The Cure for People Who Hurry
What You’re Missing While Waiting
I love discovering intuitive solutions to day-to-day struggles. With intuition, there is no struggle, only release from struggle.
Turns out, it’s another paradox to the universe, the swirling yin-yang of positive and negative energies that somehow balance everything. No one side can always be right (or even exist) without the other. If one side ever seems “pure” or dominant, expect the situation to flip soon.
“The waiting is the hardest part.” — Tom Petty
I feel ya, Tom. I’ve always been an impatient one myself. So, let’s flip the situation. Let’s make waiting the funnest part.
Because actually, it is.
Journey to The Elusive (yet obvious) Sweet Spot
Too often reaching for a goal messes up the goal itself. We get lost struggling, because we’re impatient.
Why do we hate waiting so much? Because there’s a lot of tension and suspense in the waiting. But you know what they say about energy, it can’t be destroyed but it can be transmuted.
Transmuting is to change something in form, nature, or substance. So, the trick is transmuting the frenetic energy of waiting into ecstasy.
Goal Addiction is When One Goal is Reached, We Grasp for the Next
Focusing only on goals causes us to hurry to reach the goal.
Apply that same approach to painting a masterpiece, making love, or growing a flower from fertile soil. If any of these actions are hurried, how do you think the reaction/outcome is?
How does a hurried painting look? How does a hurried lover feel? How does a hurried flower grow?
If we slow things down a bit (again, slow breathing is the free medicine there for the inhaling) then we can naturally sink into the unfolding of each moment, the journey, the brilliant now. That’s the sweet spot of life.
And how sweet it is…
The masterpiece is achieved when each seductive stroke of the brush glides across the canvas transforming color to form, light and shadow.
When the lover’s call is answered and her every move becomes the center of the universe, well, words don’t go that far…
The flower will open to the sun after clouds saturate the midnight-black minerals to awaken the seed.
“The masters accomplish everything by doing nothing.” — Tao Te Ching
This doesn’t imply we sit around idle all day, it just implies we’re not chasing our ego’s wants all over the place. Rather, we’re in a receptive flow state where in good things come to us that are meant to be.
When the good stuff arrives, or our natural course takes us to them, then the appropriate actions arise, but they are “in the flow” instead of from some compulsion or ego-craving.
Doing nothing implies allowing the flow of the universe to guide us, or as a spiritual person would put it: surrendering to the will of God.
Novelists, Hollywood Producers and Investors Know This
The rising action, that culmination toward the climax, is the fun part. That’s what a good writer knows how to extend, the ecstatic moment-by-moment build up. The same holds true for life.
Right here. Right now. That’s the sweet spot.
You won the race to the egg. And you’re winning again when you learn to love the waiting.
Next Time You’re Feeling Impatient…
If you learn how to love the in-between moments instead of wishing they’d hurry up, everything brightens, like turning up the dimmer in a room.
That’s because almost all of life is made up of those in-between moments.
God is in every moment.
The cool part is, embracing the waiting makes the arrival sweeter. For all we didn’t get frazzled leading up to the event. You’ll be calm and totally in that moment too.
Chilled out Pooh Bear knew the value of waiting, and drank that nectar like honey from the comb.
From The Tao of Pooh:
“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them…”
“Each time the goal is reached, it becomes Not So Much Fun, and we’re off to reach the next one, then the next one, then the next.”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
Hollywood loves extending that “coming soon” to theaters time. Even Wall Street know often a stock surges leading up to a big announcement. But when the announcement actually drops, there’s often a sell off. Not always, but it’s amazing how often this happens.
Even in spirituality, we await the “next phase” after this life. Better to make the most of this life now. Won’t that make the next level that much richer?
And there’s one easy way to make life richer, relish the space between thoughts, the pause between breaths, the feel of air on your skin, all waiting in the luxurious now.
https://medium.com/the-mood/boost-your-morning-mood-with-a-cacao-ceremony-made-easy-8f445b0c9d35
https://medium.com/the-mood/boost-your-morning-mood-with-a-cacao-ceremony-made-easy-8f445b0c9d35