Tag: mental health

Inner Skills for Outer Impact

Posted on by Allan Johnson in intention
Photo by miniperde on Pexels.com

There’s a particular tone to the Easter break that I’ve come to love: the semester recedes just enough for patterns to come into view, and there is a much-needed opportunity to reassess, realign, and prepare again for the next portion of the year.

This year, that pause has felt especially necessary. My partner moved in this week: a joyful, grounding shift, but also one that gently disrupts the rhythms I had sedimented into habit. Shared space recalibrates everything–time, attention, even silence–and it’s a reminder that inner work doesn’t happen in ideal conditions. It happens in situ, in the ongoing negotiation between self and world.

And so I’ve found myself returning—again, deliberately—to the practices that don’t negotiate.

Meditation each morning: nonnegotiable.
The daily Course in Miracles workbook lesson: also nonnegotiable.

Because if there’s one thing I’m increasingly convinced of, it’s this: outer impact without inner skill is unstable. We tend to think of impact in visible terms like outputs, influence, reach. But this is only ever the surface expression of something more subtle: the quality of attention we bring to what we do.

We want clarity, but not the discipline that produces it.
We want flow, but not the boundaries that make it possible.
We want impact, but without interrogating the internal patterns that shape how we show up.

What contemplation actually does—at its best—is interrupt. In my own practice, this often shows up as a kind of deceleration. The day still unfolds, emails still get answered, teaching still happens—but the internal tempo changes. There’s more space between stimulus and response. You begin to notice the scripts.

I wish I could say that this awareness translates seamlessly into behaviour. It doesn’t. There are still days where the meditation feels mechanical. Where the workbook lesson lands flat. Where I move through the day slightly out of sync with myself.

And recently, with the changes at home, that’s been more noticeable. The routines that once held me are being renegotiated. There’s a kind of friction in that—small, but real.

So instead of trying to restore the old rhythm, I’m experimenting with a new one. Shorter meditations on busier mornings. A more intentional transition into the workbook lesson rather than squeezing it in. A willingness to let the practice adapt without losing its core.

The question, then, is how this translates outward. What does contemplation actually do in the world? At one level, it refines attention. And refined attention tends to produce better work—more precise, more thoughtful, less reactive. But at a deeper level, it changes the quality of engagement. You become less invested in being right and more interested in what’s actually true.

In teaching, I’ve noticed this as a shift from delivering content to holding space. The material matters, of course, but what matters more is the field of attention in which that material is encountered.

In coaching, it’s even more pronounced. The most useful thing I can offer isn’t a technique or a framework, but real presence. The ability to sit with someone without immediately trying to fix or reframe. And this is where inner skills become outer impact.

There’s a temptation—especially in creative and professional spaces—to bypass this layer entirely. Then strategy turns into control, output becomes compulsion, and visibility slides into performance.You can observe this, I think, in certain corners of the online world—a kind of frenetic productivity that looks impressive on the surface but carries an undercurrent of exhaustion.

Contemplation offers a counterpoint.

If you’re reading this and recognising something—perhaps a sense that your outer work is slightly outpacing your inner grounding—then this might be a good moment to recalibrate. And if you’d like some structure around that, I’m holding a couple of spaces this April that are designed to support exactly this integration:

And if you’re looking for more personalised support, my 1–1 coaching work is very much oriented around this intersection of inner practice and outer impact, helping you build the internal conditions that make your external goals not just achievable, but sustainable.

The Ethics of Attention: Reading, Writing, and Living in a Distracted Age

Posted on by Allan Johnson in Observations
Photo by Oziel Gu00f3mez on Pexels.com

As I prepare for some very exciting spring workshops and begin working with a new cohort of 1–1 clients, I find myself returning again and again to the question: what kind of attention are we cultivating? And to what ends?

At the same time, I am collaborating with colleagues at the University of Surrey on a research study exploring the relationship between mindfulness and originality. I have designed an 8-week Mindfulness for Originality programme that we are currently trialing, and we will be studying its outcomes over the coming months. The premise is simple but, I think, quietly radical: that sustained, non-reactive attention is not the enemy of creativity but its precondition.

This runs counter to a certain romantic myth of originality as frenzy. But when we examine the intellectual lives of figures like Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, or Virginia Woolf, what we find is not scattered brilliance but disciplined depth. Woolf’s diaries are full of labour—patient, iterative, attentive labour. Originality emerges not from distraction but from fidelity.

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that we have moved from a disciplinary society to an achievement society, in which the violence is internalised. We exhaust ourselves trying to be endlessly responsive. The result is not freedom but fragmentation. In Stolen Focus, Johann Hari traces how economic and technological systems have steadily eroded our capacity for sustained attention, not as an accident but as a business model.

The ethics of attention, then, must reckon with power.

Who profits when we are distracted? Who benefits when we can’t read a long book, hold a complex argument, or sit with a difficult feeling?

Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows made this argument over a decade ago, but the evidence has only intensified. We are training our brains toward interruption. And yet, paradoxically, we long for immersion.

I see this longing in my coaching practice. People do not come to me because they lack ideas. They come because they cannot hold their ideas long enough to deepen them. They skim their own lives.

Reading, in this context, becomes a form of resistance.

To read a demanding text—say, a passage from To the Lighthouse or a dense philosophical argument—is to enact a countercultural choice. It says: I will not be hurried. I will not reduce this to a headline. I will allow complexity to exceed me.

But attention is not only about texts. It is about how we inhabit our own projects.

In the 8-week programme we are trialling at Surrey, one of the early exercises invites participants to notice the precise moment at which they reach for distraction during creative work. Not to judge it. Not to suppress it. Simply to witness it. The findings, even anecdotally, are striking. Original insights tend to arise not in the first burst of enthusiasm but in the stretch just beyond discomfort—when one stays.

There is an ethics here, too. To stay with one’s work is to honour it. To stay with another person is to dignify them. To stay with oneself—especially in the face of uncertainty—is to cultivate integrity.

This is why I am so passionate about the upcoming 5 Days of Creative Abundance workshop (9–13 March, 7.30–8.00 PM GMT, £29).

Yes, it is a practical, energising, five-day immersion into creative flow. Yes, it will give you tools, structure, and momentum. But underneath that, it is an experiment in attention.

For five evenings, we gather. We turn toward what matters. We practise not skimming our own creative impulse.

Abundance, as I understand it, is not accumulation. It is depth. It is the experience of discovering that when you attend properly to one idea, it unfolds. When you give something your full presence, it yields more than you expected.

There is a quiet confidence that arises from this. Not the performative confidence of broadcasting productivity, but the grounded confidence of knowing you can enter and remain in meaningful work.

If you have been feeling scattered, thinly stretched across platforms and obligations, this workshop is designed for you. If you sense that there is more in you—but you can’t quite access it amid the noise—this is for you.

I am intentionally keeping the price accessible (£29) because I want the barrier to entry to be low. But do not mistake accessibility for superficiality. The container will be strong. The invitation will be serious.

You can register here:
https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/313206797/

And if you are ready for more sustained support, my 1–1 coaching work continues alongside these group offerings. In those spaces, we go deeper. We examine not only habits of attention but the attachment patterns and identity narratives that sustain them. We design structures that protect what is most alive in you. It is precise, relational, and tailored.

Attention, I am increasingly convinced, is a form of stewardship.

In an earlier book project, I explored the ethics of mediation in mail-order occultism—how printed texts promised transformation across distance. I am struck now by how similar the stakes feel. Every medium shapes consciousness. The question is whether we use the medium deliberately or allow it to use us.

Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that “the medium is the message” was not a celebration; it was a warning. If our dominant medium fragments attention, then our inner lives will fragment accordingly—unless we intervene.

This intervention need not be dramatic. It begins with small, repeatable acts. Reading ten pages with full presence. Writing one paragraph without checking a phone. Listening to a friend without composing a response.

It also requires community.

One of the reasons I continue to run workshops—even as I refine my focus and prepare for new directions—is that collective attention is amplifying. When we gather around a shared intention, distraction loses some of its grip.

There is something profoundly moving about watching a group of people choose depth together.

In my own life, this season feels like a threshold. New 1–1 clients. Spring workshops taking shape. Research that, I hope, will contribute something meaningful to the conversation about mindfulness and creativity. It is not frenetic expansion. It is intentional cultivation.

And so I return to the ethical question.

What deserves your attention?

Not what clamours for it. Not what monetises it. What deserves it?

Your most original ideas do not shout. They wait. They require a certain stillness before they reveal themselves.

If you would like to practise that stillness—and discover what abundance might mean in your creative life—I would love for you to join me for the 5 Days of Creative Abundance.

Register here:
https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/313206797/

Attention is not merely a mental resource. It is the substance of a life.

And how we give it—what we allow it to shape—may be one of the most consequential ethical decisions we make.

The Way We Live Matters More Than The Way We Think

Posted on by Allan Johnson in habits, Observations

It’s easy to forget that philosophy was never meant to be a spectator sport.

Long before it became something we studied, it was something people did. Philosophy began as a way of arranging a day, training attention, shaping character, and orienting oneself toward what mattered in life. It didn’t live in texts, but in habits: how one woke, walked, ate, spoke, listened, and rested.

In other words, philosophy was practical.

This has been on my mind a lot recently, perhaps unsurprisingly. I’ve just come to the end of my sabbatical and I’m now taking on responsibility for running the MA in English Literature and the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Surrey. This transition made me acutely aware of how much of our thinking is shaped not by what we claim to believe, but by what we repeatedly do.

One of the great misunderstandings of modern intellectual life is the assumption that clarity comes first, and practice follows: if only we had the right theory, the right worldview, the right explanation, then our lives would fall into place.

But lived experience tends to run the other way around.

As Pierre Hadot points out in Philosophy as a Way of Life, ancient philosophy was grounded in spiritual exercises, that is, concrete practices designed to transform perception and conduct. Stoicism wasn’t a set of ideas about fate or reason; it was a disciplined training of attention. Epicureanism wasn’t a theory of pleasure, but a daily practice of simplicity, friendship, and fear reduction. Even Plato’s dialogues, for all their abstraction, were designed to do something to the reader: to unsettle, provoke, and reorient.

Closer to our own time, thinkers as varied as Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and Michel de Certeau have reminded us that attention, habit, and repetition shape the moral and imaginative texture of a life long before explicit reflection enters the scene. We do not first decide what matters and then act accordingly; rather, what we attend to, rehearse, and ritualise slowly teaches us what matters.

This is why everyday rituals are philosophical, whether we acknowledge them as such or not.

By “rituals,” I don’t mean anything grand or mystical—though they can be. I mean the small, repeated actions that quietly structure our inner lives: how we begin the morning, how we transition into work, how we respond to resistance, how we close a day. These acts rarely feel important, but they are formative.

A life without intentional ritual isn’t neutral; it is simply shaped by default rituals of the world outside: algorithms, inboxes, urgency, comparison, and distraction.

During my sabbatical, this became unavoidably clear. Writing a book is less an act of inspiration than one of sustained fidelity: returning to the page when enthusiasm fades, when doubts arise, when the work resists being done. What carried me through wasn’t motivation, but a set of simple, repeatable practices and routines that made thinking possible at all. A system.

This is where much contemporary advice culture goes astray. We are encouraged to optimise outputs while leaving the deeper structure of our lives untouched. But philosophy—real philosophy—asks a more demanding question: What kind of person is this way of living making me into?

This is also why I’m increasingly wary of purely instrumental approaches to creativity. Writing, thinking, and teaching are not just tasks to be managed; they are forms of life. How we organise our time, relate to resistance, and hold ourselves in periods of uncertainty is not secondary to the work—it is the work.

Much of my recent teaching, coaching, and writing has been circling this insight from different angles: that sustainable creativity requires a different relationship to time, effort, and selfhood than the one most of us have inherited.

This integrative dimension is central to my current work, including the practices I’ll be sharing in upcoming sessions. Whether through meditation, reflective co-working, or rethinking how we organise creative labour, the aim is the same: to help people cultivate forms of attention that make meaningful work—and a more humane life—possible.

If this resonates, you might be interested in the following upcoming offerings:

Integrative Meditation
2 February | 7.30–8.30 PM GMT | £4
A guided session focused on attention, integration, and gentle inner alignment.
Register here:
https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/312077761/

Creative Flow Co-Working Session: Reframing Resistance
9 February | 10 AM–12 PM GMT | FREE
A shared, reflective working space for engaging resistance as information rather than failure.
Register here:
https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/312151261/

Beyond Time Management: A More Natural Way to Organise Creative Work
24 February | 7.30–9.00 PM GMT | £12
An exploration of rhythms, seasons, and structures for sustained creative practice.
Register here:
https://www.meetup.com/the-art-of-creative-practice/events/313062163/

Perhaps the most important thing philosophy can do for us now is remind us that a life is not shaped primarily by what we profess, but by what we practice. Everyday rituals—chosen with care—become a quiet form of resistance against fragmentation, haste, and superficiality.

And in a culture saturated with noise and abstraction, this return to lived, embodied wisdom may be one of the most radical gestures still available to us.

How to Carry Inner Stillness into Outer Action

Posted on by Allan Johnson in Observations
Photo by Aron Visuals on Pexels.com

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the word ‘equinamity’: what it really means, why we use it so infrequently, and how we can translate the inner stillness of equinamity into outer action.

It’s an old question, of course. The contemplative traditions are full of cautions against mistaking withdrawal for wisdom, or serenity for disengagement. And yet, in many contemporary spiritual and creative cultures, stillness is subtly framed as an end in itself, or something to be achieved, protected, even defended against the messiness of life.

My own experience suggests something more demanding, and ultimately more generous: stillness is not a place we go, but a quality we carry. Its real test is not how calm we feel on the cushion, but how we move when the world asks something of us.

Equanimity is often misunderstood as emotional neutrality or the ability to remain unruffled, untouched. But in its deeper sense (and here the Stoics, Buddhist psychology, and contemporary contemplative science quietly agree), equanimity is not about less feeling. It’s about more capacity. As William James observed in The Varieties of Religious Experience, maturity of spirit does not erase emotion; it reorganises it. Similarly, in Buddhist psychology, upekkhā (equanimity) is not indifference but balance—the ability to stay present without being commandeered by reactivity.

What matters, then, is not whether we feel disturbance, but whether disturbance determines our next move.

This distinction has felt particularly alive to me recently as I return to university teaching after a sabbatical and time away from campus to focus on my thinking and writing. Much of that time was spent working on my latest book, a project that demanded long stretches of solitude, patience, and sustained inward listening. Sabbaticals are often imagined as pauses from “real work,” but for me this one clarified something essential: inner stillness only becomes trustworthy when it is tested by responsibility.

There is a moment in many contemplative narratives that matters more than the awakening itself: the return. The Buddha leaves the Bodhi tree. Dante descends the mountain of Purgatory. The mystic goes back to the village.

For me, that return has taken the form of stepping into a new academic role at my university, taking over the MA programmes in English Literature and Creative Writing. I feel a genuine sense of excitement about this transition because it asks for a different quality of presence.

Teaching, at its best, is a relational practice. It requires attunement, adaptability, and a willingness to meet uncertainty without control. In that sense, it is one of the most honest laboratories for equanimity I know. You cannot curate the room. You cannot pre-empt every emotional current. You can only show up with clarity, boundaries, and a willingness to respond rather than react.

In my coaching and teaching work, I often encounter the fear that: If I slow down, I’ll lose momentum. If I soften, I’ll stop functioning. But stillness, when cultivated well, does not reduce effectiveness but it refines it.

Contemporary neuroscience supports this. Practices that strengthen interoceptive awareness and emotional regulation do not dampen motivation; they improve decision-making under pressure. This is where equanimity becomes practical. It shows up as:

  • the ability to pause before replying to a difficult email
  • the capacity to hold creative uncertainty without collapsing into self-judgement
  • the willingness to set boundaries without aggression or apology

These are not abstract ideals. They are trainable skills—and they matter enormously for creatives, academics, and highly sensitive people navigating complex systems.

Writers and artists, in particular, are vulnerable to confusing intensity with truth. We can mistake emotional activation for insight, urgency for necessity. Yet some of the most durable work I know emerges from a place of deep inner steadiness. Equanimity allows us to stay with the work long enough for it to become true, not just expressive.

This insight informs much of what I explore in my current writing and teaching: how attachment dynamics, attention, and inner regulation shape not only what we create, but how we live alongside our creations. Creative formation, like spiritual formation, is less about transcendence than about reliability—becoming someone who can be trusted with complexity.

If stillness is to move with us, it must be practiced in motion. This is why I’m increasingly interested in integrative approaches that bridge meditation, creative rhythm, and everyday action.

Over the coming weeks, I’m hosting a small number of workshops through The Art of Creative Practice that explore exactly this terrain:

For those seeking more sustained, individual support, my 1-1 creativity coaching spaces are currently fully booked until March. If you’d like to join the waiting list, you’re very welcome to get in touch at allan_johnson@mac.com.

Equanimity is not a spiritual personality trait. It is a practice of continuity: learning how to carry what we touch in silence into the noise of relationship, work, and responsibility.

As I step back into the classroom, into institutional life, and into new forms of creative leadership, I’m reminded that the real measure of stillness is not how protected it feels—but how generously it participates.

Stillness that cannot move will eventually calcify. But stillness that walks with us becomes wisdom.

And wisdom, as ever, is something we learn in company.

Four Dimensions of Stillness for Creatives

Posted on by Allan Johnson in Observations

Living in a city like London trains the nervous system in a particular way. Even when we love urban life—its density, its cultural richness, its chance encounters—it asks us to metabolise a constant low-level stimulation: noise, movement, decision-making, comparison.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about this more deliberately. I’ve recently moved into a flat in a beautiful 1920s building. It’s filled with heaps of character, and I know that I’ll be very happy here, but it’s also a significant change.I’ve spent the past decade living in new-build flats, the kind with sleek appliances, underfloor heating, and a comforting sameness to all the others. But my new flat, even before my furniture was moved in and the boxes filled every spare corner, was noticeably maximalist: crown moulding, dado rails, radiators, and, perhaps most notably, the constant sounds of neighbours on all sides.

This move has coincided with a renewed reflection on minimalism as a practice of attention, that is less about owning fewer objects (though that can help), and more about creating pockets of stillness within environments that are, by default, overstimulating.

Minimalism has been thoroughly Instagrammed. White walls, pale wood, a single ceramic cup placed just so. There is nothing wrong with this, but it risks missing the deeper point. And my old flat was certainly minimalist in the aesthetic sense.

Writers like Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism and Jenny Odell in How to Do Nothing have both argued, in different ways, that minimalism is not about subtraction for its own sake, but about protecting what matters in a culture designed to fragment attention. Similarly, the Japanese concept of ma—often translated as ‘negative space’—suggests that meaning arises not from what is present alone, but from the intervals of emptiness around it that give it shape.

Big cities are where this discernment is most tested. Urban life rewards responsiveness: quick replies, constant availability, social agility. For many creatives and sensitive thinkers, this can become exhausting. We learn to override subtle signals—fatigue, saturation, the need for withdrawal—because the environment rarely validates them.

Over the years—through my own practice, teaching, and coaching—I’ve noticed that these pockets of stillness tend to form around four dimensions:

  • Spatial stillness: a chair by a window, a desk cleared of visual noise, a room that signals ‘nothing is required of you here.’
  • Temporal stillness: protected times in the week that are not optimised, monetised, or rushed.
  • Relational stillness: fewer, deeper conversations; rhythms of contact that don’t require constant performance.
  • Inner stillness: practices that allow attention to settle without forcing it: meditation, journalling, slow reading.

One theme that runs through my recent work is the idea that many creatives are finely tuned. They notice more. They process more. They feel more. Without the right structures, this depth becomes a liability. This is why I resist advice that tells people simply to “push through” or “build resilience.” Resilience matters, but so do the structures of support and nurturance around you.

A few practical reflections that may be useful:

  • Reduce friction at points of transition. The moments between activities are where overstimulation accumulates. Even five minutes of pause between tasks can change the tone of a day.
  • Let one room be functionally “unproductive.” A space that is not for work, storage, or optimisation becomes a psychological refuge.
  • Limit inputs before increasing outputs. Reading less, scrolling less, listening less can paradoxically make creative work richer.
  • Choose rhythms over goals. A daily walk, a weekly reflective session, a regular co-working rhythm—these stabilise attention over time.

None of this requires perfection. It requires kindness toward your own nervous system.

If this resonates, there are several ways to explore these ideas in a supported, communal way over the coming weeks.

For those wanting more personalised support, I also offer 1-1 coaching, focused on helping creatives and thinkers build sustainable structures for meaningful work and life. You’re welcome to book a free 15-minute clarity call here: https://allanjohnson.co.uk/coaching/

Pockets of stillness don’t remove us from life; they allow us to participate more fully, with less quiet self-erasure. In a culture that rewards constant motion, stillness becomes a form of discernment. And discernment, I increasingly believe, is one of the most important creative capacities we have.

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