Shaking up the Control Freak

And I'm back! Anthony and I had a wonderful, present vacation in Costa Rica, with just the right mixture of natural wonders, vigorous adventure sports, relaxing times of just being, and connecting with old and new friends across a variety of languages.

There is something about a vacation that helps you see things just a bit more clearly. Maybe part of it is that you see what aspects of your life you leave behind, and which you take with you. The stuff that you take with you seems even more glimmering against the backdrop of a new locale and new adventures.

On my trip to Costa Rica, one Samantha characteristic that glimmered and shone in the sun was that I am a control freak.

I like to be in control. Heck, I would even call it an addiction. You can see it in the way that I strive to control my time, trying to use every minute of it with optimal efficiency. You can see it in my friendships, where I control the flow of conversation to focus on what I want to focus on, and avoid what I want to avoid. You can see it in my relationship with Anthony, where I try to control where he puts his towel and how he pronounces the word "miracle."

This proved particularly maddening in Costa Rica, when I tried to control our schedule across two languages, poor phone access, and a populace that is, in general, a tad laid back.

Now, there are many good things that come with being a control junkie. Oftentimes, I get what I want, how I want it. But here is a drawback of being a control freak: there is no space for the world to surprise me. Oftentimes, the answers that we seek in our lives are waiting just around the corner, in the most unsuspecting of places... but if you are always in control, you never look in the unsuspected places. You look in the suspected ones. And so you look and look and start to short-circuit because you've found one thing you can't control, gaining insight, and meanwhile the signs around you are pointing the way.

So, I'd like to share with you an exercise from Beth and Lauren, cofounders of the Handel Group. The goal of this exercise is to shake up your nicely orchestrated routine to make space for new perspectives to enter. What you do is deliberately shift your daily routines to something unfamiliar. For example, if you always eat cereal for breakfast, try oatmeal. If you brush your hair with your left hand, try your right. If you always run down Willard Street during your daily jogs, try running down Orchard Street instead. Answer the phone with a different greeting. And so on.

This exercise in neat, because it makes you realize how familiar we are with a small set of daily experiences, and how thoroughly unfamiliar we are with an infinite number of others. Your day has a dash more adventure and intrigue in it, and you find yourself being more present in the NOW (nod to the last blog post) because you can't run on autopilot. You need to concentrate on what you are doing, otherwise you'll start brushing your shoulder, or get lost on that jog. Moreover, by loosening your iron-clad grip on your daily schedule, you allow the unsuspected to appear and touch you.

Maybe the Costa Ricans figured this out a long time ago. Maybe this trip was exactly the right thing for me, for all the unsuspected reasons.

Image courtesy of http://forums.trossenrobotics.com

The here and now

Continuing with the theme of scheduling stresses, I realized recently that I spend a lot of time being somewhere else. While playing fetch with the dog, I think about all of the other things I want to accomplish before 8:00am, and will I have the time? While eating breakfast, I check my email and plan out my communications for the day. While talking to my partner Anthony, I wonder what we will make for dinner. While eating dinner, I plan out the wedding shower card I'm going to make for my buddy Sandra. And on and on.

The consequence of my rambling mind is that I don't experience the joy of the current moment. The cute about-face my dog does while diving for that toy to avoid a collision with the wall, the yumminess of the food I'm eating, and the beautiful depth of Anthony. The irony of it all is that the goal of my scheduling is to accomplish and experience as much as I can, but then when my efforts reach fruition, I don't take the time to actually experience the moment. My mind is off on the next thing. Even though I live a jam-packed life, at the end of the day I feel unfulfilled. My first response to this feeling is to say "well then, I guess I need to schedule more activities into my day, then." But in reality I have plenty of quantity, but not much quality.

My solution to this has come from meditation. I meditate for 2 minutes before doing something that I want to enjoy. During those two minutes, I close my eyes and focus my attention on my breathing. In and out, in and out. The focus brings me to the current moment, and then when I open my eyes and move on to the event itself, I am more present to what is happening now. And when the elsewhere thoughts pop into my head, I am more able to say "Not now" instead of indulging them.

Today, Anthony and I head off to Costa Rica for a vacation and the wedding of two friends, Jason and Hillary. I might blog while on vacation, I might not. But one thing is for sure: there will be many two-minute meditations :).