Cruising down the road today, I really listened to the lyrics of Nickelback’s song, If Today Was Your Last Day, for the first time. Since I have written about what my last twenty-four hours would look like before, I thought this musical version was pretty neat.
Happy Viewing, All!
I had a great chat with Judy Martin in New York. Here’s what we had to say about work, life, and information overload.
The outdoor temperature flirted with freezing as we shifted our weight from one foot to the other. The rain pelted our heads relentlessly as we waited for the command.
“And…action!”
We quickly whipped off our hatwear, pretending it was a breezy spring-like day. It wasn’t. Our hands were frozen, our shoulders perched on our ears. Because the camera couldn’t pick up the ‘light rain’, we had to act as if it wasn’t precipitating. Life on television is a lot different than life in the real world. And I loved every minute of it.
Like many women, I wear many hats: wife, mother, PR consultant, writer, actor, friend. Every now and again I step out of life and in front of the camera for a day or two of complete release. Hanging out with crew members and feeling the sense of temporal camaraderie are rewarding experiences. As Dena Marie Patton says in Gina Blitstein’s piece, “Where is the ‘i’ in my life?”, we must step out of our myriad roles, if only for a few minutes, to rediscover the me in we, the self in the collective. Dena herself experienced a minor stroke at age twenty-six after living a workaholic lifestyle. She knows of which she speaks.
Believe it or not, bundled under five layers of clothing to ward off the freezing rain, I found myself. Despite the straining external circumstances, it was a journey of self-discovery, a true test of desire, and a marvelous return to me.
How will you carve out those moments for yourself? Which avenue will you choose to ’step out of your role’ and into yourself? I’d love to know.
Hyperparenting has dropped off the media radar for the most part. You don’t read much about overscheduling, at least not like you used to. My guess is it has more to do with our acceptance of today’s norm of overscheduling than to the actual disappearance thereof. We are all overscheduled. And that makes us ‘normal’.
Sometimes I observe people’s reaction when they ask me if I have time.
“Yes. I do.”
They typically blink twice, dumbfounded that anyone would admit they have any time at all. Isn’t that just so 1800’s when leisure was a part of the upper class and not really something anyone who toiled for a living could admit to having enjoyed?
So we book ourselves, and our kids, to the max. Then we wonder why we are time-starved and stressed.
We can avoid the whole overscheduling debate by leaving blank days available. Some people might laugh at the impossibility of it. Really? I’m not sure when we gave over our power to the almightly clock (actually, yes, I do. It had to do with Frederick Taylor’s study of factory worker productivity, tying the knot between the clock and capitalism once and for all). As far as I know, we all have the same hours on it as everyone else.
If our scheduling minds require it, schedule ‘down time’. Mondays and Wednesdays are notoriously blank days in our family. The kids have no athletic activities, music lessons or afternoon instruction. They frolick (after homework), allowing their minds to roam. They read books, play games, or romp in the snow. It works because they are used to the down time necessary to free up their mind for the next day’s assignments.
Some may call me a slacker mom for leaving so much ‘dead air time’ in my kids’ lives. They play in organized teams, have music lessons and even tutoring sessions. But those days off are as precious as the air they breathe.
How can we invite more slow into our kids’ lives?
1. Leave several days of unstructured time available for kids to play with their friends or do whatever comes to mind.
2. Ask them to suggest a weekend activity. Give them a choice as to whether they ‘do’ anything at all.
3. Allow for spontaneity by leaving space between things. Instead of planning back-to-back events, plan only one, then see what else unfolds.
4. Have your child organize his or her own birthday party, offering assistance only where needed.
5. Spend a day together frolicking without a stated purpose.
Slow family living is about connection, joy and love. It is life’s greatest reward.
**This post originally appeared on Psychology Today. Reprint with permission.
How many times have you said that to yourselves? Your time starvation is frustrating, agonizing, and you wish it weren’t that way.
The power of slow doesn’t say you should stop living your life. It says here’s how you can start living it. We have convinced ourselves that we have so much to do. Take it from me. I have two kids who are nestled in a school system that has them home by 1 pm virtually every day (and sometimes even at 11:15 am when they don’t have enough teachers. Hand on my heart. It happened last week. Oh, and we live in Germany). I work with clients spanned across nine time zones. And because the children have a half-day of school, they are expected to do hours of homework at, you guessed it, home. It works because we make it work. It’s a choice, like everything else we do.
And it is true our lives have gotten faster as we attempt to keep up with the demands for efficiency and productivity. But there are limits to what we can do in a day. Sometimes less is more. We are addicted to the speed of our lives, unable to change because we see no way out.
Believe it or not, when we slow down, we make better choices. As women who not only contribute more to the GDP than ever before in history, but also nurture the next generation (and sometimes the older one, too) we must take time for ourselves as the life-sustaining necessity it is.
We live in time so why not love the very thing that enshrouds us like a robe? You do have time ~twenty-four hours each day to be exact. The question is what will you do with it?
It was a fruitless exercise, but I was already caught up in the ‘have tos’ and ‘gottas’.
You see there I was, standing at the bakery counter, digging through my purse for some loose change so I could keep my Euro whole that I planned to use later for the shopping cart at the next store (Europe uses coin-operated carts, not bag boys!). My face reddened through the embarrassment and effort, but I was bound and determined to give the woman exact change. She moved on to other customers as I dug some more, fussing over the silliness of it all.
When I finally gathered all the change I needed (which involved going to the car to look for errant pennines under the car mat ~ ridiculous, I know!), I smiled at the bakery clerk. She smiled back in a knowing way, as if she knew the feeling of being stuck in the should’s of life.
The irony? When I got to the car, I had two more coins in the central console that I could have used for the cart, if I had taken a slow moment to look. And when I got to the store, I grabbed a cart whose coin slot was in disrepair, allowing me to use it without the coin I so desperately tried to salvage.
It made me laugh. Some days we get stuck in how things should be. We carefully plan, align our actions with our intentions, and it ends up being a useless exercise.
I wonder what would have happened if I had cheerfully given the bakery clerk the extra change and left it up to God/the Universe to see me through to the next store with or without the proper coin. Most likely I would have saved an extra five minutes and enjoyed the flow that trusting the unknown brings.
Life offers lessons no matter where you are ~ oftentimes they come from the unlikeliest source!
It is subtle at first: the ‘yes’ to that exciting new project; a nod to take on new levels of parenting (whether you feel prepared to do so or not); the impertinent weather that smacks your windshield as you navigate new roads to pick up loved ones.
Then it hits you. You have lost the alignment you exceedingly crave, that fine line between enough and too much. It comes in waves, washing over you with the tides of your life.
You drift, seemingly alone in the morass of demands. You can sense the faint music reaching your ears. Perhaps it is a hand-crank organ pipe and you its monkey, dancing on the fringe of things.
Life’s scary road leaves no street lamps to show you the way. You teeter. You totter. Then you wake up, realizing it was only a dream…
To which music do you dance? To whose rhythm does your heart beat?
I hope it is your own, and no one else’s.
If you haven’t discovered Late Bloomer Bride, yet, you are in for a ride! It is full of life’s wisdom. The blogger has a most cherished wit that routinely lands me on the floor ~ rolling.
I was a late bloomer in every way possible, except for the bride part (I got married at 25). Her quote of the week will give you a taste of her offerings. This particular quote’s message serves as a marvelous intersection between mid-life issues and the power of slow.
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. ~Oprah Winfrey
How many people’s bus do you ride? Are you in one or two? Do you show up for all your friends or for only a select few? Would you rather have a large circle or a few intimate people to accompany you on this journey?
I have a few bus-riding friends. The rest, I would guess, would enjoy the champagne and the limo ride, too. It’s the ones who stay after the party to help clean up that count as my closest buddies.
Yoga Living magazine’s Robert Butera provided these great lifestyle tips disguised as how to get more out of your yoga practice. He recently authored the book The Pure Heart of Yoga: Ten Essential Steps to Personal Transformation. Honestly, you can apply these tips to your life, too. You needn’t be a yogi to benefit. In fact, Robert says it’s better to focus on the inner transformation first, which, in turn, allows the external one to unfurl. You betcha. Robert is a fan of taking it slowly.
So give it a read, then tell me what you think.
Ten Steps to Transformation in a Yoga Pose Practice
Step 1: Intention. Setting an intention to practice yoga immediately connects your mind and body to the practice in one seamless unit. From beginners to advanced students, practicing a yoga pose with a specific intention in mind brings power and focus to both the yoga and your intention.
Step 2: Attitude. Closely aligned with your intention for doing yoga, an awareness of your attitude helps you connect with the nonphysical essence of yoga pose practice. Maintaining a positive attitude while you practice will improve your yoga pose experience — and your daily life.
Step 3: Posture. Attention to the correct physical alignment of yoga poses improves the nervous system; the musculoskeletal system; the digestive system; the circulatory, immune, respiratory, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems; mental function; and emotional health. I recommend attending a yoga class when possible to have an experienced yoga teacher further assist you with physical alignment.
Step 4: Breathing. Learning how to breathe very deeply is the one of the primary benefits of a yoga practice. Breath control increases oxygen in your blood, instantly reduces stress, brings clarity of thought, and stills the mind. You will find that doing different types of breathing exercises when you practice the poses will change your experience dramatically.
Step 5: Archetypes. Yoga poses are based on things observed in nature and in the human experience. By understanding the story of each yoga pose and where it comes from, you can develop a deeper perspective on yoga by discovering the qualities that are inherent in the pose – and how to apply or internalize these characteristics in your practice and in your life.
Step 6: Energy Centers. This step explores the mind-body connection of the chakra system (energy centers), and how different yoga poses stimulate energy flow to these chakras in different and powerful ways. This is a vital component in learning how to deepen your awareness of the relationship between your body and mind. You can use the poses to address specific health conditions or weaknesses in your body.
Step 7: Concentration. This step lets you explore the distractions in your physical environment and mental landscape that are keeping you from achieving a deep meditative state. The better you get at applying concentration techniques, the more profound your yoga experience will be.
Step 8: Energy Seals and Physical Locks. Step 8 delves into the power of symbolic energy seals (mudras) and physical locks (bandhas) on the body to deepen your awareness of the body’s energy. This step will help you understand subtle energy and how to consciously understand the flow of energy throughout your body – and is particularly useful for advanced students to combat “yoga burnout” or “yoga boredom,” as it helps them cultivate a beginner’s mind.
Step 9: Psychological Blocks. Yoga has the power to help you see aspects of yourself more readily than through thought or self-reflection alone. In this step you explore afflictions of the mind (klesas) and identify obstacles in your psychology that may be keeping you from moving ahead in your life and your yoga practice.
Step 10: Emotional Transformation. This step teaches you how to transform emotions to master the ego and merge with the infinite. Practice these concepts and you will learn new ways to manage your daily life.
Treat these steps as a gateway to experiencing the richness that yoga has to offer rather than as a strict, methodological program. It is a template that will grow with you over time as certain steps become more relevant at different times in your life than others. Be careful to not be in a rush to experience all the benefits that these 10 steps have to offer. Enjoy the process and honor your patience, and in doing so, you will notice shifts in your practice in the months and years to come.
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Robert Butera PhD is author of The Pure Heart of Yoga: Ten Essential Steps to Personal Transformation (Llewellyn, $21.95), publisher of Yoga Living magazine, and director of The YogaLife Institute in Devon, Pennsylvania, where he trains yoga instructors as well as students. Visit www.pureheartofyoga.com for more information.
 
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