Exhausted by all the drama? Hit your reset button. Orin J. Hahn has 9 ways how to do that.
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Unfriending because I have too many people already….. republicans are killing us……. democrats are losing and behaving more like republicans……its all a sham…..Monsanto blah blah blah…feminists are trying to blah blah….Men don’t….
Did that seem like a strange way to start a post? Annoyed? Put off? Yeah me too yet all too often that’s what the beginning of the day feels like. A nonstop blur of complaints and how “people need to wake up” or x is going to kill y. It gets to the point where whether I’m x or y I just can’t anymore. If everywhere you look you hear you’re unaware of the problem or you are the problem well that don’t leave much space for loving life. Remember loving life? No? Ok come along we’ll get there. Promise.
Loving life is that feeling you had when you were a kid and it was the last day of school, you could just taste life waiting for you. It was that corkscrew spiral of IMA GONNA DO EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!! that just was waiting to burst out at the bell. I dig that feeling and though I’ve donned a few robes, jobs, titles and such between then and now I ain’t letting go of that without a fight. May take some work, may take some planning but my inner IMA GONNA DO EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!! has a supporter in the world -adult me, and he can lay down the tracks for that train to roll.
So there’s some steps to this, they seem counter intuitive. Mostly because you spend your whole life swallowing what should happen. Your inner compass is already filled with the directions people laid on it. The other reason they seem counter intuitive is you. Odds are you spend time calculating how to get what you want. Not a bad goal and certainly a necessary one but it don’t leave much room for let’s just see, let’s be goofy, let’s be light. So here’s my list of occasionally pointless, life reaffirming, brain reboots when the mixture of feeling others, complaints, and the world at large has gotten too big.
- Go for a walk – move your body, meander. Stroll your home base like you just got there. Bet wherever you live you have paths, destinations and goals. Chuck them and wander.
- Stare at the sky – whether you are somewhere rural with nothing but sky or in a crowded city pick out a spot of sky and watch it move. Simply lifting your eyes up and out can be amazing.
- Take a cold shower – with every shudder and shake feel where the sludge of apathy and overwhelm turns into one focused point of “eek that’s cold.” Focus all that resistance to living into one surface feeling, and then let it go. Melt into a warm towel after and it is a delicious victory.
- Watch kids play – seriously go find a park bench and just take that in. These are the Zen masters of freedom.
- Look in a dog’s eyes there are few pure places that really let you pour out your soul in a few seconds like a dog’s face.
- Crank really cheesy, over the top music. If Freddie Mercury is involved good. Spandex 80’s big haired men in lipstick? Sure that works. Moldavian boy band? Why not. I dare you not to smile at Holy Touch from Foxy Shazam. I can’t even say Foxy Shazam and keep a bad mood fully in place. Goofy is critical, go get some of that in ya.
- Toss on tunes from a seductive lady with pipes. Goofy lightens; sexy stirs, let some in. A few bars of Chaka Khan, a listen to Lisa Lisa weighing the merits of taking me home and what can I say but hello happy town. CeCe Peniston can growl finally in my ear till I’m 80. And of course Groove is in the Heart.
- Make something. Anything. Fry an egg, do your laundry, fold a paper airplane. Let yourself create because you can and it’s fun. Maybe something useful will happen too (accidentally of course). A simple I did that feels good.
- Listen to a problem of someone else. Sometimes the most uplifting thing is talking with my kid about her worries. Sometimes I give her advice but more often than not I try to just invite her to let it out. Maybe it’s grades, maybe it’s boys, maybe it’s the start of all the burdens that I got a head start on accumulating. Letting her say them aloud and knowing she can let go of that makes her feel good. Before you know it I’m picking up that feeling by proxy. We all can feel overwhelmed, and we can also be there for each other.
Life, it doesn’t have to be serious to be seriously worthwhile.
Photo: Flickr/Toshihiro Gamo
Orin. I just met you and I like you. Thanks for writing this.
-Vince
I see two suggestions out of however many. (as you repeat self) However this doesn’t mean you are wrong. I completly agree with getting in touch with self again, in this digital age: 1. Activities that encourage bring back sensations to physical body 2. Looking at the future (kids play) and realising/remembering the world is bigger than you and you’re part of it. PS this isn’t just a critique of your bloatness (unless ofc you gorge yourself on junk food, then shame on you :P) but seriously, the world would be a better place if we were honest with ourselves.… Read more »
Gawd, that “posting too quickly, slow down” error is extra annoynig when you’re ADHD and drunk, lol.
Alfie Kohns! (i’m drunk and slow, but not misinformed xD)
Is who I was referring to.
He is a great START for changing the World.