Prelude to a Pause
What if I did my weekly review?But I also have to write a report.Oh wait, my nails need clipping.Ugh, this is hopeless.Maybe I just need a “reset.” I’ll just see what’s on Instagram…
(3 hours later)
Where did the day go? I had so much to do!
Getting lost in the day, the media, in politics both grand and in the family, it is far too easy to lose our bearings.
We might blame this sense in ourselves – that we need stimulation. Whatever it is we are “supposed” to do is simply not stimulating enough. It might be quite boring in fact.
But what is that craving for stimulation?
Stimulation
Stimulation can be a stand in for a sense of vitality. We want to feel alive, some depth of meaning growing somewhere within us. Something needs to feel alive and real.
While there may be some shared, wordlessly agreed upon reality, there is also the reality within ourselves, created in the contours of intense emotion. Our personal reality is the emotions within.
When we can acknowledge that this so-called need for “stimulation” is more truly about a need to feel alive, we can find a new direction.
For example, let’s say, in some rare moment, we are able to catch ourselves scrolling through the phone. We might wonder,
Rather than either
- force ourselves to not scroll
- force ourselves to do anything else
We can pause and deliberately feel the boredom.
It is in no way easy to do this, but doing so begins to shift the emotion from driver to messenger.
From there we can decide what feels most meaningful to us, whether that is to face the difficult work of the day, dive into our scrolling phone, or recognize that there is something else that could be yet more important we hadn’t originally even considered.
- Kourosh
PS. Consider checking out the extended podcast version of today’s newsletter here in the Rhythms of Focus.
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