The No Plan Plan
‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.. I’m not sure where I want to live or what to do for work’ she answered truthfully. ‘I actually don’t know what I’m doing with my life’. Panic set in as she realised her own uncertainty.
‘No plan then?’he joked.
‘No.’ she replied, unamused.
‘That sounds like freedom to me’, he said.
Life is never what we expect. At the end of my last relationship, I felt as though I was in a boat docked to a burning harbour. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I had an axe and I was swinging at the rope to break away, but the ties were too strong and too many. They wouldn’t sever. I was exhausted, but desperate for freedom, so I kept going. Finally, I broke free. To my surprise freedom wasn’t the elated feeling I had expected. It was the opposite. It felt as though my boat was adrift on a roaring sea. Terrifying. In time, I did find my sea legs, and learnt a valuable lesson in the process:
Lost OR Free
Terrified OR Excited
Given up OR Surrendered
Opposing feelings, feel exactly the same.
The fine line between fear and excitement are the lines of the story we write and believe. The power is in our perspective. If you’ve been numbing out, it’s quite a shock to feel all the feels. Pleasure comes with pain and pain with pleasure. It’s neither good nor bad; it just is. Two sides of the same coin. You feel the adrenaline, and you get to decide what it means: ‘I’m not ready!’ versus ‘I’m ready!’
I didn’t know what I was going to write in this post until I started typing, no plan. My lack of preparation could have easily been a reason to fret. But I began this blogging thing on a whim, before I could plan it all out. If I had, I’m sure I would have organised themes for different days - ‘Mindfulness Monday’, ‘Truth Time Tuesday’, a day of bulk writing so I had content ready days in advance and other complications under the guise of ‘organisation’. I would have been bored before it began. Instead, I woke up this morning with the same question I’ve had on my mind every day this week, ‘What will I write about today?’ The answer, ‘I guess I’ll find out when I write it’. It was exciting. Sure enough, as I let my Regina Phalanges dance on the keys, words came out.
Instead of drowning in uncertainty I chose to dive into curiosity.
It’s not always easy to will fear into excitement, there is reason I haven’t ticked skydiving off my bucket list, yet. But it turns out there is an insanely simple trick we can all use to change our physiology and flick the switch. That trick is, wait for it, breathing. Research shows that the only physiological difference between fear and excitement is in the exhale.When you’re afraid, you take a sharp breath into the top part of your lungs and hold it. When you’re delighted or excited, you take a sharp breath into the top part of your lungs and then you let it out with a sigh “aaahhh”. You can literally breath out your fear…
Fear is just excitement without the exhale.
I know it sounds crazy but try it right now. Hold. Reset. Then Release. Feel the difference? What an amazing power we all have at our disposal. Next time your feeling creative anxiety, choose excitement and exhale the fear away.
Breathe easy.
Your Friend,
Buzzy