” Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” Albert Einstein
Ok, so what? Read it again but this time imagine doing this when you are in the midst of loosing your balance. Do you have that picture? Now what is the one thing you will do when you start to loose your balance? Yup, you got it – you will try to stop, reach out to something, find something solid to hold onto.
Makes sense BUT where doesn’t it make sense? For me, when I am needing to move forward and I find myself becoming anxious (perhaps its too dark, too cold, too muddy or just plain too something for me) – I start to build up the excuses and believe that I am going to loose my balance – and then I find myself trying to prevent this? How you might ask? By trying to stop till I find my balance – and the result is I never get up enough speed to find that comfortable place where your balance is just there.
What I do find is that awkward stop-start place where I never quite get my balance. I start to become frustrated and more anxious as I am now convinced if I go faster I will fall and hurt myself. And what do I do now? Sigh, I go even slower.
The result is that I never trust myself, don’t push myself, don’t allow myself to just stretch a tiny bit more and reach that comfortable place where I am moving with enough pace to keep my balance.
This is what I hear, see and think when I read the quote above. Lets take a moment, grab something to jot some thoughts down and explore the following. :
1. What causes you to become anxious?
2. What do you do when you become anxious? What does “braking” to find your balance look like for you?
3. What if the next time you felt you needed to brake, you stretched it a bit, held on a bit longer, sat with the uncomfortable. You can try a conscious pause – count till 5 and then brake, next time count a bit longer and so on.