The other day I was driving to the airport to pick up a friend. On route I found out the flight was delayed, so there was no need to rush. I knew that the airport offered no good place to park or a cute cafe to sit in. So, I decided that the best thing to do would be to just slow my roll. Easy enough, right, I would just drive slower.
Easier said than done. No sooner had I slowed down I could feel my foot getting progressively heavier on the peddle as if urging me to speed up. This sense that my body seemed to do things my mind had made different choices about happened over and over again.
We tend to discount the body as a mass of muscles and bones and not acknowledge the enormous extent to which
we are the product of behaviors that the body carries before we have even had a chance to think.
Please tell me I am not the only one who finds themselves half way home when they were headed somewhere else simply because somewhere along the way I started thinking about something else and my body instinctively took me on my habitual route home?
This, and my experience the other day of finding my car going faster than I had decided to go are just two demonstrations of how strong our muscular behavioral patterns are! And in our world we have a conventional behavior towards productivity and therefore speed. As I drove to the airport the other day it took effort, and concentration to stay tuned-in and not fall prey to my habit to engage with the road and the other cars as if it were some sort of race. I took this as a metaphor for many of us heading into the holidays. How easy it would be to just continue with our usual mental/body patterns for speed.
As you go on your summer holiday, I invtie you to give yourself the time and space to change things up. It may take some effort, but doing less and doing things more slowly, giving yourself the opportunity to learn new and different patterns will nurture you in more ways than one.
On that idea of creating more than just one way of being in the world below is a brief extract from the book “The Creative Act: A way of Being” by Rick Ruben.
“The Creative Act: A way of Being”
By: Rick Ruben
“We might set up a daily schedule, where we engage in particular rituals at specific times every day or week.
The gestures we perform don’t need to be grand. Small rituals can make a big difference.
…
We might eat our meals mindfully, savoring each bite with appreciation. Take a daily walk in nature, looking at everything entering our field of vision with gratitude and connection. Take a moment to marvel at the feeling of our heartbeat and the movement of blood through our veins before sleep.
The purpose of such exercises is not necessarily in the doing, just as the goal of meditation isn’t in the meditation. The purpose is to evolve the way we see the world when we are not engaging in these acts. We are Building the Muscles of our Psych to more acutely tune-in.”
