#rushLess

“Inhale to mountain pose; exhale deeply to forward fold. You’ve been here before,” my yoga instructor told the class. I’ve been here a thousand times, I thought. What of it?

I generally rush to arrive at anything with a fixed start time. Not just for the journey there, but for the whole getting-ready process: rush to shower, rush to eat, rush to get to an appointment. I don’t want to be late or miss a dental appointment—seriously—but I’ve done my Appointment Day routine a couple hundred times. I’ve “been here” dozens of times. Why do I feel the need to rush? You might argue that anything could happen in traffic, but does my rushing help me to avoid that? I’m still going to leave the house at around the same time. Yet my behavior hints otherwise.

The other day, I was recklessly rushing through my morning routine to set up for my Zoom co-writing session, when the implication hit me. I have been here before! In fact, I’d been there three times a week for almost every week for a few years, now. Here, too, the routine is the same. And I’m almost always on time except for the day my hairdryer made a pop! sound followed by a burning smell. (The last time I ignored that and kept drying, I shocked myself. Otherwise, it was an unpredictable circumstance out of my control.)

I won’t get into how I “overprepare” here—just know that I was able to skip a minor detail to assess the hairdryer situation and still make it to my Zoom session on time. If I’ve been “here” before, there’s a familiarity about it. I’ve worked out the details and smoothed over the rough patches. What my yoga instructor was conveying was, when something is familiar, it makes us more confident, more trusting of the process. The situation typically doesn’t involve surprises and if they arise, we’re better equipped to handle them.

Back when I was a sportswriter, I asked professional bull rider Ty Murray how he handled his nerves in the moment before he and the bull left the chute. He told me that by then, he knows he’s done every single thing he possibly can to prepare for that very moment. When it arrives and the gate opens, he’s confident because he’s done everything in his control. (He might have overprepared—I didn’t ask.) After that, what happens, happens. Alpine ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin recently said something similar in an interview, about how she practices runs as much as she can and then, during the race, she knows she’s done the work and whatever happens, happens. In other words, both Ty and Mikaela have been at the start gate or chute many times before. They know what to expect. They trust the process.

The relevance of those examples for me now (in addition to the epiphany that I have no good excuse not to rush less) may be a stretch, so I hope you’ll stretch with me. I’m struggling to write a synopsis for my memoir. I’ve completed several revisions of my manuscript over the years, so I can’t use older versions of the synopsis for my current book proposal for agents and small publishers. But even writing a synopsis, I’ve been here before; I should be confident about it. I have a lot of practice. But it’s exceptionally difficult this time around.

As with my hairdryer situation, I’ve decided to pivot my strategy. Rather than force it, I’m honoring a suggestion in a recent Free Will Astrology horoscope. (Free Will Astrology if you’re curious. I’m not big into astrology, but these horoscopes are exceptional.) I’ve stepped back to take what it referred to as a “productive pause.” For me, that means setting the synopsis task aside to experiment with more creative, literary writing. Fingers crossed, when I return, my confidence will too, and along with my feeling refreshed, the familiarity of the task will enable me to bust out a brilliant synopsis. After I send it to agents and publishers, whatever happens, happens. (For the love of a writers goddess, let it happen.)

In the meantime, I’m watching for more complex situations to apply the assurance of You’ve been here before; trust that. Hopefully, it’s allowing me to conserve energy for when I’ll need to respond bravely and energetically to less familiar, less predictable circumstances of the future.