Shut Up!
A Lesson About Obsession
Sorry to start this off with a negative, but you see, I’ve been haunted all my life. Before you conjure up visions of vaporous entities or scary goblins chasing me until I hide under the covers, I have to tell you I think it’s worse than that. My eerie little demon is the voice in the back of my head that tells me all the things I need to be doing, and won’t shut the **** up until I’ve completed every task demanded of me. Has your mind ever felt like this?
As a musician and professor of music I became a rock star - - - at being a workaholic! Now there’s nothing wrong with productivity, but some of us don’t know when to stop, or what to cut out of our lives so we can get more than 3 hours sleep a night and not start speaking in tongues.
My little voice (or shall I just call it for what it is – my big ego, won’t stop there…oh no!
Back in the day here was my ego talking…
“Ok little Johnny workaholic, you got up, graded your papers, taught your classes and lessons, went to a couple of committee meetings, answered all your emails and texts, ran a few errands downtown, and now that it’s late afternoon you still need to practice sax, piano, flute, clarinet, then work on a scholarly paper that you’d better do if want tenure, then prepare those materials for a task force that you’re leading tomorrow.”
Whew! I get home about 8 pm for a quick meal with family, but then my ego says in a gnarly voice…
“Oh sure you practiced sax but you didn’t get to the other instruments today, and what about your workout? How’s that diet going? You should have practiced longer on that sax concerto you’re working up. And, the next batch of class assignments are waiting to be graded – with loving care! Oh and one more little thing – you really DON’T have time for any family time, do you? (evil laugh)
My epiphany - no matter what I did – it would NEVER be GOOD ENOUGH. I would never BE enough. So how high is the bar? I felt like the bar was at the top of a mountain I could never climb – Mt. Some Flung Dung!
Ego again: “What’s the matter with 18-20 hours a day of hard work? I’m doing it for the betterment of others, right?”
“Yes, almighty ego, but why is my health down the tubes, my marriage failing, and my burnout level is extra crispy?”
Ego: “Well that will all change when you retire…(sarcastic chuckle).
I ended up taking early retirement so I could caregive for my wife and soulmate Toni. I was just so grateful she was still in my life and she is such a happy being. All was fine, for a while…
The little gnarly voice came back with a different script:
“Sure, little Johnny, you have caregiving duties on and off all day BUUUUTTTTTTT…You still have all your instruments to practice including singing for upcoming gigs. You call yourself a writer? Get busy on reading new material at least 2 hours a day, AND get going on your next book! And those blogs? You need to do one EVERY WEEK! Then get busy on the slipshod marketing you’ve been doing unless you are happy with the 10 copies you sold to your friends! And how’s that diet going, and did you exercise today? And what about the household projects that need attention? And furthermore…and…and…”
After tearing out a couple of clumps of my hair I realized I needed to save myself (and my hairdo) once again. I HAD to go back to the activity that saved me from workaholic obsession and ruin before…
Yes, Meditation!
(The next section is a shortened version from my book Well I’ll Be a Blue-Nosed Gopher…Practicing Happiness Now!
There’s no law against being busy, but too much busyness causes us to forget a very important commodity—ourselves! Heroically, we protest: “I don’t have time to think about myself when I’ve got a million other things to do!”
One question: If you’re not living your life, who is?
Excess busyness comes with a price. It consumes our valuable time to the point that we don’t spend one single minute toward what’s most important: our well-being! Here’s an old pic of me - Johnny Workaholic doin’ his thing…
To practice happiness, we have to spend some time daily to sort out our most essential issues; rediscover what’s most important to us; and get ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually in balance. This is best accomplished when we are alone in a quiet place. In this noisy world, it’s easy to be afraid of quietness. Even a few minutes of uninterrupted quiet time will work wonders. Some of us have been knee-deep in busyness for so long that we’re not even sure what we’d do if we had a few minutes of quiet time, except maybe fall asleep! So, instead of allowing circumstances to slap us around like a beach ball in a tidal wave, it’s time to give ourselves a moment or two to start changing all that.
I recommend using quiet time for prayer and/or meditation. There are two basic categories of meditation techniques: those designed for contemplation and concentration practice and those designed for relaxation and deep rest. Contemplation and concentration practice brings an important issue to our minds in order to make decisions in a calm atmosphere. Since important issues won’t be solved in a single day, it’s essential to make quiet time part of a regular practice.
The second category of meditation (relaxation and deep rest) is designed to temporarily shut down
the thought process. Sometimes the mind just rambles on and on with negative or useless thoughts, so I finally told mine to shuuuuut up!
Relaxation meditations, such as transcendental meditation, are designed to free us from this constant “mind chatter.” This allows the mind to go into a deeper brain-wave activity than sleep provides. It’s a perfect opposite to contemplation because sometimes we simply need to relax and get our minds away from thoughts! Techniques include mantras, breathing exercises, creative visualizations, or concentrating only on the present moment. We want thoughts to fade away into the background, and even stop for a while, so the mind is essentially quiet or free from conscious thought. This is not a trancelike state or hypnosis, but it is a very relaxed state of deep rest, like diving below the ocean waves to find the stillness on the ocean floor. I’ve found both techniques to be successful. Ultimately you’ll know which style you’re drawn to most often. If you have an inclination to pray, by all means, incorporate it during contemplation and just before or right after relaxation techniques. There are many types of meditations, all with specific explanations for the process. My wife and I greatly benefited from transcendental meditation, which requires a teacher initially, but the first two Happiness Steps in my book are meditations that require no training. Reserve some time for yourself on a regular basis, even if it’s only ten minutes a day. Consistent practice will bring an increase in creativity, overall energy, and an ability to remain calmer in difficult situations. It can be life changing. Without my meditation practice, this book would not exist.
(end of excerpt)
After meditating for about 25 years, these days I do TM (transcendental meditation) nearly all the time, but if a pressing issue comes up, I will do a contemplation meditation. Sometimes when I mention that I meditate (and Toni can do the TM with me) some will see me as some sort of far-out tree-hugging, incense-burning freak. Sorry to disappoint the stereotypical judgment of some folks, but I only hugged a tree once when I nearly passed out from running in the heat and humidity in East Texas. OK, so maybe I have burned incense, but – 99% of the time I always feel better and think more clearly when I meditate.
There exists today an inherent guilt about stillness. (Well you’re not doing anything, you’re just sitting there meditating when you could be doing the dishes, washing your car, or a bazillion other tasks that will present themselves as urgent). I like to think of my own meditation time as a short Sabbath – where my mind gets closer to my higher self – and whether one believes that is God or not is up to the individual, but it does not change the beauty of the peaceful stillness. Occasionally over the years a really profound idea will suddenly present itself or pop into the meditation, or will come to me shortly after, and some of those ideas inspired positive changes in my plans and habits that had a significant impact on my life’s direction.
There are no awards for meditation, but if you decide to give it a try or are a meditator now, here ya go…
The Speed of Toni
Finally, there is one more hugely important event that helped my tendency to obsess over all the things I can or cannot get done in a single day…
Toni is on such an even keel all of the time, and I can’t begin to tell you how much that has helped me. She has to ask for help throughout the day and night but there is never any impatience or pressure about getting things done – a perfect antidote to my “need” to get all things in the known universe done. In fact, one thought that came to me in a meditation was – “If I don’t get “x or y” done today, will the world flip on its axis? Or, perhaps a galaxy will implode? Me thinks NOT! Now if something is really important, that’s different but I know that hanging out with Toni has helped me prioritize what is most important to do and what I can leave behind.
So, now I move more at “the speed of Toni”. I once again meditate daily, and I hope you take that important time to do that too. That way we can learn to tell that chatter in our minds to – SHUUUTTTT UUUPPPP!
