that you can recognise the pull when you feel it – and know that you have to follow.
