This is me, talking to myself.
Using the question that almost always helps.
What’s true?
So tired!
What’s also true?
This is a pattern.
Craving rest is legitimate.
There are reasons for being tired. It’s okay.
Rest is the first duty of the queen.
What’s true?
I don’t know how to stop.
What’s also true?
You do know how to stop. You have stopped many times before. Lots of stopping.
And now you’re just learning how to get better at stopping.
What’s true?
There is so much to be done!
What’s also true?
You might as well rest because there is pretty much always more work to be done.
There is no “finished”. And even if there were such a thing, it’s probably not going to suddenly happen now.
You have options. You can build new and different structures. You can add a list of types of restful things to the Book of You.
You can play with all of this at the next Rally (which will help you get better at using the Book of You.)
You have more influence over your day than you think you do.
What’s true?
I do have a million things to do and they’re all important.
And there are real deadlines that I have committed to.
What’s also true?
You invariably have the sensation that there are a million things to do. Which means it’s more perception than absolute reality.
So you probably don’t have to do all of them, at least not at once.
You have support! So many people can help you.
You have a creative, playful, mindful, inquisitive approach that will help you untangle this.
You can do Shiva Nata on it to figure out what needs to happen with the pattern.
What’s true?
These things! They are fires to be put out!
I mean, not literally. But I feel anxious when I’m not actively trying to put them out.
What’s also true?
Since this feeling of urgency is a constant, you could also experiment with not putting out fires. Let it burn.
What’s true?
I have fear that these fires will consume me. And fear is always legitimate. There is no such thing as irrational fear.
What’s also true?
It won’t consume you. The fire will consume itself and then be done.
You do not need to take upon yourself the job of being the extinguisher. Let it burn itself out. Fire ignored and isolated cannot live. Put rings of stones everywhere.
And you will see that there are fewer fires. As long as you keep insisting on putting out the fires, there will always be more.
Let them burn themselves out and ignite themselves and burn themselves out again.
It has nothing to do with you. It’s their cycle, not yours.
And you will get to the point where you won’t care about whether or not something is appearing to be a fire. You will take time for yourself.
What’s true?
This scares me.
What’s also true?
You are made of the element of water.
You are flexible, resilient, curious, creative, You can take many shapes. You can experiment, compromise, laugh, dance, take notes.
You can play with this. You can take it to Secret Play Date. You can take it to Rally. Rally!
Let’s play.
Follow
sometimes when you’re a hypervigilant firefighter, as I am, you find yourself, sheepish, having drenched someone’s birthday cake candles with a blast from the large fire extinguisher you always keep nearby……
Wow Havi, you never cease to amaze me. Such simple questions, but so super helpful for me (all of us I’m sure!). I can totally relate to the “there’s so much to do” and “there will always be too much to do” answers.
*muah* Thank you!
Havi, I love this post. The metaphor of fire really resonates with me. In Yosemite National Park, the park managers used to put out all the fires that started in the Mariposa sequoia grove. So many people loved those trees, and god forbid they burn down.
But then the rangers noticed that no new sequoias were seeding themselves and growing. So they began to let the fires burn, and indeed to practice controlled burns. And it ends up that sequoias are relatively impervious to fire–it takes a lot to get through their thick bark and reach the heartwood. And the sequoia cones need fire if they’re going to release their seeds–indeed, it’s how they know it’s time to release the seeds. If you tour the grove today, you’ll see many nurseries of young, strong sequoia trees reaching for the sun, fertilized by ashes of what’s come before.
Thanks for the morning metaphor. It will enrich my day!
@Havi: …WAH. Let it burn. What is true is that I am getting better at knowing when to do that. What is also true is that I still forget and panic and fall into old patterns. What is also also true is that every time I recognize the pattern and play with it, I get better at remembering that I too am water and will not be consumed.
@mariko: *chuckle* That’s a wonderfully vivid and memorable image.
Did I forget to say that I love this post? I love this post.
Oooooh. This is some lovely morning support/reinforcement/inspiration for me.
Thank you. Beautiful to read this after a day of having been crushed by my to-do list.
I love the image of fires that burn themselves out, and I love how deceptively simple the questions are.
xo
Oh thank you! I’d do well to print this out and stick it on my wall. What is true, and what is also true reminds me of the practice of replacing ‘but’ with ‘and’ to adjust one’s thinking around the perceived dichotomies… ‘but’ then morphs into something less blocking.
Good luck to all those feeling overwhelmed by to do lists and fires, including myself. Good luck and rings of stones – faery circles! Yay! Boundaries. Not so good at those… maybe ‘casting faerie circles’ is a better image than ‘putting up boundaries’? Ah detours, thank you for the inspirations Havi!
*happy thoughts and pixie dust*
~a sleepy Halo x
Ooooooh. This speaks directly to me.
“You are made of the element of water.” And water won’t be burned by a fire.
I’m going to do some brainstorming/playing about Gentle Planning. I think these concepts need to be part of it.
Thank you.
“rest is the first duty of the queen.”
Yes, yes yes yes yes yes. Perfect. Let us say WAH indeed!
Kisses to you and yours.
I once had a dream…. by which I mean, an I was asleep dream. Only this one, I remembered. 🙂 I don’t always, in my awake brain, remember the dreams I have, though I often know I’m acting on some kind of conference and decision that was taken by me for me while sleeping away.
Anyway, in this dream, I, me, as me, two legs, etc., was in the Den of a family of Wolves. They were, of course, also my family, my tribe, if you will. There was a Mama and a Papa and three cubs. The cubs had a chicken bone. I know chicken bones and canines are bad, bad, bad. I was trying to get this across to them, to take the bone, etc. and was getting nowhere. So I went to Mama and Papa and said, the cubs have a chicken bone, and they won’t listen to me! DO something!
Mama and Papa Wolf said, yes, we know the cubs have a chicken bone. Don’t worry about it.
Don’t worry about it?! How can I stop worrying about it?! IT’S A DANGEROUS CHICKEN BONE!
Mama and Papa Wolf replied, “Yes, it is, BUT — it’s not YOUR chicken bone.”
Maybe one of the true / also true questions you could ask, is, “Is it MY fire?”
Beautiful. So many things today have been telling me to “let go” and “stop trying to control everything” and “let it burn”.
Someone I know declared email bankruptcy today. Any emails he hadn’t responded to before today…he just erased them all. He let it burn, he let it go.
The idea of declaring bankruptcy resonated with me, so I spent some time writing about it. Then I read this, and it resonates on the same frequency. 🙂
And “You are made of the element of water.” made me breathe a deep deep sigh of relief. 🙂 thank you.
And because not everything requires a response, not even fires…
Also, aren’t most neural synapse connections built while we sleep? Dude, if you’re going to fry your brain so much with the Shiva and the Nata then you will definitely need REST to grow it back all smarter and shinier. Luckily this is why the answers will be there in the morning. Yay.
I’m sure that’s right, about sleep and the brain…. I read it somewhere I’m sure… probably on the INTERNET so you know it must be true….
Wishing you peaceful slumbers and deep exhalations….
x
This is VERY helpful for me. Thanks !
I forget what book I was reading. In it there was a group of fireman, fighting a wildfire. One of them did something that seemed utterly, profoundly counterproductive. He had the idea and tried to yell to the other firemen who were running for their lives, to stop.
His idea:
He stopped and set a smaller fire in front of him. He He stomped the fire out he had set and he stepped into the ring of scorched earth.
The big and out of control fire bypassed him, simply because it could not as is the nature of fire – it could not burn where all the fuel was already exhausted.
This seemingly counterproductive action saved the man.
Noone had ever done anything like that inside an out of control fire before. Now all the firefighters learn it.
I’d say the same applies here –
I had never really consciously thought to ask myself, what is also true , even though there is always more than one thing true at a time, in a situation.
Thank you!
One of my mottos has long been “More than one thing can be true at once.” You have amply demonstrated that!
Interestingly enough, just this morning I was meditating and came upon the idea of myself, my weaknesses, as the wick of a candle, burning, and saw the ashes being used to compost my garden. Let it burn, baby.
And Yay! for being curious, one of my favorite qualities. Curiosity can save the world, and being curious about what is true, and what is also true, is a great place to practice it.
Hey
I normally play with the Byron Katie questions which start with ‘Is that true?’
The end point for me being expanded multiple perspectives and less certainty (and less anxiety…)
‘Is that true?’ can be a bit confrontational however.
‘What else is true?’ could be a gentler way to get to the same place, for times when gentler is a good thing.
Which it often is.
Nice!