Spring Always Comes
BREATHE!
"Each breath is like a little rebirth, a renaissance that can only be celebrated if we recognize that it’s happening. "
-Cristen Rodgers.
A dear friend called me yesterday, desperately unhappy because her job is rejecting remote work, which she has enjoyed since the Pandemic. If she goes in to work, it will throw off a variety of important life factors (deliberately Vaguebooking here) and the quality of life will suffer.
She could see no answer, and hoped I would have one.
I asked how long she had to devise an answer, how long before the situation was set in concrete. She estimated a week.
Great. Then the first and best thing to do is to BREATHE. Find the center of the storm. The Five Minute Miracle breathing (sixty seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing at the top of the hour) is like pouring water on the little flaming demon that SCREAMS that you have to do something NOW NOW NOW.
No. You don't. One of the really ugly things about fear and stress is that it motivates you to do what is IMPERATIVE (run in a circle with your hair on fire) rather than what is IMPORTANT (calm yourself, see what the situation is, look at your resources, use your problem-solving strategies).
The saddest, sickest thing is that the actions necessary to both solve problems and build up a surplus of energy, reserves of reciprocal emotional support with friends, or financial abundance are mostly daily actions: exercise, calls and visits and support on small things, increasing quality of service AND networking AND marketing/sales technique. Its just daily action. It is IMPORTANT rather than IMPERATIVE.
Then, eventually and without exception, the day comes when the problem IS imperative. Scott Sonnon said that we must train our bodies for the moments when life throws us something outside the normal limits, and we have to stretch, or lift, or move in an unusual way. If you "train for life", train the MOVEMENT, and to exert strength or speed or flexibility at unusual angles, when these things happen you will be able to cope. When you have an emotional disaster you have the network to get all the hugs you need, or the depth of meditative calm to guide your heart between the obstacles. Or the financial reserves to survive emergencies that throw others into panic. In fact, you will have the resources to help them.
But you have to prepare yourself. You have to KNOW that those moments are coming. And if you associate with the "grasshoppers" of the world, who are in denial about their need for fitness, love, and money…you might want to incorporate a few more "ants" into your circle.
People who will tell you to BREATHE.
I'm an ant. I know winter is coming. It always comes. But also that spring comes after, and I've watched that cycle every year of my life. So in spring I keep my mind on winter, and in winter, keep my mind on Spring.
And the grasshoppers laugh, and mock, and claim I'm a "Pollyanna" because they are ignorant of my life circumstances, where I started, and how I survived by learning from the past, staying in the moment emotionally, but keeping an eye on the future. And when, inevitably, they enter winter, crash and burn, they simply didn't build the reserves to survive. Then they want an immediate solution.
But if you give it to them, they often immediately relax, and don't correct their behavior, and simply motor on until the next disaster.
If they are family, I'll continue to help them as long as I can, but after three times reserve the right to refuse if I intuit they need that pain to wake up. If they are strangers I'll help them once. There is simply no time to save everyone…but the LIFEWRITING (www.lifewrite.com) is a free community where I'm gathering a tribe of leaders who are willing to thrive, to escape suffering, embrace joy, and be of service. THOSE people can help those strangers I cannot, because to THEM, those strangers are family.
But the first step, always, is interrupting the physiological maladaption to stress, the limbic system "burn" of extreme fear or anger. BREATHE. A martial arts master who sees a gleam in the night and must react INSTANTLY will exhale into the response…but the very next thing is INHALATION.
Given a moment, you can step back to give yourself more time to see what is happening and respond. But if its NOT happening in this moment? If it is fear of what might happen tomorrow, or next week?
CENTER YOURSELF. Pause. Find the calm space between the breaths, the space between your thoughts. Connect with your heart.
The key is NOT conceptual. Not "thinking" about your problems. Your thoughts can chase themselves in a circle, no sense of what to do or how to do it. The body, on the other hand, knows exactly what it needs: the next breath. Built all your tactics and strategies on that foundation, and you will gain serious CLARITY. Which is what you need. As Terry Letteau told me, long ago, "your problem isn't fear. Your problem is a lack of clarity."
Pause. BREATHE. See yourself in the eye of the storm. Then, ask "what is true?" The emotions always obscure, exaggerate, or discount. The intellect simply crunches the distorted data. Connect with your physical experience of reality, then feel gratitude for that breath. Trust me: all of the problems you think unsolvable? Imperative? You would forget ALL of them if I cut off your air.
Be grateful for that breath. Gratitude is the antidote for anxiety and anger. And then, in clarity, look at what the problem is with FAITH that there is an answer: gratitude is the seed of faith.
Then carefully plant and nurture those seeds. Remember: spring always comes.
Namaste
Steve
