Wrenches – what to do when they get thrown in…

06 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by in managing time, managing worry, resistance

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Wrenches.  Unexpected events or occurrences that get tossed into the machinery of life.  As in, “Well, that really put a wrench in it!”

What do we do when we start our day all ready for productivity and greatness and then find a wrench stuck in the machine?

I think my answer is to watch for distortion.  I was going to write about distortion anyway today, and then the universe provided me with a giant unexpected wrench.  Here’s what happened.

My bicycle was stolen.  Yes, that cute one on the right that I just took on a Fourth of July picnic with my honey.  That one.  It was stolen while locked up on an extremely busy street in the French Quarter in broad daylight.  (Oh how I hate to tell you this, because I love my city and I don’t want you to think ill of it.)  I haven’t given much thought to who did it or how – in fact I’m strangely unable to wish the thief or thieves ill.  I hope somehow that something shifts in a positive way for them- some kind of change or lesson.  But that is not my business. I don’t know their story and I never will.

So I ironically asked myself, “What’s perfect about this?”  Not a whole heck of a lot. First I just felt disoriented and kind of stupid.  Was I sure that’s where I’d parked it? Was that the light post I’d attached it to?  Then I just felt crappy. And I allowed myself to feel crappy – I even shed a brief tear of frustration and general ickiness. A little bit of “poor me.” But I stuck with my plans and had a lovely lunch with a friend who was able to pick me up and drive me home too.  I had a bag full of goodies from LUSH that I’ll be sharing with my retreat participants. (By the way, there’s still room in the retreat if you want to check it out!) I wasn’t missing anything except the bike.

I wish this story ended like the wallet story, with me turning the corner and forgetting I’d parked the bike in a completely different place, but alas, that’s not the case.  However, when I got home, my sweetheart hugged me and said, “I’m so sorry this happened to you.  You need a bike – let’s go get you a new one tomorrow.” And we can do that.  We have enough money.  We have enough and more than enough, of everything.

So what about distortion? Well I find that my mind can sometimes go into distortion mode.  Sky is falling mode.  Interestingly, my mind is generally better in the face of minor tragedies like petty theft.  My mind’s preferred subject of distortion is in day to day dealings.  It likes to distort how long something’s going to take, or how hopeless everything’s going to be if I’ve missed one day of a habit I’m trying to take up.

So next time you’re dealing with a major or minor wrench in your plans, watch your mind.  Is it going into distortion mode?  Is it whipping up a giant story about how awful everything is or is going to be?  Ask yourself if you need to believe your mind, or just look around at the actual circumstances, and deal with them in the best way you know how.

 

Tricky brain and grass time

05 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by in managing time, resistance

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Ok, it’s been four days and I’ve been listening closely to what kinds of little bon mots my brain tosses out there while I’m trying to get things done, stick to my plan and do my work.  If you’re just arriving at this post without the background, you might want to begin here:

This is what I’ve been hearing.  Prepare yourself – it’s not pretty:

“You know, there’s too much to do.  Even if you worked all day, you’ll never be done. And then you’ll just be working all the time.  Yuck to that!”

“Being efficient is soul sucking.  It’s only for boring people who don’t have a rich inner life.  Too much neatness is sterile and the sign of an empty mind.”

“It’s too hard.  You don’t have what it takes.  Give up.”

“There are too many steps!  Aaaah!  We don’t know what to do!”

“Oh, see – that didn’t work.  You totally don’t know anything about websites.”

“Well- you missed doing your ten minute thing on the Fourth of July.  You’ll never catch up now. Might as well just avoid everything for another week.”

“Wait until Wednesday.
Wait until Thursday.
Wait until tomorrow.
Wait until after lunch.
Wait until tonight.
Wait until Monday.”

“Oh my god.  Look at that list of things you want to write/change/create/tweak.  It’s a mile long.  You’ll never get all that done in time.”

“It’s too late. Too late, I tell you!”

“Zzzzzzzzzz.”

Ah, yes.  My helpful mind!  Despite its cries, I got some stuff done.  I stuck with my ten minutes per day of working on my last little pile (I doubled up today since I didn’t do it yesterday.  It’s smaller.  My space is in order, overall.

But, there’s stuff on the list that I was really planning to work on.  It’s bigger stuff, with multiple steps, and I avoided it.  Here’s why.  Everything I’ve done so far to help myself be more productive is rational and ought to work, but it doesn’t completely, just like when people try to lose weight with very reasonable rational diets, and their bodies freak out on them.  My brain is in rebellion mode.  Sabotage mode.  It doesn’t trust that I’m not going to become an all work, no play kind of girl.  It remembers how tired we used to be when I was working all the time. It’s panicked.  It’s resisting any form of discipline.  And my body’s not helping much either.  It just wants to sleep.  A lot.  Whether I go to bed early or late.

If my brain and body feel deprived by my time management and task organization “plan”, they’re going to fight me.  I need a new tool.  As Martha Beck says, I just need to get my brain and body to “join up” with me, much like a horse will follow the lead mare in its herd. And that won’t happen when we’re in “famine” mode, and all my brain sees are rules about how we’re going to spend our time and what we “can’t” do, making my body anxious, fidgety and just plain tired.

Because when I’m not relaxed about how my day’s going to go, when I’m gritting my teeth or dreading what I’ve put on my to do list, I’m not particularly productive.  Sure, I can force it and just work anyway, but I’ll pay later with that sense from my body and mind that I’m not to be trusted, that this isn’t going well, and next time we might as well just go to sleep.

So, how do I get relaxed and get my body and mind to trust that all will be well – that we don’t need to go into avoidance napping mode?  By giving them what they want- a safe place to not have to do anything.  I call it “grass time”. Ten minutes of quiet out in the grass, with the cats if they happen to be around.  And a couple of mantras – these borrowed or adapted from from Martha Beck’s Four Day Win:

“Everything is OK.”
“I don’t have do do anything at all for the next ten minutes.”
“In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what I get done today.  It’s much more important to be kind than to check things off the to do list.  I’ll start by being kind to myself.”
“If I never changed anything at all about how I get things done, the world would keep revolving.”
“It’s OK to rest.”

I’m looking for a relaxation response – a sense from my body and mind that all is well, with easy breathing, relaxed muscles, and a general sense of wellness and peace. Nearby cats always help!

And then, with that peaceful state of mind, I can get to work.

Give it a try and see if ten minutes of really doing nothing gives your body and mind a little more reason to trust you, and a little more interest in happily going about your day with you.

 

Wordless Wednesdays – moonlight style

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in the moon, walks, wordlessness

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While I’m on a wordless sunset/moonrise walk, I know exactly what I think I’ll want to say to convey the magic, and then when I get home, the spell is gone and I just say things like, “It was amazing”.  “So beautiful.” “Peaceful and lovely.”

My favorite trail for moonlight walking is closed, so we took a different trail and I’m so glad we did.  It was equally magical, perhaps even more so because we were dwarfed by towering cypress stands in a way that doesn’t happen on the other trail.

We had a beautiful view of the hazy moon.  There’s something so special about seeing your shadow by moonlight when there’s no other light around.

Click here to hear a short clip of what the swamp sounded like: summer swamp sounds – and enjoy a little taste of the magic!  You’ll be amazed at how loud the frogs and insects are!

Turtle steps

02 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in animal wisdom, managing time

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The way to get anything done is a step at a time.  One little step.  Martha Beck calls them turtle steps.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve been known to act like a rabbit.  Sprint like heck, and then get so pooped out that I abandon everything and nap for a week.  When I act like a turtle and take small steps on a regular basis, I get a lot more accomplished and it’s amazing to look back and see what I completed!

It’s just like hiking the Appalachian Trail – it’s five million steps and over 2000 miles–  but you can’t think that way – you have to just keep walking a little every day.

Turtles keep coming to find me to remind me to take turtle steps.  And the most recent ones I’ve seen have also been submerged in muddy water – I wonder what that means?  Don’t be afraid to get a little dirty?  Don’t be afraid of murkiness?  Go to the spa?

About a week ago I was on a wordless walk with a dear friend and I took her to my favorite tree.  This was the tree where I saw my turtle about two months prior, but I really didn’t expect to see her, as she had been sitting on the forest floor a good 30 feet from the tree last time.  Well, apparently my favorite tree might also be hers as well!  We arrived at the base of the tree, and there she was, completely submerged in a mossy puddle made by the tree roots.  We sat for quite a while and she finally moved, sticking her neck out.

I felt very honored to see this wild turtle again – I know they have small home ranges, but it was still mighty special.

Today I worked diligently, but with free time built in too (I’ve learned that my mind will go into complete and utter rebellion and give up on any system if there isn’t some fun built into every day – like a quick dip in the neighborhood pool)  and this evening, who did we see in our garden but our own turtle who lives in the yard?  We rarely see her and there she was, drinking the air conditioning condensation water in our tiny horsetail-planted wetland.

I count these sightings as auspicious messages from the universe.  All is well.  And I’m enjoying life, one step at a time, and savoring as I go.

The time management anti-diet

02 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in managing time, thoughts

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Ok.  Here’s what I’ve decided.  I have a somewhat complex relationship with time similar to some people’s somewhat complex relationship with food.  I’ve managed to deal with it for the most part and make it look pretty good from the outside, similar to how someone might diet themselves into submission but always worry about a relapse or how someone might binge and binge on junk food and then feel terrible, shameful and yucky afterward, even if it doesn’t affect their actual weight, either because they don’t do it very often or because there’s purging involved too. This is not to make light of anyone’s difficulties with food, or to say that I’m experiencing the same thing as someone with those difficulties.  However I do believe there are similarities, and that they’re both serious issues that can get in the way of living our best lives.  So I’m going to step out into the open and talk about it – and see what happens when I shed a little light on something that I think is a big challenge for many.

Just like overweight people know that all they need to do is eat less and move more, I know that all I need to do is use my time wisely and take care of my stuff.  Duh.  Easy.  So if it were that simple we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. And we wouldn’t have television shows like hoarders, and there would never be a giant pile of papers about ten inches high on my desk.

I’ve determined that it’s time to take a new approach to my time and organization.  I’m going to use the science behind my thoughts and behaviors to change my relationship with my time and my stuff.  I’m using Martha Beck’s book, The Four Day Win, as a guide.  Even though it’s written for weight loss, I’m figuring out that it’s all the same stuff.  Let me explain.

Martha says what happens when you put yourself on a diet is that you end up with “famine brain”.  All you think about is food and you are suddenly hungrier than ever, and your body, now that it’s received signals from your brain that all the food is being reduced, does everything it can to conserve energy and hang onto every molecule of fat just in case you never eat again.

Similarly, when I try to “finally get fully organized and manage my time like a grown up”, my mind starts freaking out with cries of, “There’s not enough time!”  Which then causes my body to immediately want to give up and go to sleep. It’s truly fascinating.

So today was the first day of a new approach, which includes the “actual dealing with time and stuff” part, similar to “actually eating less and moving more”.  I’m spending ten minutes per day on paper piles of any type – they’re actually not too bad right now because I’ve been working on them in this way for months.  So I’m sort of at the spot that someone might be who is looking to shed the last 15 pounds to get to their most natural, “feel good” weight. I’m looking to shift my attitude toward time and stuff in a way that will “feel good” forever.

My reward for doing ten minutes on my paper piles is a sticker.  Yep.  That’s all I need.  I love to put a sticker on my calendar!  After four days, I get a bigger reward, which is 30 minutes of doing absolutely whatever I feel like doing, ideally a creative something that I keep putting off, but I’m going to wait and see about that part.

Most importantly, the other thing I’m doing for the next four days (I get a sticker for this as well) is observing my “time famine” brain.  Observing and watching and learning.  Getting really curious about what my brain has to say.  Today, knowing that this was the first day of a new approach to time, I slept in. Not part of the plan!  Thanks, brain!  Quite a bit later I felt panicky when I looked at the clock and it was already 1 p.m.  My mind was screeching, “NOT ENOUGH TIME!!! AAAAAHHH!!!”  Which led to my body responding with, “Give up! GO TO SLEEP!” I just observed nonchalantly.  And did my work.  And hosted an incredibly beautiful moonlit wordless walk tonight. More on that, and time, and turtles, tomorrow.  Yay!