A couple of years ago, I wrote about the concept of the pendulum. Recently, with everything going on in the world, I revisited that post and realized I didn’t quite say what I meant. So, here I am, taking another shot at it.
The world feels strange right now. In the U.S., we’ve re-elected a president I didn’t think stood a chance. Globally, things don’t seem much better. My social media feed is a never-ending cycle of bad news, each headline met with outrage. Some people seem stuck in a feedback loop of anger, unable to step away—even when a rare piece of good news comes along.
Here’s the thing about the pendulum: when you’re at the bottom, every shift feels like chaos. You’re being yanked back and forth, reacting to every little movement. But when you zoom out—when you move up the pendulum and rise above the swings—you start to see the bigger picture. The patterns. The ebb and flow. The swings don’t feel nearly as nauseating as they do at the bottom.
It’s kind of like the stock market. If you watch it day by day, it’s all volatility and noise. Step back, and the long-term trends become clear. The same goes for life. If we’re always reacting, we stay trapped in the swings. But if we can pull back, even just a little, we might just find the clarity to move forward with wisdom instead of fear.
So how do we do it? How do we move up the pendulum? Silence the noise…turn off the news, tune out social media. I strongly believe what is meant for you will find you. Before there was the man-built algorithm that served for the benefit of the tech gods, there was the universal algorithm that served for your benefit – where likes, comments and emojis have no meaning. It’s the natural rhythm which guided our ancestors before all of the noise that we deal with in our modern day lives.
When we trust that greater rhythm—when we step back from the noise and let the universal algorithm guide us—we move differently. Less reaction, more intention. Less fear, more clarity. And maybe, just maybe, that’s how we begin to rise above the swings.
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