Jumping Off the Hamster Wheel
“To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”
If you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know that I'm all about helping you find ways to dial down stress. This week, we'll look at the importance of making choices that are right for you despite the lure of endless possibilities. Living in a world with 24/7 access to electric lights and incessant information means that we know there's always something we could be doing. That can be overwhelming, and some people feel this as a constant. Combine that feeling with the Puritanical ideals of our country's European settlers, which became a part of the fabric of our collective philosophy, and you have a culture-wide tendency to believe that if we can be doing something, then we must. Anything else makes us lazy, selfish, and useless. This is a recipe for anxiety; it will erode your happiness and physical health more insidiously than almost anything else you can experience. No one wants that, but how do you halt this cycle when so many options and imperatives are always staring you in the face?
First, let me acknowledge that this is difficult. Options, information, and entertainment are fun to play with, and therefore hard to put down at the best of times. Also, if you believe that opportunity is obligation, then your self-image will suffer when you take time away from attending to the constant requests of people and advertisers that will assail you throughout your waking hours, never mind the things you'd like to be doing to address your own priorities. Then there are any frantic mental habits you inherited from family and others before you were old enough to notice. This constant stimulation gets your mind into the habit of racing, and then it takes serious effort to retrain it to allow some empty space and relaxation to permeate.
When there's an abundance of anything, whether information or food or opportunity, maintaining health and balance requires that we learn to set boundaries. We need some hard stops that will carve out appropriate time for sleep, exercise, healthy eating, and leisure. Those can be planned and tinkered with until they seem optimal in the grand scheme of your life, your needs and your desires. The trickier boundaries to set and police are those that will keep you functioning well when unexpected circumstances arise. These you need to brainstorm on the fly. Learning to do this well is a constantly evolving effort, since we change throughout life, and in small ways each day. It's more art than science, and only you can really know how well it's working for you at any given time. If you're constantly exhausted, resentful, or frustrated, it's not! So where does one start when it's clear that better boundaries are necessary?
There's a concept in Qi Gong, a Chinese healing art, that one should never do anything to more than 70 percent of one's capacity. Reserving 30 percent at all times means that there's leftover energy at the end of the day. You're not collapsing into sleep desperate for regeneration without which you cannot function; instead, you just need small adjustments to keep you in balance, and your sleep can regenerate you more deeply on all levels as well as build yin—energy reserves and power. Then, when you go through any periods of high activity, you can get through them in better shape. You'll have to rebuild your yin later to replace the overage you've used, but you are not a mess if you have to overextend yourself somewhat. If you encounter a health challenge when you're in the habit of reserving your 30 percent, you'll be able to bounce back from it more easily, and that's obviously very important to your quality of life.
Some other keys for learning to set appropriate boundaries:
- Write out and read daily two lists: Your goals and your highest values. Both help you to work out your long-term plans, and to make those on-the-fly decisions about when to say yes and when to pass. These decisions are subjective. If you don't have a strong commitment to your plans and values, you'll flounder more than is necessary when faced with a choice.
- Remember that no one can do everything that sounds interesting in any given lifetime. Focus on doing the things that seem most right for your interests and abilities (while remaining creative about workarounds and breakthroughs where you identify limits). Revel in how these things are yours, and make you unique and wonderful!
- Just because someone wants something from you doesn't mean you need to say yes to the request. If you're afraid of what will happen if you say no, you may need to work on your communication skills, your list of priorities, or your self-esteem. This last one is a long-term project in most cases, but every day is a good day to start. In order to set appropriate boundaries, you have to see your own life as valuable, just as much as everyone else's. If you're not sure what to do here, get help from a book, class, or specialist.
- Start to watch for beliefs that keep you stuck and challenge them. This takes some doing, but once you decide to notice your thoughts, you'll begin to become aware of them--whenever you feel frustrated or irritable, that's a great time to ask yourself what you were just thinking. Very often those thoughts will comprise some destructive beliefs that are sabotaging you. The stories we tell ourselves, when they're fatalistic (suggesting we are powerless to change our conditions) or negative in ways that trigger and prolong old, outdated patterns, have a huge effect on what's possible for us. Once you know your patterns, you can work on untying those old knots and freeing up powerful stores of energy for whatever you choose. I'll write more about what to do to change old beliefs in the future (and you can bet it will include using some EFT!) but the first step is noticing what's happening and being aware of what you'd like to change.
You will be most successful, and most able to help others, when you know how to live in balance. It's no good to anyone if you're chronically exhausted or overwhelmed and cranky. When you prioritize your own health, you are a living example of principles that can help everyone around you. No one else can do this for you, because no one else has first-hand knowledge of what you need. A willingness to set appropriate boundaries is an essential step in fostering your balance, happiness, and ability to be the best of yourself every day.