I think I have disliked downtime since I was 12 years old and had no idea what to do with my racing thoughts and crippling emotions. My adolescent solution: constantly be doing something so I didn’t have to sit with them. Since that time, and after much therapy and meditation, my ability to sit with my thoughts and emotions has greatly increased. However, I still often feel this baseline of restlessness.
Sunday was the first day of a new month. My goal this month involves my attitude towards downtime and has three objectives.
- Take a moment to OBSERVE – What this means is to just acknwoledge and fully feel my emotions and sensations without acting on them or identifying with them when in downtime situations. I can even set a timer for this purpose if that helps.
⠀ - Don’t just wait – After I have given myself some space to just be with my thoughts and emotions (and taken some deep breaths), I would like to use skillful action. I don’t have specific actions I want to take or thoughts I want to think, but I do want to involve my mind or body in something skillful – skillful being the key word here. Some obvious options include:
- Daily thoughts: create mind castle that I am periodically adding to
- Meditation
- Yoga pose: the best candidates are standing deep breathing, half moon pose, awkward pose, and eagle pose
- Push-ups
- Planks
⠀
- Create daily downtime – In order to maximize what I learn from this challenge, I need to ensure I have plenty of opportunities to practice. In case I don’t have a specific circumstance that involves downtime during the day (and this excludes my daily commute), I need to be creative in giving myself these opportunities, which is generally the opposite of my natural instinct. Ways of doing this can include:
- Buying something at Walmart and waiting in line
- Showing up for dinner early
- Immediately going down to get printouts from printer before it has finished
- Bringing work over to ISS room without calling and waiting for them to get back
- Utilize downtime protocol instead of doing other things while waiting for ads to finish
I am not including larger segments of downtime in this challenge specifically. Usually these situations, like waiting for an appointment, will involve reading a book or listening to an audiobook or podcast. For this month, I am more concerned with the smaller chunks of downtime during the day where I cannot easily just turn on something to listen to or pull out a book.
May you find a sense of peace and purpose in the in-between periods of your life and daily existence.
Namaste.