#42 Take a Break
Jun 19th, 2008 by doing better
My recent trip to Scotland was the best thing I have done all year. After months of anxiety, I thought I had tried every kind of stress relief: exercise, healthy diet, yoga, meditation, self-help books. Nothing was working. I felt overwhelmed by the impossibilities of the future, and at some point every week I felt as if I was about to have a breakdown.
Then my mother came to visit, and we went to Scotland for a week. I didn’t let myself take any work with me. We went hiking every day, through landscapes that varied from moors, forests, and mountains to clifftop coastal paths and beaches. We walked through rain and sunshine. We stalked wild seals basking on the rocks and called to dolphins playing in the waves. All I had to worry about each day was, first, deciding where we would hike, then doing the hike, and finally mustering my last reserves of energy to eat some delicious local fish for dinner. Every night I slept well. The only stress was driving on the wrong side of the road, but that was fairly easy to adjust to.
On the second morning of our holiday, I awoke feeling happy for the first time in months. I finally felt like myself again. I could see that all my burdens were imaginary and self-imposed, and no one else was judging me as harshly as I was constantly judging myself.
I discovered that when I confine my concerns to my daily activities, I can really enjoy each day. It is only when my mind leaps ahead to next month and next year, and I start trying to control the future, that I get into trouble. When I say to myself, “If I can get this project done by this date, I will be an OK person, but if I don’t get it done, I am worthless and my life will fall apart,” I am obviously setting myself up for misery. I believe I have to say those things to myself to keep motivated, but for that week in Scotland I did not give myself a hard time, and I did not try to control the future – and lo and behold, the sky did not fall! Maybe tomorrow really can take care of itself.
I think the key is to concentrate on the work of the day and jettison the general angst about anything that doesn’t have to do with this particular day or even this hour. If I focus on the task at hand, I’ll be happy. When we were hiking, I was putting one foot after another, mile after mile, and not worrying about next year or my career, just thinking about getting up the next hill, enjoying the view, finding our spot on the map, and enjoying all the ideas pouring into my head. That was the wonderful thing: when I left my work behind, I was more inspired than I had been in months. I spent our walks reveling in the creative visions that seemed to shine from the sky with the endless daylight. Something about the rhythm of walking releases a flood of ideas in my mind. I had so many useful thoughts without even trying, and I didn’t end up feeling that I had taken time away from my work; I had just approached it in a different, more stimulating way – like sneaking up on the seals across a seaweed-covered peninsula instead of going to see them in a zoo.
If I could hold onto that live-for-today mentality in my everyday life, I would be just as productive, and I would have none of the useless anxiety that is so exhausting. Life would be heavenly.