Gone Fishin’. In My Head.

Hi. It’s been a while. Are you still here? If you are, you’ve probably realized I don’t stick to a regular writing schedule. Why is that?

First, because I only write when I have something to say, like now.

Second, it takes me time to write. There are writers who say the words flow off their tongues onto the page. My tongue specializes in eating ice cream.

And third, because sometimes I need a break, like I did after writing the past few posts about grief. Writing those posts took a lot out of me.

All this to say I apologize for the delay and welcome back. Thank you for continuing to share this writing adventure with me.

How do I know when I have something to say? It just sort of happens. I usually get a feeling inside that something is percolating. I sense I’m going to want to write soon, but I don’t know the topic yet. Then a topic appears in my head and I begin to get ideas about what I want to say. That’s when I start writing. I also spend a lot of time thinking while I’m writing, trying to figure things out and how I feel about them. When I finish my first draft, I let it sit for a day or more, like a jello dessert. Then I edit many times over the course of a few days or a week. When I’m finally happy with what I see, I stop. And that’s my writing process. As smooth and predictable as a Swiss watch.

So what prompted me to write now? I’ve been asking myself some pretty big questions lately. Nothing as big as “What’s the meaning of life?”. More along the lines of “How do I want to live my life and how can I make it better?”.

This isn’t new for me. I check in with myself regularly because when I was young I promised myself I wouldn’t sell myself short and I’d try to live life to the fullest. But I’ve been thinking about my life more frequently the past few years. Maybe because I have less time remaining and I want to spend it wisely.

(These questions could be signs I’m having a mid-life crisis, but I don’t think that’s the case because as much as I hate to admit it, I’m either on the tail end of mid-life or already beyond it.)

What specifically do I think about when I think about my life? I think mostly about my relationships and how I spend my time. The things that are important to me.

I also can’t help but think about my health because it’s like a thread that weaves through everything. I keep hearing my Grandma Rae’s voice in my head saying “Without your health you have nothing.” And she was right. Good health allows me to spend time with the people I love and do the things I enjoy.

Her influence may be what motivated me to start paying attention to my health when I began running at age eighteen.  I’ve done my best to take good care of myself since then. I work at staying in decent shape, getting enough sleep and eating properly.

About ten years ago I started hearing more about the insidious nature of stress and inflammation. I wanted to minimize the risk of them doing unseen damage to me internally so I started meditating and doing breathing exercises.

I felt healthy, but sometimes I wondered if there was an unseen stress and inflammation time bomb ticking inside me caused by an unresolved past issue. I had no indication there was, but I did some traditional therapy several years ago just to play it safe. I didn’t discover anything, but the concern still lingered.

When a friend casually mentioned Emotional Freedom Therapy (tapping) to me about six months ago, my ears perked up. I’d never heard of tapping before, but she’s in the health field and I trust her a lot. She told me tapping is an energy therapy (keep an open mind here) and it was helping her work through some difficult issues. I still didn’t know if I had any unresolved issues, but my lingering concern made me think I should do some research into tapping.

I spoke to a couple friends who said similar therapies helped them. My doctor explained tapping to me in a way that made sense. He said my mind and body work together like a computer and tapping is the software that finds and fixes bugs in the computer’s operating system to make it work more efficiently. He also said tapping helped him personally.

I decided to give it a shot and contacted the tapping therapist my friend recommended. My attitude was “Let’s go fishing and see if we catch anything.”

I had low expectations. I read online testimonials by people who resolved lifelong traumas in one tapping session. I knew that wasn’t going to be me. I didn’t even know if I had any lifelong traumas. I really was just fishing.

I didn’t catch anything during my first session, but I got enough nibbles to make me think “Let’s keep going. We might catch something.” So I took more sessions.

It’s been a very educational and enlightening experience. I’ve uncovered lots of things that will hopefully help me in the coming years. Like what kinds of things? Like these:

1. My body and mind are more strongly connected than I thought. When one is off, the other is off, too.
2. My mind has scar tissue just like my body, but it can be harder to find. That girlfriend who broke up with me in grade eight? It might’ve been easier for me if she broke my leg.
3. Keep on the lookout for patterns and triggers that aren’t helping me now. And there are plenty.
4. Practice acceptance. Other people are subject to their own patterns and triggers. Their behaviour might upset me, but I can’t control or change them. They’re doing the best they can.
5. Pause before I react. Take the time to look for patterns and triggers in myself and others. This is very hard, but very important.
6. Rely more on my feelings and body to guide me. My brain doesn’t know everything. The knot in my stomach is trying to tell me something.  
7. Just be. Pay attention to what’s right in front of me and spend less time thinking about the past and future. (I may change the name of this blog to Michael Doesn’t Like Thinking.)
8. It’s okay to strive for perfection, but perfection is unattainable. Enjoy the process because satisfaction comes from the process and not the results.
9. Be me. Try my best. It’s okay to make mistakes. Be kind to myself when I do.

None of this is new. I’ve heard it all before. I’m sure you have, too. What’s different is I now understand better how all these things apply to me in real life. I’m internalizing them and that makes them much more helpful.

What’s my goal? Better health, yes. More enjoyment from life, yes. Those are the big goals. But when I think about what I want to get out of things like meditation or breathwork or tapping, I think about inner calm. Equanimity. The feeling I get after a good yoga practice. Or when I gaze out at the ocean. Or go for a walk in the woods. I want to bring that feeling into my daily life. I want my system to operate smoothly, without disturbances.

Do I think it’s possible to do that all time?  Probably not. But I’m not focused on that result. I’m enjoying this process of discovery and learning and I’m taking baby steps. The further I can walk in the right direction, the better my life will be.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

I read a good quote in the Farnham Street newsletter recently that I could relate to:

“Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Importantly, writing is also the process by which you figure it out.”

This is true for me, except I would alter it slightly to say writing doesn’t help me figure anything out completely, but it does help me understand things better.

Thanks for reading and for sharing your most precious resource, your time, with me. I hope to see you again, but I can’t say when that will be. In the meantime, I wish you the very best of health.

If you’d like to receive future posts automatically, you can subscribe below if you haven’t already done so. If someone forwarded this to you and there’s no way to subscribe below, you can subscribe at the bottom of the home page www.michaellikesthinking.com. And if you clicked on a Facebook link to get here and want to read future posts, you might want to subscribe because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be posting these on Facebook.

Follow My Blog – New Posts Sent to You