The Seduction of Motion

Two weeks until the holidays.

The Q4 sprint is nothing new. One more deliverable. One more meeting. One more push before we can finally rest. Then we will be ok. The magical reset of the new year. As if…. We know this rhythm.

But this year feels different.

I see it in my coaching sessions, in conversations with other consultants, and in my own body. There's something heavier underneath this familiar rush. A deeper disquiet.

The busyness isn't just about deadlines anymore.

This is a way to avoid the existential weight of a world that doesn't make sense the way it used to. Political fractures. Climate grief. Economic uncertainty. The slow unraveling of systems we built our identities around.

Here's What I'm Really Noticing

We don't just stay busy. We cling to it.

There's a seduction in motion. As if being in action is the default. I can even discern a drug-like quality to the busyness. And I’m not even present. I’m already thinking the next meeting, the next deliverable, the next win. This is not an accident or aberration. It's strategic: our nervous system's way of avoiding what we know is waiting in the stillness.

Think about it: As long as you're moving, you don't have to feel.

You don't have to sit with the question of whether any of this still matters. You don't have to face the possibility that the thing you've been optimizing for—success, achievement, "making it", might be the wrong game entirely.

But here's the deeper secret that I'm noticing in the coaching sessions:

We're not just avoiding the hard questions. We're pushing harder with a strategy that doesn't work anymore.

It's like that image of the American tourist who doesn't speak the language, yelling louder and louder in English, hoping that volume and intensity will somehow make it work. Hoping that if he just enunciates more clearly, speaks faster, the other person will suddenly understand.

Except in this case, the strategy is: work harder, optimize faster, execute better. Push the boulder up the hill with more force. Do what's always worked before—just more.

And it's not working. The maps don't fit the terrain anymore. But we can't see that yet. So we keep pushing.

Because the alternative is stopping, admitting that the old approach is broken, and we don’t know what comes next. That is terrifying.

So we fill the space. We stay productive. We measure our worth in tasks completed, projects shipped, meetings attended. The logic is simple and seductive: If I keep moving, I'm okay. If I stop, I have to feel what's actually there. And I have to admit I don't know what to do.

I catch myself doing this. The pull toward motion. The habitual reach for the next thing. The almost hypnotic response to do something, anything when there is a sudden empty space on the calendar. Or worse, when standing in line, sitting at a red light, or on the couch during commercial breaks, grabbing the my-whole-universe-in-a-device faster than any gunslinger.

If I am honest, under that impulse to move is fear. There is a panic-clinch in my chest when there's nothing on the calendar. The phone is in my hand before I even decide to reach for it. And underneath all that….a deeper all hidden fear that if I stop, I'll discover I don't know who I am anymore.

And here's the thing that's been hitting me: We've built an entire culture around this. We've made motion a virtue.

Being busy means you matter. It means you're important, needed, essential. Slowing down feels like failure. Stopping feels like collapse.

So we don't.

The Cost of Never Stopping

The exhaustion I'm seeing isn't the kind that a holiday break will fix.

Real talk: most people I'm talking to right now are tired in a way that sleep won't touch. It's not about rest. It's about meaning. It's about the slow erosion that happens when you're moving so fast you never look up to ask why.

When you stop moving, things become visible:

The relationships you've been neglecting because you were too busy optimizing. The creative part of yourself that's been dormant for years.

The questions you've been outrunning: What actually matters now? What do I want my life to be about? Who am I when I'm not producing?

These aren't small questions. They're the kind that halt momentum. They're the kind that make you realize you might need to change direction entirely.

And so we don't ask them. We keep moving.

But here's what I see in the coaching sessions: the people who are actually awake to what's happening right now aren't trying to move faster. They're trying to find the courage to stop.

Not to quit. Not to collapse into despair. But to stop long enough to actually see what's in front of them. To let the question work them instead of trying to work the question.

That's where the real disquiet lives. Not in the external chaos. But in the gap between the life we're living and the life we actually want to live.

When you finally stop running, something shifts. Not because you figured anything out. But because you're present to what's actually true.

What If You Just Sat Still?

I'm not going to tell you how to meditate. Not going to prescribe mindfulness or offer you a breathing technique.

Here's what I'm inviting instead:

This week, before the holidays hit full throttle, notice when the urge to move becomes strongest.

Is it in the morning when you wake? Mid-afternoon? Late at night? Notice the feeling in your body. The restlessness. The pull toward something—a message to check, a task to start, a problem to solve.

Then—and this is the part that matters—sit with it for a minute. Not to fix it. Not to meditate it away. Just to notice.

What's underneath the motion? What are you afraid you'll find if you stop?

You don't have to answer. You probably won't even know. But the asking itself changes something. It interrupts the automatic. It cracks open the possibility that motion isn't the only option.

The question I'd offer you to hold over the next couple of weeks:

What would my life look like if I stopped running from this moment and started running toward something that actually matters?

Hold the question. Let it work on you over the break. There's more to discover here—both for me and for you. We'll explore what comes in the new year.

Go well.

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