Hey there Taters (a term of endearment in our house),
I’ve been zooming through an intensely busy time the last 4 weeks and I got 2 more weeks of intensity to go — teaching & interviews & travel all mushed in together. I’ve found myself getting a little crazy with it all — falling into a screen-burned-computer-desk-bound trance, where I am neither productive nor recharging as fully as I desire.
I posted about this state on Facebook a few days ago:
This week I need to be focused + practicing deep self-care. I need to hold both. And sometimes (okay often) when I have a lot on my plate, I want to flake out OR eat sugar, not move my body and not be kind to myself. I throw it all over one side or the other.
My little post got a lot of passionate “me, too!” comments which made me realize how common this state is. Then I got curious — what could I do differently to step out of the trance right now? After a few days of experimenting and feeling into it, I made today’s Spontaneous Video.
[iframe src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/3cv2iONwGiQ?rel=0&showinfo=0″ frameborder=”0″ width=”480″ height=”360″]
Don’t want to watch me make funny faces? Here are the highlights:
- To escape the trance, do something small and different with your body. Drink a glass of water and imagine you are drinking pure relaxation. Go the bathroom and reeelaaaax as you do. Do not make this a big ding dang do — just do something.
- Doing something different with your body opens a window into awareness. Ask yourself, “What is driving me right now?” When we get into the doing-pushing-stress trance state, it’s almost always driven by the fear of not being good enough. For me, it’s the fear I will screw up the TeachNow live call (sign up here and get the details) or one of my three talks next week (one at a high school… argh!!!). I won’t be good enough. I won’t deliver.
- Once you touch what is driving you, even for a moment, you can start to — even a tad — adjust your expectations to what you can do. What is enough in simple facts?
- Whatever you do, don’t add insult to the trance. Let go of the desire to beat yourself up for being here again. It will only keep you stuck.
I said all this and more — plus the usual funny faces — in the video.
I would love to hear what you do when you get into this friable place — it’s so much less shaming when we share in community.
