Calm Down and Carry On!

Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength. -Robert Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891), An English Statesman and poet.

Too Much Time

What a laugher! I mean really, can you imagine that back in the 60s there was a study that predicted in the future there would be so much technological advance that people would be able to do just about everything faster and that would leave them with enormous amounts of free time! People would theoretically have to find new distractions…like I said, what a joke!

As a matter of fact, time management has become an even bigger problem if anything. As a real estate coach, I have the opportunity to lead a mastermind group and often hear that the number one issue is time management. Poll most people and they’ll say the same. They want more time to spend with their families, friends, on travel or just to simply sit still.

Instant Distraction

So what’s really at play here if technology is doing nothing more than exacerbating the problem? Well consider the pace of life. Think about how technology has actually accelerated that pace to break neck speed. We get our news in an instant as we look at our cell phone for updates. Our stock prices, our weather forecasts and our sports scores. Even more so with our distracting texts back and forth devouring our precious time as we banter back and forth about mostly useless information.

The ability to have that kind of access to the random or the seemingly interesting minutiae of life has caused a level of anxiety that never existed before in time. Think about the life of our hunter-gatherer predecessors whose daily concern was to search out a source of food and shelter to make it through life. They didn’t have to wake up and turn on their PDA to check yesterday’s stock prices to see if they could retire any time soon. They didn’t swap a piece of the days hunt to attend a sporting event to take their minds off the next days work. Oh and by the way, they never even considered sitting back and hoping that somebody else would feed them. They knew that nobody was coming each day so that had to get after it.

Productive Anxiety

Even in our modern day and age there are those that still get up early somewhere on a farm and grind it out from sun up to sun down. Sure maybe they have cable TV, but I bet you many of them run around outside with their dogs and retire to a fireplaced room where they curl up with a good book and go to bed early. But that’s so boring most of us would think. What would I do without my cell phone, my thousands of cable channels? Read? Exercise my mind? Go for a walk and watch the sunset? What about the mall? The shopping? All the things that I want to go and get.

There you go! There’s what’s really wrong. We are hunting and gathering things that we don’t even need. We are getting locked into a mode of dragging our minds and bodies into a sedentary, non productive life! And you know what that creates? Anxiety! Why? Because we are born to be productive. We’re wired to go to work. We’re destined to create! Ask anybody that’s out of a job. If they have always been a worker then they’ll be going crazy.

Sheep Herder

I’ve been looking for a dog for my family lately and I’m intrigued by the breeding history. You see, a breed never seems to lose its true instinct to work. The Springer will chase birds, the Border Collie will herd sheep and the Bernese Mountain Dogs will pull carts…even if they live as family pets, they will be happier if allowed to do some of their natural work. That work load will actually relax them. They will feel fulfilled and calm down and become balanced and well tempered.

Why is that different for us? Are we not wired in a similar way? Maybe the problem is that we jumped way up the food chain ladder and became so sophisticated that we got up in our heads too much. We became obsessed with happiness and tried to control it by building distractions galore. Anything to take our mind off of good old fashioned work. It all seems to make sense as I think back to the early stages of my business career where I got so up in my own head that I was spinning in circles. I was always plotting and planning how I was going to conquer the world in a half an hour.

Dirty Hands

The best advice I received at that time was to work with my hands! That’s right, get dirty. Get out of my head, roll up my sleeves and make something. I’ll never forget going out and getting a bunch of wood and dragging it into my basement and getting after it. You all would have gotten a great kick out of it if you saw the end result; a shelf system for our laundry complete with sagging shelves. But you know what? It felt good. I felt productive. I knew from that point forward that no matter what happened in life, I would be just fine. The best part of that effort was that it calmed me down and I began to settle into a less chaotic pace.

With my eyes reopened, I started to see the beauty all around me. The mountains seemed taller and more magnificent; the sunsets more dramatic and colorful; and the beaches and rolling surf more rhythmic and strong. Energizing! You see we’re just steps away from reconnecting to what’s important and I’m sure there’s not one of us that will argue that what we want most is a peaceful life. A life where we feel a confidence that comes from knowing that we are able to take care of ourselves. So the best way to get started is to calm down and then carry on!