We’ve been bitten. By a spider.
It started when we went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home before Christmas. Which led us to watch the original Toby Maguire trilogy and we just finished Andrew Garfield’s two films.
My family officially has Spider-Man fever.
No matter the film, I always love the dazzling acrobatic shots of Spidey swinging through the Manhattan landscape. But there’s one move I like that I don’t remember noticing before. Basically, he uses his webs to create a slingshot, and after pulling himself back, propels himself forward in order to quickly cover more ground than usual. It’s a pretty creative – and effective – move.
It got me thinking about how sometimes the best way forward is by taking a few steps back.
I know that we’re at the beginning of a new year, and we’re all supposed to be off to the races, re-energized, and chasing our shiny new goals with abandon. That may be all well and good for everyone else, but maybe that’s not what you need to be doing right now. Maybe this is the time you need to be taking a break. To embrace stillness. To lie fallow.
When singer Lauren Daigle had broken through the barrier of anonymity and was in the midst of a meteoric rise up the charts, she admitted to being burned out from the non-stop touring. At the point when all the experts said she needed to put the pedal to the metal or risk losing all momentum, she told her agent she was taking a year-long break. Far from a death knell for her career, Lauren shared that the year of rest ended up being her best financially, and led to new creative breakthroughs.
In our driven culture, such a bold move goes against the common wisdom to keep on hustlin’. The desire for forward motion is constant. We don’t dare risk losing momentum, let alone consider stopping altogether.
But sometimes we need to be a slingshot.
Indeed, sometimes going backward is the best way forward. A much-needed, well-timed retreat can lead to faster, more explosive progress than the diminishing return approach of keeping your head down and grinding it out day after day.
On a personal note, I came into the final few months of last year burned to a crisp, like a brittle slice of blackened toast. It was a good year, but a busy one, probably filled with too many yeses. I eagerly embraced a fallow period. Taking a time out, I cut my work schedule in half and spent more time walking, thinking, and hanging out with the kids. This deliberate step back has already resulted in more peace, better clarity, and the identification of new opportunities.
Different seasons call for different strategies. If your tank is full and you’re eagerly scaling the next skyscraper in your path, that’s great.
But if your Spidey senses are tingling and you suspect that you might be better served by a break in the action, that’s ok, too.
Be a slingshot.