Play With Synchronicity

My best work happens when I am in a state of playful curiosity.

I was chatting with someone recently who told me he does his best work when there is a deadline. When something has to get done, he moves. There is a simplicity to that way of working that I understand. A deadline creates urgency, urgency creates action, and action creates a result. There is something reassuring about knowing exactly what needs to happen and when it needs to happen, particularly when you are building a business where there is always another decision waiting to be made.

He asked if I was the same.

“No.”

It isn't that I can't operate that way. Give me a deadline and I can move quickly. If something needs to happen, I can make it happen. But pressure isn't where my best work comes from, and neither is giving myself an infinite amount of time. My best work tends to happen somewhere in between, when I become curious enough to play with my bestie, Synchronicity.

I like having a direction without needing to know every step. I like taking an idea somewhere simply because it interests me, following a thought before I know whether it will become anything, and making a move without needing the next ten moves mapped out. There is a different quality to the work when I am in that state. I am still focused. I am still ambitious. I am still working towards something very specific. But I am not gripping the outcome so tightly that I leave no room for anything unexpected to enter.

That is usually when synchronicity arrives, or sometimes she arrives just before it, pulling me into that state. The fun part is that you never know when she'll turn up.

I have come to think of her as the other player on the tennis court. I hit the ball, and then I pay attention to what comes back.

There is a practical side to building anything meaningful, and I don't think synchronicity replaces it. Business needs logic. There are numbers to understand, offers to build, conversations to have, systems to put in place and goals that require consistent action. There are times when A + B = C is exactly what you need. When I don't see anything particularly synchronistic happening, I don't stop and wait for a sign. I keep moving towards the goal. I make the call, I place the advertisement, put the offer out, have the conversation and keep showing up.

Logic gives you somewhere to put your feet.

But there comes a point where the work becomes less about following a formula and more about paying attention to what is happening around you. That is where it gets interesting for me, because synchronicity isn't really about one thing causing another. In fact, what I love most about it is that the two things often have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I can do something over here and something completely unrelated can happen over there. There is no obvious connection between the two, and yet the timing, the feeling or the circumstances create a sense of alignment that I can't quite explain through logic.

Synchronicity is simply something I notice. And noticing changes the way I experience what I am doing.

Right before I hit my $50K milestone in 30 days, I won a meat raffle at a local race day.

There was absolutely no connection between winning a meat raffle and reaching $50K in my business. The raffle didn't cause the sales. The sales didn't cause the raffle. There was no strategic relationship between the two whatsoever. I hadn't won a meat raffle in years, and I hadn't even been somewhere to buy a ticket in years. Yet there I was, suddenly standing there with the meat tray prize.

It made me laugh.

The last time I remember winning one was in my early twenties, during that wonderfully invincible chapter of life when you assume good things are going to happen because, well, why wouldn't they? There was something about winning it again that brought that feeling back for a moment. Not because a bag of meat had anything to do with my business, but because I felt that lucky charm energy.

It was an “I've still got it” kind of vibe, and that gave me a playful confidence within myself to put my foot down in business even more.

Then the numbers started appearing. 11:11. 3:33. 12:12. They would keep showing up on my phone and in other places repeatedly enough for me to notice, and eventually the kids started noticing them too. I don't need to know whether there is some greater significance attached to those numbers. What interests me is what happened inside me when I saw them. They created a little spark of curiosity. They made me smile. They gave me another reason to stay in the game and keep moving towards what I had decided I wanted.

None of those things created the $50K.

I did the work. What it did do was lift my energy and change the way I was approaching the goal.

I had the conversations. I made the decisions. I kept showing up. I continued moving towards the number I had set for myself. But the experience of doing it had changed. It wasn't only about getting somewhere anymore. I was curious about what might happen next.

Synchronicity makes the process playful, and play is a very different state from pressure.

When I am playing, I am still serious about what I am doing, but I am not taking every moment as evidence of whether I am succeeding or failing. I am experimenting. I am noticing. I am responding. I am allowing myself to be interested in what unfolds rather than insisting that everything must immediately make sense.

That creates space for intuition.

I think this matters particularly when you are building a business or a life that isn't designed around somebody else's definition of success. We are taught to make decisions from evidence, and rightly so. What is the logical next step? What is the proven strategy? What did someone else do? What is the safest option? Who are we expected to answer to? There is no shortage of people willing to give you the answers.

But there is another layer of information that doesn't always make it into the business conversation.

What are you noticing? What keeps catching your attention? What are you curious about? What feels interesting enough to follow, even before you know where it will lead?

That doesn't mean abandoning strategy for intuition. I actually think the opposite is true. The stronger the foundation underneath you, the more room you have to listen to what sits beyond the plan.

Vision gives you direction. Intuition gives you information about how you might move towards it.

And synchronicity, for me, is one of the things that makes me curious enough to listen and play.

Before I hit $100K in 30 days, synchronicity started showing up again.

Starlink sent me a free portable satellite that I could switch on when I wanted it and turn off when I wasn't using it. It was completely unrelated to my business. I hadn't set it up as some symbolic representation of anything. It was simply one of those unexpected things that arrived in my life.

I'm actually camping with the kids and family while writing this, using it. The kids thought it was great because on the last two camping trips, we adults had been talking about getting one and wondering whether it was worth it.

Again, there was no logical connection between a portable satellite and a business milestone. But the timing made me smile.

On one of the days, my eldest called me over to his ipad, because he wanted my luck to get what he wanted in one of the games he was playing. I didn't know what he wanted me to do and so I said "Imagine if we got...." and then he got it. We both starred at each other in disbelief, laughed and with total acceptance because he got what he wanted.

A local masters tennis competition fell the weekend before my 30 days to create this milestone. It was perfect, because tennis is a way I disconnect from everything, yet is also where my best ideas and energy comes from. I won the women's 40+ singles. Here was a medal. Not related to business, but another win to raise my energy.

The numbers started appearing again. Then came the final two sales that took me over the line. One text arrived at 5:55 and the other was a phone call telling me the final money to tip me over the $100K mark had been transferred.

I don't want to hand my agency over to synchronicity. I don't want to sit around waiting for a number on my phone or a coincidence in my day to tell me whether I should take action. That isn't how I run my business, and it isn't how I want to live my life.

I want to do the work and then remain open to what happens around it.

You can be intentional without being controlling.

Intentionality says, I know what I am moving towards, and I am willing to move. Control says, I need to know exactly how I am going to get there. That can make the journey unnecessarily heavy.

Building an online business has taught me that I deserve both structure and spaciousness. I deserve goals, strategy, numbers and discipline. I also deserve enough room to notice when something unexpected appears. I deserve to be able to follow an idea that wasn't on the original plan. I deserve to let curiosity have a seat at the table.

Because sometimes synchronicity shows up around a milestone, and sometimes she shows up simply to play. Simply to make the journey towards your vision fun. My son came up to me while writing this and said, "I just won UNO with 3 x 7's".

A conversation arrives at exactly the right time. An idea appears while you're doing something completely unrelated. You think about someone and they call. You come across a piece of information that answers something you had been quietly wondering about. A door opens that you hadn't been looking for.

Here's the other thing. If you're needing her to show up, looking for her or expecting her, she doesn't come. You can't force synchronicity. She is her own source of playful energy.

When I allow myself to play with synchronicity, I become more curious about what might happen next. And curiosity changes the quality of my decisions. What happens if I do this? What happens if I follow that? What happens if I stay with this idea a little longer?

It turns business into a game rather than a checklist. I move. Something moves back, or doesn't. I notice. I respond. I keep moving.

That is part of what emotional wealth means to me. It isn't having everything figured out or needing certainty before taking the next step. It is having enough internal space to notice what is happening while I am busy building what I want.

I can work towards something with conviction without becoming so attached to the route that I miss the unexpected turns. I can trust strategy without requiring strategy to explain everything. I can use logic without asking logic to account for every interesting thing that happens along the way.

It's freeing to know where I am going, to be willing to do the work to get there, and to remain curious about what might meet me on the way.

That is how I want to build my business. It is how I want to lead, and it is increasingly how I want to live. With enough intention to create movement, enough discipline to keep going, and enough spaciousness to notice when life decides to play back.

Because when synchronicity walks onto the court, I don't need her to prove anything. I just want to see what happens when I hit the ball and play.

xx

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