Walking thoughts
"Touching Grass" is more important than people give it credit for... Especially for those so absorbed by their build or business or family.
Getting so wrapped up in your day-to-day, for positive or negative reasons or even a mix of both, can keep things moving... At the exact same pace as they have been.
All while keeping you the you are.
What do I mean when I say "Lick a tree"?
The phrase is a reminder to myself to actually take myself out of "function" mode, when I'm so lost in something or putting out fires or if I am overwhelmed with noise, decisions, interruptions and the like, by "licking a tree". Go for a walk, remove myself from the environment causing me the issue temporarily, do something unusual or not routine (hence the Lick part of the phrase).
Multiple reasons to do this:
- Moving reduces stress
- Constant demands on attention cause stress/anxiety
- Nature has been proved to have "calming" effect, even looking at a photo of nature can help.
- Being present with yourself helps you gain perspective
- Talking to others has cognitive and social benefits.
I don't literally mean Lick a tree, if you want to though I won't stop you, I mean go into nature, go analogue and write or draw in a physical medium, move your body, go somewhere else, socialise face to face (that's the most beneficial way to socialise anyway),
Bring your thoughts back to yourself by disconnecting from tech, even 30 minutes and you'll start to feel better as you're actually here for once.
Not pre-empting, not planning for the future and not picking up the pieces of whatever just happened.
You are you, right now, wherever you are.
This is what I want to help people with, atleast in part, give them a chance to stop and smell the roses, splash in a puddle, wink at a passerby.
There is very little enjoyment to be had from a life where you're moving so fast that everything is a blur... In that haze of motion things begin to feel less like things and more like wallpaper.
Small to medium business owners, are the worst for it. They are so determind to make ends meet, please the customer, make sure everything is running smoothly that they might not be able to see the woods for the trees, so engrossed in trying to make the business work that they don't realise that the faster they go, the more the falling leaves turn into shuriken. Cutting, Slicing, tiny nicks that build up to the point that you have lost all your energy and have to slow down.
That's where you take stock. You have no idea where you are, which direction you were meant to be going or how you ended up so exhausted and bleeding profusely. You look behind you to see how far you're come, only to be met with a trail of blood.
You're blood.
From all tiny little nicks you didn't notice at the time...
The resulting trail of blood and your current exhaustion being the only things marking how far you have come.
But now you can't move, lack of blood and tiredness sweep over you. You need to rest and recover lest you arrive at the end a mere pile of mince that no one, least of all the version of you who started, would recognise.
This is not only applicable to business owners, no. Far from it. Any one who finds themselves repeating their days or reacting to everything that isn't themselves would benefit from licking a tree, atleast once in a while; parents, students, athletes, corporate execs, programmers, anyone.
Life isn't meant to be run on autopilot. It's meant to be experienced; through connections, through learning, through trial and error, through presence.
You don't fully experience something if Billy's football match is coming up and you need to wash their kit beforehand, or if Daisy in accounting is going to be back before end of year finances need consolidating, or even if your elderly grandmother's health and wellbeing are being upheld now that your father has had to move her into a care home since she fell in the shower...
You were having lunch at a cozy little pub with your family and all you've done is yell at the kids for misbehaving, text your dad asking about grandma, scrolled through emails to find Daisy's return date and ordered stain remover from Amazon...
All the while your partner has asked you a question from one knee... The most important question of their life.
And you haven't heard it. You didn't notice the staff rearranging parts of the pub for this moment, them get down on one knee. Where did this beautiful little box come from?
You finally stop running and lick the tree.
You notice all the cuts and blood from the leaves now that you're here. All the "work calls", the questions about jewellery, it's all beginning to come together... And you notice that there were things that you would have noticed if you weren't running.
Then the exhaustion... You feel like you are missing all the parts that make it worth living...
Never Again
You almost missed your proposal, if you hadn't have licked that tree, the story would have ended much differently.
Before too much further. Stop. Smell the roses, take a look around.
Lick a tree.