We pulled in to Nevada City from Road Trip 2008 on Friday, three days ago. Today is the first day of being back in “take care of business” mode. As it was when I left, community work (our first Nevada City Farmers Market was on Saturday!!) is taking a significant amount of my energies. In thinking about planning for the week and being aware that I was working 36/7 the week before leaving, I’m also wondering how best to proceed, post-vacation.

I feel like there are some wild horses stampeding along the mental plains and I’m unwilling to let them have their way. Taking some time on the back porch, this is where my thoughts are leading for reining the stampede back in…

Learn to control my mind and I can do any and everything. This is my practice now, controlling my mind. Observe:

• One thing on my plate can consume 110% energy (i.e. drawing from reserves and not sustainable).
• Ten things on my plate can consume 50% of my energy (i.e. I’m organized, taking care of business and not expending any energy unnecessarily).

Which do I prefer? That’s a no-brainer! Which am I doing at this point in my life? Ten things on my plate at 110%. My goal is to get that down to 80%.

No wonder I’ve been so drawn to meditation lately. I thought it was going well and then I got a book at the famous Powell’s Books in Portland called, Turning the Mind Into an Ally. [I love the title and lament the reality that the mind is such an unruly foe so much of the time.] Sakyong Mipham, the author talks about the nine stages of meditation in the Buddhist tradition.

The first four have to do with placement of the mind on the breath. In other words, developing the ability to hold calm attention on the breath without getting distracted by a wandering mind. He calls this stabilizing the mind. One way to think about it the mind as a body of water. The untrained mind is like a rough ocean with tall waves on which you get thrown and pulled all over the place. As the mind stabilizes, the waters calm. The next step might be white caps on the ocean–you still get tossed about but not as much. Eventually, the deep waters on which you float are calm and serene. One way to tell where you are on the waters is how many breaths you can take in meditation without a thought popping in your boat. Once you can do about 21 breaths in a row, you’re probably at the second level.

Like I said, I thought I had been doing well with my meditation, but after reading Turning the Mind Into an Ally, I’m quite clearly still in level one. LOL.

Why do I think this is such an important practice to cultivate? It’s mostly intuitive–I just know that getting my mind under control is an incredibly important part of my development as a person, but also for the work I do in the world. Burn-out is so last paradigm! Learning how to say “No” to requests for my time and energy is one part of the solution–but it’s a small part. There is a lot to do in the world right now. Change is happening so fast and our participation in creating the communities that truly serve its members is crucial. But like I said, burn-out is no good. Getting spent because of all the responsibilities on my plate serves no one.

The ultimate question, as I see it, comes down to a foursome: “How do I do as much as possible, as well as possible, with as little effort as possible, and have as much fun as possible?” I’m still figuring it out but I know that meditation is the key: it enables me to stay clear on priorities, focus my energies, do what I do best and leave the rest for collaborators, stay out of drama-filled situations, and have the greatest impact.

Maybe someday meditation will replace the need to do weekly planning and ToDo lists but I probably won’t get to that point until level six or seven, which, according to my timeline, should happen in another three decade or so. =)

This is an easy to read and understand book on meditation by Sakyong Mipham with a forward by Pema Chodron.

You can read more about my thoughts on it in this post.

(Normally I’d include a picture of the cover but this one is basically all white and sort of hard to see on the white background.)

This article was originally published in The Simplifier #66.

Article: Vacationing - Your inner masseuse vs. your inner drill sergeant

By Shawn Tuttle

I think it’d be safe to assume that you’d rather go on vacation with a masseuse than a drill sergeant. In fact, you’d probably enjoy deep relaxation more than jump-and-run orders all the time. 

Why is it then, that so many people let their internal drill sergeant dictate their lives so thoroughly? “Keep going! Don’t stop! There’s more to do! One more, one more! Look at him over there, he’s doing more than you! Pick up the pace!” 

Maybe you always feel under the gun as soon as you wake up and race around until you drop into bed at night. Whether it’s professional work, yard work, or family time–you charge on like the Energizer bunny. No wonder it can take a week of vacation before you feel like you’re even on vacation! 

On the flip side, someone who has been on a long break from work may feel like they want some get-up-and-go discipline to get back in the swing of things. 

Naturally, we move back and forth between these two states. (Obviously there are more than two states, but we’ll playing the duality game here for the sake of demonstration.) A healthy cycle might go something like this:

Charge–rest–charge–rest–charge–charge–rest–rest. 
Sounds pretty ideal and balanced, doesn’t it?

However, our American culture and accepted work ethic has moved us toward a different pattern: 
Charge–charge–charge–charge–rest–charge–charge–charge–charge
Not very sustainable! 

How to screw up a perfectly good vacation
We let ourselves be hijacked by the drill sergeant for 50 weeks of the year and then depend on a once-a-year vacation to rejuvenate. Really now!?