My gym's lease runs out this month.
New premises to find, a move-out, a move-in, and a list of requirements long enough to keep me busy for a fortnight on its own.
I've done this before.
Different building, different year, same kind of upheaval.
What's different isn't the situation. It's how I'm carrying it.
The old version of me would have had six fires burning at once and tried to put them all out with the same hand.
Chasing the landlord one minute, the fit-out the next, the timeline after that, panic running quietly underneath because everything felt equally urgent.
This time I'm doing one thing. Then the next one. That's the whole shift.
I picked it up properly while reading The Inner Game of Tennis. I have a focus for the month of deliberately not doing more than one thing at a time, so I can give each action the respect it deserves.
In his book, Gallwey splits every game into two. The outer game everyone can see and the inner game nobody's watching.
I've spent most of my life fighting hard on the outer game and leaving the inner one to look after itself.
There's an old image I keep coming back to.
Years of being the man in the trench, no bigger picture, just attritional fighting, a yard gained here, pushed back there.
Working harder in that trench never won me anything. In fact, it's what kept me stuck in it.
Nobody watching this move is going to see the frantic version of me. Not because I'm performing calm, but because there's actually less to manage when you're only holding one thing.
The trust I've got right now isn't coming from anyone noticing. It's coming from watching myself do this, one piece at a time, without falling over.
If pressure has always looked like progress to you, if six things screaming at once feels like the price of being ambitious, try this the next time it happens.
Don't reach for all of them.
Pick one.
Let the rest wait their turn.
That's the whole trick, and it's smaller than it sounds.
Cheers
Paul
P.S. If this sounds like where you are right now, whatever your own version of the lease is, drop me a line. Let's talk about how to move you forward.
