stop for a minute

I am starting to see more and more that one of the points of life is to throw yourself into the community you’re in. So, one of my main day to day focuses has been to have better interaction with the people around me.

As I start to get busier and involved with more things, naturally I get more stressed and overwhelmed. When I’m stressed and overwhelmed, it’s a lot harder for me to deal with people, as I imagine it is for just about everyone. I read a smart quote that said, “It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.” That quote has a lot of truth to it. It’s easy for me to just cut people out completely and go into a world of my own, not interacting with society at all.

So as a way to make sure I continue staying light, I’ve started to work out little tricks that help me stay happy and pleasant with others. I have two important ones. One is that I always try to make sure I am getting enough sleep. I don’t always want to get more sleep, I’d rather be reading, watching another episode of Scrubs, sitting around eating snacks, but I know that if I don’t get enough sleep, inevitably the next day around 2 or 3 I’ll hit that mid-afternoon tired and get snappy, short with people, and generally be no good at being with people.

The second trick is one I developed from my time with the Kenyon College Community Choir. Before every recital our conductor would remind us to take two deep breaths by putting two fingers up in front of him, so the entire choir could see but the audience couldn’t. For me, the gesture was kind of a reminder to slow down, reorient myself in the moment, and remember why I’m here.

So sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed I’ll purposely slow down my walking and take in the moment a little more, or I’ll just stop entirely, put two fingers up, and take two deep breaths to regain composure and put myself back in the moment. When it works, it really reminds me that I might feel overwhelmed but I should be grateful for this opportunity because I really do want to throw myself into as much as possible.

Ironically, I lost a little bit of sleep writing this..

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com