Rushing vs. Rhythm

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel
Welcome to. The Get Emergent podcast. This is where we like to discuss ideas and issues related to leadership, team and organizational development. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and your leadership. And we hope that you’ll find some better practices to apply in your work. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone
And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel: So, Ralph today’s topic we’d like to talk about rushing versus rhythm. This idea of going too fast or pushing too hard, not being in flow. Desired state, obviously, rhythm being in flow. Yeah.

Ralph Simone
Yeah. I think my tendency, by the way, is to rush.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, me too.

Ralph Simone
And so I think this spoke to me from a book I was reading, Ellen Tadd, who wrote the book the infinite View. And I want to share what she wrote, because I think this sets up the rest of the conversation that we’ll have on the podcast. So she described rushing as an internal sense of pushing, and these words are pretty important. That causes stress and strain. As I reflected on that, you can actually see it in people’s faces and in their body language when they’re almost working too hard.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely.

Ralph Simone
And she contrasted it with rhythm, which she said emphasizes balance, and went on to say that we can move quickly or slowly. I’ll, say that again. We can move quickly or slowly, depending on what is called for. Simultaneously maintaining the feeling of equilibrium and flow. I just love how she put that.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, that is beautiful. And it creates some images for me. I picture maybe your kids played in band or orchestra. If you’ve gone to level and there’s, you know, they’re at the right level they’re at. And it’s not always the best piece of music being played, but you see one or two kids, like, really speeding up to catch up or trying to be in front, and you can see the stress or the strain on that little child’s face, on their posture, in their chair, if they’re sitting right, whatever instrument they’re playing, I immediately got that right, like, the stress and the strain that could be there by not being in rhythm.

Ralph Simone
Unfortunately, today, I think I was in rhythm while crossing the street, as opposed to rushing, because I probably cut it too close, was crossing when traffic was. And it appeared to me, I’m sure this didn’t happen, that the guy was speeding up, and I didn’t panic, I didn’t rush, I didn’t stress, and I fortunately made it across the street. But when you’re in rhythm, as she points out, you can move quickly or slowly, depending what is called for in the moment. And, you know, when I first adopted the mantra slow down to go faster, which became, one of our TEDx talks, it’s the title of my book that hopefully comes out in, either this year or 2025, that really hit me, because I found that when I don’t perform as well as I could, it’s because I’m too fast.

Bill Berthel: Yes, yes. And it’s too fast relative to what’s needed.

Ralph Simone
in the moment. Well, they talk about a golf swing. When the rhythm of a good golf swing, the tempo, that’s really, critical to hitting the ball squarely.

Bill Berthel: So it’s rushing relative to what’s needed at that moment.

Ralph Simone
Yes. And I think that we rush too often, and part of it is. I mean, you brought up the music example earlier. Right. It’s the space between the notes.

Bill Berthel: Yes.

Ralph Simone
That creates the melody, that creates the music. And when we’re too fast or when we take up that space because we’re rushing, it doesn’t sound as good. It’s not in rhythm. And I think we all need these constant reminders to find the rhythm so that we can adjust speed up or slow down, depending, as you pointed out, what’s needed in the moment.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. And I think we have the, concern that in that lack of flow or lack of rhythm, it’s not just looking clunky, but we might be missing others in that we might be missing ourselves. We’re probably not at our best. It’s not going to not just flow well. We’re really going to miss a. Like, let’s take in conversation or in communication. We’re not going to connect very well if it’s not in rhythm.

Ralph Simone
Absolutely. When we talk about our work with leadership, development or emotional intelligence, talk about know self, know others know the situation. And in order to kind of take all three of those into consideration, I think we have to be in some type of rhythm.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely.

Ralph Simone
Now, in an emergency situation, the pace picks up a little quicker. Right. We do need to pick it up. It was interesting to me because I think I’ve joked with you, and we have talked about this on a podcast. In another lifetime, I think I was late often, and so I have some issues with being late. I actually probably have some issues with other people being late. But being late, in and of itself isn’t a measure of imbalance. Deviating from a schedule may be an attuned conscious choice.

Bill Berthel: Yes. Yes.

Ralph Simone
So when we’re in rhythm, we can identify that something else may warrant our focus and our attention in this moment. And I think that’s the other advantage of rhythm versus rushing.

Bill Berthel: I think you’re absolutely right. I think what it is about being late for many people, including me, is that we forget that we’re only late for that one moment.

Ralph Simone
Exactly.

Bill Berthel: But we keep that moment going energetically. That keeps us out of rhythm, that keeps us clunky. Right. Where if we gave ourselves the grace to recognize I was only late for that moment, we could get back in rhythm.

Ralph Simone
So this is an example of you teach what you need to learn. So I actually wrote a blog that talked about you’re only late for one moment for two reasons. One, I find myself rushing when I thought I was going to be late. Consequently, in some instances, getting speeding tickets or the other thing you said, which I think is maybe more equally important, is not being present, because I felt bad for being late. Well after the initial apology. And so, to your point, never getting into the rhythm and the flow of the conversation that was presenting itself.

Bill Berthel: So what do we need to do in those moments, or maybe before those moments, to be proactive, to get either more aware of our rhythm or our rushing or what are the signposts along the way? How can we know?

Ralph Simone
Well, I think this is interesting, and I think part of somatic, work, part of mindfulness, part of tuning into yourself is really paying attention to how you feel.

Bill Berthel: Yeah.

Ralph Simone
When you make choices throughout your day, throughout the week, and, you know, pay attention to. Because when you’re in rhythm and flow, you feel aligned, you feel at ease, or do you feel like you’re either holding back, right, out of rhythm, out of flow, or pushing too quickly or too hard. So I think just tuning into yourself and paying attention to how you feel in those moments is a way to do it.

Bill Berthel: That’s kind of interesting that you said holding back or pushing. I was really thinking about the pushing, you know, the rushing part of being out of rhythm. Right. But there’s a holding back. Maybe there’s a pensiveness, or being pent up a little bit about something. Yeah, that’s interesting.

Ralph Simone
You can go too slow. Remember when we came back to how Ellen Tadd author of the Infinite View, described rhythm, we can move more quickly or slowly, depending on. But holding back is moving too slowly.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Ralph Simone
And we’re out of rhythm, we’re out of sync. Or we could be way ahead of people. I always get a kick out of. I’ve worked with some really fast, smart, quick processing leaders who say one of their biggest challenges is they just process so much faster than everybody else. I said, so what are you doing to get in rhythm with them? You know, it’s not always about. Right. It’s up shifting and downshifting. Right. Which is how you get a car in rhythm. Right. When you drive a manual transmission.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. Yeah. Let the clutch out too quickly, and, you’re out of rhythm.

Ralph Simone
And so what is your personal indicator of rpms? Right. What is your. And so really paying attention to that, because what we do know, Bill, is when we rush or get too fast with anything, it usually does not work out as well.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Ralph Simone
And I think the same can be said when we hold back, because people don’t have the benefit of our perspective. So both are important.

Bill Berthel: Yeah. I’m, very conscious about rushing. A space I think I do this really well, is in my woodworking shop, because I know that there’s a safety component attached to not rushing. I don’t always think about it as rhythm. I like that. But it’s really about not rushing. It’s about being really aware, because, I mean, you’re dealing with sharp tools, and that could be very dangerous. I think I do it really well there. Really funny,  I play guitar. I do it really poorly there. I just don’t have the rhythm I’d like to have when I play guitar. And so I’ve been using technology. I found this app that allows me. It’s actually really intelligent. It hears the notes I’m playing while I’m reading the music, and it actually starts flashing, telling me I’m going too fast. I’m always going too fast and playing my music.

Ralph Simone
So you use the technology to observe yourself and to give you feedback on your pace or rhythm.

Bill Berthel: That’s exactly it,

Ralph Simone
Which is what mindfulness practices can do, for us. But I do want to cycle back to the woodshop for a minute, So, because safety is of paramount importance. But let’s talk about psychological safety.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely.

Ralph Simone
So when we’re in a meeting and if we’re going too fast and we’re rushing, we could make it unsafe, which could cause people to hold back.

Bill Berthel: Sure.

Ralph Simone
I like the idea of the safety. What rhythm do we have to be in to make it safe for people to fully engage?

Bill Berthel: I think at times is slowing the meeting down or slowing the conversation down. I think sometimes that is setting the stage for other people’s voice. Right. Inviting them in so they, too, can contribute their voice. Leave that pause. Maybe that’s a strategic pause in a way for people to enter.

Ralph Simone
I don’t think we call timeouts enough in the corporate world. And one of the things that when a game is getting away from, a football or basketball coach, it’s going too fast. They’ll call a timeout, they’ll reset. And I think we need to have that at our disposal. You know, we talk about taking strategic pauses, but what’s the use of a timeout in a meeting, you know, using breath work just to kind of slow ourselves down and get into the. Or speed ourselves up, depending on the pace of the thing that we are engaged in?

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. The breath work could be a way to just slow ourselves down. I think about just changing my environment sometimes, right. Whether it’s getting up. And moving, whether it’s taking a walk outside that can kind of reset. It can get me back into rhythm often, especially if I’m rushing through my work or I find this when I’m writing, I have the ideas, they’re all rushing in. It’s not that I want to get to the end of the page, but it’s almost like I need a reset. And so I’ll often just. I’ll take a walk outside. That’ll do it.

Ralph Simone
There’s more of a natural rhythm outside often than inside. And I do like this. I think we probably use the word flow because flow and rhythm, I think, could be used interchangeably. Flow does not necessarily mean slow, but it seems like it’s slowed down. But it may look to. the eye very quick. And so there’s a subtlety around the words we’re using. It’s really a lot about how you feel and the impact it has with those things that you are relating with.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, absolutely. I think in that flow state, we become less aware of time in a helpful way. We’re not feeling rushed. We’re also not feeling slow. It’s almost like time goes into the background.

Ralph Simone
Yes. And so one of the. There’s a couple things I’ve done over the years, because I think I can be overly time conscious.

Bill Berthel: Yes.

Ralph Simone
Which then influences either this rushing or holding back. So if I’m in a meeting, I think we’ve gone too long and I have something important to say, but I don’t want to prolong it, I may hold back. So I have this one statement that I use. I have all the time I need to work on what’s important.

Ralph Simone
I have all the time I need to work on what’s important, which really helps me to kind of just find that rhythm. Find that rhythm. It’s really kind of a powerful technique. And the other thing that I’ve done, although I’m back to wearing them again, I stopped wearing watches for a long time so that I wasn’t. And I found this in a coaching meeting, I would be too cognizant of we’re coming up to. The end, and then I would rush it or I would be less present.

Bill Berthel: Yeah.

Ralph Simone
And so, you know, you actually can tell pretty good time, by the way, without a clock.

Bill Berthel: Yes.

Ralph Simone
Which is more of the natural rhythm. Right.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Ralph Simone
Rhythms of the seasons. And so I think there’s this really struck with me. I really wanted to share this with a broader audience because I think, you know, replacing rushing with finding that right rhythm is powerful for leaders. It’s powerful for anybody who is engaged in the game of life.

Bill Berthel: Ralph I love it. Thanks for bringing this topic to us.

Ralph Simone
Appreciate it. Thanks, Bill.

Bill Berthel: And thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can listen to a new podcast two times every month here at Get Emergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you pick something up, you’re going to apply to your leadership and your work. Let us know how that goes by reaching out to support@getemergent.com or directly to me, Bill Berthel, or Ralph Simone. Thank you.