Kay:

Hey there, Questers. Welcome back! This is Episode 189, and today is a very special day. It’s Thursday, September 24th, which means it’s Megan Jensen’s birthday. For those of you who don’t know who Megan Jensen is, she is our #1 here for all things Kay & Shi. She is our administrator, our manager, and our ALL the things. We love you, Megan – and happy, Happy birthday!

Shi:

Happy birthday, Megan! You are our right hand woman, and – though we often say you’re our number two – that actually makes you our number one. So, today we wish you a very happy birthday! And, you are a nature-loving girl, so this is a great quote for you today from Lao Tzu, and he says, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Kay:

You know, I think Megan is a lot like that. She’s the kind of girl who gets everything accomplished, but she never seems hurried in what it is that she’s doing. We all know people like this, and I think it’s because they’ve probably gotten a little bit of that “go with the flow” – like you learned from us in yesterday’s podcast. But, this is such an incredible quote because so many of us live in this state of a busy and hurried life.

Shi:

Definitely! Maybe you’ve heard the military saying, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” That’s what this quote is getting at, and that’s how Megan lives her life as well – always accomplishing a lot, but never seeming hurried. That’s exactly how nature intended for production and advancement to happen. Things get accomplished. The sun rises and the sproutlings come up, right? The things get fertilized. The bees come out. The honey gets created. All of the things flow in perfect harmony and it’s not hurried or rushed. Boy, in this day and age, we could all take a page from nature on that one!

Kay:

Man, I think that I am probably the queen of messing things up when attempting to rush through them. Trying to be in a hurry while attempting to read a detailed email or send something off oftentimes leads me to big-time mistakes. This is one of those spaces that, personally, I have to lean into and really find where I can slow down intentionally, in order to get more done. Because ultimately, speeding up oftentimes costs you extra work because you miss things along the way and have to backtrack in order to fill in your details.

Shi:

Right?! We’ve heard this all just a bunch of different ways, right? It’s like the, “measure twice cut once” rule from the lumber industry, I guess. Or the carpentry industry, there we go…maybe not from the lumberyard. But, making sure that what we’re doing is accurate, that we’re not doing it from a space of being hurried, where we can leave things out or forget things off, is that natural way that things can evolve and unfold.

Shi:

Lao Tzu, if you’re not familiar, is an ancient Chinese philosopher, probably most famous for finding Taoism and writing the Tao Te Ching, which is a really interesting ancient spiritual book that many masters have come back to and studied through the years, and is full of wisdom just like this.

Kay:

Yes, and what we love about nature not hurrying and everything getting accomplished, just means that if nature can do it, gang, you can too!

Shi:

Yeah. It’s in your nature 😉

Kay:

It is in your nature to have things done and accomplished in their own time. How often are we fretting over things not happening fast enough, or creating that sense of busyness in our lives because we’re in a hurry? But, if nature’s not in a hurry, you don’t have to be in a hurry either, because that franticness doesn’t do any good for you anyways…I bet that raises your blood pressure, and will probably have you do all the bad medical things.

Shi:

All of them are going to line right up for you. That emotion of being hurried is not a fun emotion to experience.

Kay: No.

Shi:

And then it gives us results that we’re not proud of, and then we get frustrated, and then we feel like we’re behind…

Kay:

Yeah. Just to clarify – we’re not talking about lacking a sense of urgency. When the rains come and the soil is fertile, you bet your buttons that those trees start dropping the seeds right away, right? Nature acts with a sense of urgency, just not a sense of hurry.

Shi:

Yeah, I think that’s an important distinction. Because, that emotion of being hurried, of being busy, of rushing like you’re running out of time – that’s when we can start to feel like we should cut corners, or that maybe it’s okay to not do something, or to skip a step, or just to do it halfway, or to skim the email instead of see all of the details that might have some important stuff in there. It’s just not an enjoyable thing, and it does all the bad medical stuff that we were talking about earlier. So, just to remind you what Lao Tzu said, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Kay:

All right, gang. Today is a #ThoughtfulThursday quest. Today, we want you to take on an attitude of being a little less hurried…That’s right – we want you to take your time! Now, we’re not meaning to not act with a sense of urgency. But, just take a deep breath, and remember: hurrying doesn’t really get you anywhere faster, and it often doesn’t get you what you truly want done, really done. Are you ready?

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!

Shi:

Happy birthday, Megan!