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The yoga of gardening
Posted: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:39:33 +0000
When I wrote about being mindful of my need for breaks, I mentioned that responding to my body’s cues while gardening would be a more advanced challenge. I think I’ve found a simple way to manage it.
What’s been working pretty well, injury-avoidance-wise, is to pay attention to my body the way I would in yoga class, or Pilates. As I snip off sprigs of wild arugula, I imagine that I’m allowing my spine to lengthen between head and tailbone. As I lean over the blueberry bush, hunting for ripe berries, I let the lean become a lunge and feel the stretch. As I haul out the hose, I remind myself to contract my abdominal muscles, protecting my back by engaging my core. I remind myself to notice where I need to adjust, moment by moment, to keep my body safe.
I’m also realizing that gardening while rushed is usually an exercise in frustration and annoyance. (You could make the same point about yoga class, and maybe about doing anything while rushed.) My “quick trips” through the garden are never quick, something I’m working on accepting. Better to let the plants go thirsty a few extra days, than to try to squeeze in the watering on a crowded or imminent-deadline day. As I give myself permission to quit watching the clock, I get to reap more of that benefit that gardeners talk about, the absorption and flow.
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Three words that saved my voice (and made training a lot more fun)
Posted: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:29:21 +0000
Exhale.
Pause.
Trust.
Those were the watchwords that saw me, and my voice, through an intensive week of leading corporate workshops while fighting a cold.
“Exhale” came from my bodyworker, Roy, who observed at our last appointment that my breathing seemed tight. “Focus on exhaling,” he said. “The inhaling will take care of itself.” (He’s good with the aphorisms.)
“Pause” and “Trust” were what I added for jangled nerves—not only my concern over how my scratchy throat would manage all that talking, but also the opening-night jitters that went along with one of the classes being a first-time delivery. I wanted an easy way to remember that it’s OK to wait before answering a question…that I can rely on my preparation and my solid training skills…that it’s OK not to over-prepare.
Exhale…pause…trust…turned out to be a revolutionary combination. Not only did it keep my voice relaxed, it slowed down my usually rapid-fire speech. (An acquaintance once said he had to replay my minute-waltz-style voicemail five times before he understood it. And as my spouse will confirm, I’m wont to interrupt, with all good intentions and enthusiasm.) As I stood in front of the training room, the watchwords helped me stay calm, present and receptive to students’ needs while also keeping the class’s energy up. Surprise! There are other ways to keep people engaged besides talking fast.
I had more fun, too.
Exhale.
Pause.
Trust.
Now, can I remember to use these watchwords when I’m not training? Like, when I’m writing? Checking email? Talking on the phone?
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What my back has to say about time management
Posted: Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:29:06 +0000
My back and neck give me hints when it’s time to take a break. A lot of the time, I don’t listen.
I’m quick to take a (long, long) break when I’m creatively stuck. But when my body needs a breather, I keep pushing.
It puzzles me, how I won’t pause and rest when I’m gardening or cleaning house or sitting at the computer. I like breaks. But stopping to rest just because my body is asking me to, feels like a big bother. It takes too long! I’ll lose my place! It’s inefficient! I have to get this thing done!
I’m especially aware of this tendency right now because it’s the time of year when there’s a lot to harvest in the garden. (Blueberries! Wild arugula!) I’m doing more bending and twisting than usual. If I’m careless, I feel it for days.
What would it be like just to stand up and stretch whenever I notice the urge? Even if this makes the project take longer?
I experimented with this the other day while cleaning out the bathtub, which is a good chore to practice with because it’s time-limited and you can clearly see when you’re finished.
I paid attention to the cues—even before any soreness set in, just the little mental message that said, “You know, this would be a good time to do something different.” Noticed that I didn’t want to. Stood up anyway. Shook myself out, got back to work.
Though I was kind of annoyed by these interruptions, they didn’t make the tub-cleaning any more onerous. My back and neck felt OK the next day. And the amount of time the breaks added to the total task was practically imperceptible. Huh.
Applying the slowed-down approach to gardening, or to sitting at the computer, is a more advanced level—those activities have fluid boundaries and are more fraught.
Next step: See what it’s like to garden while being responsive to my body’s cues for, say, 45 minutes. What kinds of signals tell me I need to pause and change what I’m doing? What’s it like to make that change? Does my impatience continue, go away, take on a different cast? Does the weeding or watering or harvesting take that much longer with breaks? If so, what is that like? How do I feel physically, right then and the next day?
And if I find myself resisting a break, what’s going through my mind? What happens after that?
I want to be more aware of my reaction to my body’s signals—observing the mental sequence, the anticipated consequences, the actual consequences, for a concrete period of time. I guess you could say that I’m opening negotiations between my impatience and my body’s need for a healthier response, and this is the fact-finding phase.
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Creative blocks: How to change the game
Posted: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:45:16 +0000
When I get stuck on a creative project—any project, really—it’s often because my emotions are shouting so loudly that I mistake them for objective reality.
“It FEELS like this writing assignment is impossible, therefore it IS impossible. I FEEL uncertain about how to design this workshop, therefore I will fail. I FEEL frustrated because I don’t see an answer to this creative problem, therefore there IS no answer for it.”
That’s emotional reasoning in action. I’ve been thinking about this concept since reading When in Doubt, Make Belief, about coping with obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD for short. Mental health is a continuum, and though I don’t have OCD, I’m seeing a lot of myself in this book—I can certainly get unproductively obsessive about things (when in doubt, make lists!), and I let anxiety run the show more often than I would like.
Author Jeff Bell, who has the disorder, writes about the way that compulsive, repetitive behavior provides temporary emotional relief for someone with OCD. An example might be checking the stove burners seven times in succession, then going back to check them yet again. The rational mind knows this behavior is unnecessary, even counterproductive, but the emotions aren’t buying it.
Emotional reasoning plays a large and stubborn role in my creative life. I don’t check the stove burners, but I do get swept up in the discouraging messages from the hollering emotions. It’s tempting to respond by avoiding the project that’s frustrating me, which buys me temporary relief but reinforces the power of emotions to derail me in the future.
Bell recommends mindfulness—steady, nonjudgmental awareness—as one way of coping better with emotional reasoning and the nonproductive impulses it can lead to. When you observe the anxiety instead of giving in to the obsessive (or in my case, escapist) urge—when you sit it out until the anxiety dissipates—you gradually habituate to the anxiety. Over time, the painful feelings that you would do anything to avoid become less dominant, less threatening.
Over time: there’s the rub. Often the anxiety does not dissipate soon enough for me. Often it gets worse before it gets better. I have been known to use this phenomenon as a further reason to delay action: “See? I was right not to want to get started! Who in their right mind would choose to do something that feels this awful?” But according to the cognitive therapists, seeing the awfulness as unbearable is a thinking habit that I’m mixing up with reality.
Naming the mission
Part of it has to do with how I frame the issue. That’s why having a name for it—emotional reasoning—is helpful. I’m in the habit of focusing on the goal: “How can I feel better right now?” A more useful goal (or frame) could be: “How can I practice a different way of dealing with frustration and anxiety right now? Am I willing to habituate to these feelings so they don’t bug me so much, don’t run the show?”
This second goal is more challenging. It means drawing on a different set of mental muscles, carving out a new mental groove. Hard work! But potentially healthier…and might even, potentially, lead to feeling better over the long term.
As with my coaching clients, I’m not aiming for a sudden about-face—that’s not a sustainable way to deal with a longstanding habit. But I have found that huge shifts can come out of a simple beginning: increasing the amount of time between the impulse to react in the default way, and the reaction itself. Micro-lengthening that bit of time between impulse and default reaction starts to change things in profound ways.
I think this is another way of looking at my take on the Pomodoro Technique (for me, micro-sessions of work alternating with longer rest periods) and why it’s been helping. The feelings aren’t derailing me so much; I’ve been focusing better. Now I’m examining the frame: changing the goal from “Make the feelings go away” to “Practice habituating to the feelings, so they’re less fearsome and not so much in charge.”
Behaviorally, this translates into: When the unpleasant creative-frustration-uncertainty-avoidance cluster pushes its way into consciousness, notice it. Sit with it. It would be nice to say, until it dissipates, but that may still be longer than I’m willing to tolerate. I’m starting by increasing the amount of time I sit with those feelings—pause, breathe—before running away.
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Bringing vacation home
Posted: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:50:42 +0000
One of the best things about vacation is that I get to structure my day the way I’d like to structure it at home—while free of the temptations and distractions and longstanding habits that, at home, get in the way of that ideal structure.
I’m recently back from a mini-vacation in Western Sonoma County. Ahhhh—a delightful mix of low-key busy-ness (I milked a goat! and bought cucumber-scented face cream!) and stillness (strolling the beach, sitting outside in the morning mist.)
Since I got back, I’ve been looking for ways to keep up with a morning routine that I know works for me: meditate for 15 or 20 minutes first thing, then step outside for a few minutes. Then have a light breakfast, then take a look at my intentions for the day.
When I follow this routine, it doesn’t guarantee a smooth day. But it generally makes for one that feels less fragmented.
More often, though, my daily routine goes: check email, check online forums, check Twitter, read paper, deal with more email, eat breakfast at lunchtime, deal with phone calls and (seemingly) urgent assignments, eventually squeeze in some meditating, go outside late afternoon (oh! there is a world out there!), work late into the evening.
I wouldn’t mind this pattern if it felt like a natural rhythm, but it feels more like an accidental or drifty one.
Here’s the key:
When I spend the first part of the day in front of the computer, my agenda gets set by the instruments of distraction.
To resist the computer’s siren song, I need something better than the grit-my-teeth-and-fight-it method. I need a substitute activity that’s simple and inherently rewarding.
I’ve tried combining steps 1 and 2 by meditating in a nearby park, but that brings up its own set of questions and distractions (is the noisy leaf-blower guy working today? should I put on sweats or street clothes? should I go to the dry cleaner, as long as I’m headed that way?)—until, overwhelmed, I turn to the default option and get lost online.
This past week, I’ve added a new element to the morning routine. First thing in the morning, I’ve been walking out to the back stairs of my apartment building, and sitting outside on the stairs while I meditate. It’s easier than getting myself to the park, and there are trees and birds out back, just like on vacation!
The rest of the day is going better.
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Staying focused: The anti-Pomodoro technique
Posted: Tue, 11 May 2010 01:58:52 +0000
Kitchen timers are the latest time-management trend. Fans of the Pomodoro Technique say to set the timer for 25 minutes, work with total focus, then take a five-minute break.
I like the idea, and I’ve tried variations on the timer technique. But when I’m on deadline, a timer adds to the stress, plus I chafe at having to sit still for long chunks. And the timer doesn’t change the coping habit that I’ve been refining over decades: encounter obstacle, get out of chair, walk to kitchen and look for food. Distract! Numb the anxiety! The timer has no power over this drive.
I’ve tried setting the timer so that it counts up instead of down. This method creates less stress and helps me educate myself about how long things actually take, which is a pleasant surprise when something goes faster than expected, but just as often an unpleasant surprise when it takes so very much longer. Unpleasant but useful to know. The counting-up method has potential but isn’t there yet.
Here’s what does work, I discovered.
Five-minute increments
Yep. Five minutes. Because that appears to be my upper limit for sitting with uncertainty, anxiety and frustration.
I tried this last week, on deadline. I was so tired I was having trouble focusing, but the project still needed major edits and was due within the next 24 hours.
I sat down to face the edits. Felt the familiar reaction: “Gahhh! Don’t know how to fix this!” Observed myself starting to get up, in search of food and escape. OK, I said, I need to be kind to myself—I’m sleep-deprived and I’ve got to get this done. Let me spend five minutes focused on the edits. Then I can forage if I need to.
About three minutes later, the foraging urge hit hard. I can focus for two more minutes, I said to myself, and believed it. I stayed with the project. A bit further in, the urge to jump up from the desk hit again. I checked my watch; seven minutes had passed since I started. OK, I’d stuck with the deal. I stood, stretched out my neck and arms, ate a piece of fruit. Was I ready to go back to work? Nope, too exhausted from lack of sleep the night before. OK, I thought, I’ll lie down and take a nap. If I have to complete this project in five-minute work sessions with half-hour breaks in between, so be it.
After resting for just 15 minutes, I felt refreshed enough to go back to my desk and work for another five minutes. Then I took a 20-minute break. After about three of these cycles, I’d built up some decent momentum and was able to work steadily for six hours. I finished the project and met my deadline.
Inefficient, you may say? It’s actually pretty efficient, compared to the usual stalling and struggling and worrying and munching.
The six-hour session that followed the ramp-up would be considered by some (like Robert Boice) to be a binge—not ideal. Later, I’ll look at how to take breaks during extended sessions without losing momentum. But first: Let’s make the five-minute increments a habit and see how that goes.
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Getting it wrong before getting it right
Posted: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:04:32 +0000
One of the things that frustrates me most about writing—or creating anything, really—is the way that you—I—never get it right the first time. Not-getting-it-right is built into the process: whatever I’m working on is continuously wrong, or gradually-and-marginally-less-wrong, until finally, near the very end, it’s right (enough), and therefore Done! NEXT!
I like being right. I hate being wrong. Creating means spending a lot of time hanging out in the not-right zone. Bleah!
It’s one of the main reasons I get immobilized. You can say all you want, “Go ahead, just write a terrible first draft” (and believe me, I always write lousy first drafts, and second and third ones too), but I find this aspect of creativity nearly intolerable. I hate committing to a choice—a word, a sentence, an organizing principle—knowing I will just have to change it later.
Yet this is how ideas get refined. I revisit them, rework them, see how they relate to each other, begin to see what’s more or less important, find new relationships, decide what’s a tangent and what’s core, eliminate the excess. Did I mention that I hate that this is how the process works? It’s excruciating to me.
After coming across the work of psychologist Carol Dweck, I’m beginning to understand my reaction a little better. Dweck has done research into the difference between performance goals (“I did great! I’m smart and talented! Reward me!”) and learning goals (“I persisted and eventually got there! Yay!”) As the proverbial A-student, I grew up (happily) performance-focused, rewarded for consistently Getting It Right. This works fine until you hit a setback. Performance-focused A-student types never learn to manage the frustration of Getting It Wrong. Their (my) approach is: “There is a Right Way, and the goal is to get to the Right Way sooner. Wrongness is unacceptable and a big waste of time!” The kid who’s rewarded for persistence rather than performance thinks, “Oh, I love a problem! If I keep working at it, I’ll figure it out.”
“I love a problem”? This attitude is completely alien to me. In my mind, “I don’t know how” leads automatically to “Therefore, I cannot.” My progress is continually throttled by the emotional conviction that “No answer YET” equals “There IS no answer.”
And really, almost all of life is about Not Yet. The moments of “Got it!” are brief and fleeting. So it would be useful to learn tolerance and appreciation for Not Yet.
A scientist I’m acquainted with heard my description of creativity-as-successive-iterations-of-not-rightness and told me, “That’s how science works: Asking successively better questions. It’s a cumulative process.” I like the word “cumulative.” It suggests not that things are wrong-wrong-wrong-until-Bing! they’re OK, but rather that I’m building on my work so that it keeps getting better.
Tolerating not-rightness is a learned behavior, and I don’t know (yet) how to learn it. I have some ideas, though. And I’m persisting.
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The battle over bedtime, continued (or: Imperfect progress is still progress)
Posted: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:39:58 +0000
How’s the Early Bedtime Project going? Spotty. But positive even so. The inconsistency is not a surprise—I acknowledged that late-night work sessions are a longstanding habit, maybe even part of my identity. As expected (I even built it into the plan), I reverted to working into the night under deadline pressure. Now that I’m not under deadline, I’m finding it really hard to return to the plan. I still think it’s possible.
Even though I’m not going to bed so early these days, a few things are different, in a good way.
• I have gone to bed early a few times in the past few weeks, and slept nicely.
• I haven’t beaten myself up for working late when I needed to.
• I think of myself as someone who will resume going to bed earlier. Maybe my identity is shifting a little.
Some other things I’ve noticed:
• Although shutting the computer off by 9:00 doesn’t guarantee I’ll meet the early bedtime goal, not shutting the computer off by 9:00 does guarantee that I won’t fall asleep until much later than I want to. To put it more simply, it’s really, really, important to turn the computer off early! Even if I don’t feel finished that day!
• And I have to be careful about TV. Okay to watch some, earlyish. Watching a lot, late-ish, gets me worked up and makes it harder to fall asleep. I need to find other ways to reward myself for turning off the computer, aside from TV.
• I had planned not to be distressed when I take a long time to fall asleep on a given night, or wake up in the middle of the night. Nice theory, but when the tossing and turning and mind-racing go on for hours, mm, not so easy to let it go. I need techniques to call on when that happens. Indeed, you yourself may have been wondering, “But Janet, what are you supposed to do when you go to bed early and then lie awake? Because I [meaning of course you] do not find that kind of thing at all motivating!”
So here’s what I’ve been trying, on nights when sleep is difficult:
Mindful breathing. Middle-of-the-night Mindfulness 101: Notice what’s going through your mind, without getting involved in it . . . notice what’s happening in your body, without feeling compelled to fix it. Then bring attention to your breath, observing when your mind wanders away from the breath and gently bringing it back. I admit that switching from thinking (with mind racing) to observing (without attachment) does not come so very naturally! I’m practicing . . . Anyway, here are some ideas for doing this at bedtime. (The breathing exercises are all good. Pick the simplest one, or the first one, or close your eyes and point. Don’t get all agitated over which one to use.)
Acupressure. One night this worked! Not every night. There are lots of acupressure points that are supposed to help with insomnia. This video explains two of them very clearly. (Sorry about the brief ad. But note the video is from the lovely people at the late lamented Elephant Pharmacy!) An internet search will turn up lots more.
It’s 9:30pm (oops!) as I draft this. Turning off the computer now—will edit and post during daylight hours. See? Stopping before I’m finished. I can do it.
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The battle over bedtime
Posted: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:56:03 +0000
I’m a night owl, as you may have deduced from the time stamps on my blog posts.
I actually like mornings, I do!, but for years I’ve been in the habit of doing my creative work (and often my less creative work too) late, late at night.Nothing wrong with that. Being free to stay up and sleep in is one of the main reasons I became self-employed all those years ago. (It is true! Maybe the main reason.) But this style works less well for me than it used to. I feel tired and behind the curve a lot of the time—kind of in a state of perpetual jet lag. I do seem to have more potentially productive energy in the morning, on the occasions when I’m awake—I’d like to take advantage of that. And the late-night schedule presents problems when I have to get up early to lead a workshop.
I experimented with shaking up the late-night habit on my mini-vacation last month. I got a spa treatment in the afternoon, which left me super-relaxed. I fixed a simple dinner at the place I was staying, watched a low-key movie on DVD, and went to bed at 11pm. 11pm is early for me! Ah, the benefits of being out of my usual environment, without the usual stimuli, and with lots of pampering.
I was able to build on the post-vacation-early-to-bed momentum for a few days. But as with previous campaigns, I quickly slipped back into my old ways. Nevertheless, I continue to examine this habit with an eye to changing it! One idea seems key:
Turn off the computer by 8:30 or 9:00pm. This also includes stopping other work, such as bill-paying. So that I have the time I need to wind down before bed.
Habits—not so simple
This intention has a lot of sub-issues attached to it, making it not so easy to stick with. For example:
I need to get used to stopping before I feel finished. (This principle alone could be a whole series of blog posts.) Also, I need to practice accepting that a lost day doesn’t have to be paid for with a late night—or another way of putting it, accepting that for an earlier night to happen, there may be Less Accomplished and that’s OK. It doesn’t feel OK! Need to work with that.
And there’s a big piece in all of this about not wanting to miss anything. I’m like the little kid—I was that little kid—who wails, “Do I have to go to bed? Can’t I pleeeeeeze stay up longer? When I grow up, I’m going to stay up as late as I want!”
I need compassion for the part of me that doesn’t want to Miss All the Fun.
Another piece: Often what throws me off the Earlier Bedtime Project is an imminent deadline. Staying up half the night seems to be a major way I cope with the anxiety of turning nothing into something. Whether it’s the lack of distractions, or sheer exhaustion that eventually wears away my resistance, it’s hard to give up a successful, if dysfunctional, coping mechanism.
So, when I inevitably slip back, for whatever reason, I’d like to not be surprised or overly discouraged by it. To notice the pull of the old habit and let that be OK…and then get back on the horse.
Inviting, not just avoiding
Some positive incentives might help too. For instance, really noticing what my energy is like in the morning. Do I create/think better then? If so, acknowledging and running with it might be self-reinforcing. Also self-reinforcing: Luxuriating in the post-computer time. I worry about being bored. What if I looked forward to watching a TV show I love, fixing a nice snack. Thinking of it as really treating myself to lovely, restful evenings. Enjoying my evening Sabbath. So that I’m going toward something I value, not just giving something up.
One other thing: Not freaking out if I take a long time to fall asleep on a given night. Tossing and turning for a while doesn’t mean the plan is flawed or that I should give up. I need to remind myself that one night, a couple of nights of restlessness are not a big deal.
These are all great-sounding ideas, but a lot to keep in mind—more than I can keep in mind when feeling the tug of the usual way. My focus:
Computer off at 8:30 or 9:00. Treat myself to some lovely rest. Kindly thoughts for the worker bee whose work never feels done, and for the kid who doesn’t want anyone to tell her she has to go to bed, ever.
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Slowing down for the new year
Posted: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:26:19 +0000
I like the quiet slow week that eases me from Christmas into New Year’s.
I spent a day and a half in Sebastopol, one of my favorite places. It’s an environment conducive to slowing down—to the degree that I found myself doing things like setting my wallet on the bakery counter and then wandering away. (The wallet stayed where I left it. Good wallet! Good people!) I strolled the Zen garden at Osmosis. I went to bed early.
I’d brought along the book Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest. It’s a meditation on the danger of focusing on accomplishment at the expense of dormancy, and full of musings on the delights of rest. I opened it to the chapter “Selling Unhappiness,” which seems well-timed for the end of the Christmas shopping season, and for setting intentions in the New Year.
Author Wayne Muller talks about the illusion of Sabbath time that’s portrayed in innumerable ads—of carefree, attractive people at leisure, relaxed and happy. We long to be like those fictional people, and we imagine that if we buy what the ads are selling, we can have a bit of their lives. Except, writes Muller:
“While they are promising happiness, they are really selling dissatisfaction. Our entire economy is predicated upon dissatisfaction. If we are satisfied, we do not need more than we already have…
“Instead of buying the new coffee maker, make coffee in the old one and sit with your spouse on the couch, hang out—do what they do in the picture without paying for it. Just stop. That is, after all, what they are selling in the picture: people who have stopped. You cannot buy stopped. You simply have to stop.”
Stopping is easier during this quiet week; it’s easier when I’m away from my usual routine. I want to build more rest into my life. I’m starting with turning off my computer in the evenings. Maybe I’ll add naps in the afternoon. Where will you pause today?
Have a delightful new year.
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