Red Light, Green Light<\/p>\n
I had a ghost\u00a0writing client who was a highly successful motivational speaker. Her life\u00a0seemed enviable. She had a recurring infomercial about transforming panic that constantly\u00a0lured a huge audiences of followers and she had all the accouterments that came\u00a0along with earning the big bucks: a house in Malibu, an ocean view, luxurious
Italian bedding, a closetful of designer clothes. Her kids went to the best\u00a0schools and a staff of people ran her estate. There was always a buzz in the\u00a0air.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d hired me to write\u00a0her book about calming anxiety but she always felt anxious to me. Whenever I\u00a0arrived at her home, it felt like I was dropping into an active volcano that\u00a0was about to erupt. She said that she hardly slept. I wasn\u2019t surprised since\u00a0she was revved up so much of the time. She told me she could absolutely make
the time to work with me, she put aside two hours a week in her calendar, but the\u00a0phone rang non-stop and she answered every call. She was a kind and\u00a0compassionate person and she wanted to be present but she didn\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n
She reminded me of a\u00a0bobble head, popping up and down, always on the move. When her daughter was\u00a0diagnosed with Asperger\u2019s, her son was failing in school and her husband left\u00a0her, I suggested she stop and take in the feelings but she refused to sit\u00a0still. She stuffed her grief, she continued to chase her proverbial tail and it
was next to impossible for her to let go and grieve.<\/p>\n
One afternoon when\u00a0the sun was setting over the ocean and lighting up her stained glass windows, she\u00a0hung up the phone and looked at me, breathless. \u201cWhat are your goals?\u201d she wanted\u00a0to know. \u201cWhere do you see yourself five years from now? Why don\u2019t you look for\u00a0a husband? What do you really want?\u201d<\/p>\n
She was asking me the\u00a0questions she was asking herself. I thought about it. I loved my work, I had a beautiful\u00a0home, I had a great group of supportive friends, I wasn\u2019t actively looking for\u00a0a relationship, I was able to take downtime and my personal issues were not
plastered all over the Internet. I didn’t need a staff and I could lie around\u00a0in my sweats and read a book, do a crossword puzzle, watch TV or just stare at\u00a0the walls and think. I\u2019d been all over the world with the ballet, I\u2019eaten at\u00a0the finest restaurants in France and Italy, but I preferred simple meals and\u00a0staying close to home. I ate cleanly and I slept. \u201cI have everything I need and\u00a0I don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming next,\u201d I told her. \u201cAll I want is peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
A look of\u00a0disappointment shadowed her face. \u201cIs that all?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I nodded. That\u00a0kind of \u201call\u201d was hard to come by.<\/p>\n
This is still a\u00a0potent topic for me. Sometimes I look at friends whose calendars are always\u00a0full and I wonder if mine should be the same. But that isn\u2019t what I want. Someone\u00a0said to me, \u201cDoing less would probably give me a better quality of life, but I\u00a0have to keep the wheels turning or I\u2019ll lose my social media followers.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was reminded of\u00a0a lyric from Joni Mitchell\u2019s song, \u201cFree Man in Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d go back there tomorrow but for the work I\u2019ve taken on,Stoking the star\u00a0making machinery behind the popular song.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last night, I was\u00a0sitting on my bed with my cat beside me and I became aware of her breath. Her furry\u00a0body was subtly moving up and down and up and down and she was content. She wasn\u2019t
doing anything special. She was simply doing what we all do from the day we\u2019re born\u00a0until the day we leave. Breathing in and breathing out. And when we take a pause\u00a0and become aware of our breathing, our minds stop racing and our hearts open.<\/p>\n
In order for me to
get through life without going crazy, pausing and conscious breathing are\u00a0crucial. Learning to be with myself no matter what is going on, is my life\u2019s\u00a0work. When I was younger, I thought that when I got older, it would all be\u00a0handled, but the older I get, the more I realize that nothing in life is\u00a0handled for good. It all keeps changing. Things fall apart and they come\u00a0together. They fall apart again and they come together. The best I can do is\u00a0make a commitment to slow down and be present with myself. Sometimes that\u2019s
difficult but the old adage, \u201cThe only way out is in,\u201d rings true.<\/p>\n
What if a red light\u00a0on the road meant \u201cpause and breathe?\u201d instead of, \u201cThere\u2019s so much f***ing traffic,\u00a0I\u2019m going to be late.\u201d Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, said that\u00a0when he was in a car and he had to stop at a red light, instead of getting\u00a0impatient, he used the time to slow down his thoughts and become conscious of his\u00a0breathing. When the light turned green, he felt calmer instead of more anxious.<\/p>\n
If you become aware\u00a0that you are out of breath and grasping for something out of your reach, try\u00a0deepening your breath. If you want something different to happen than what\u2019s\u00a0happening right now, take a pause. This offers the opportunity to see where you are, how you feel, to observe the world around you and reset the mechanisms
that influence your mind.<\/p>\n
Our breath is always\u00a0there. Becoming aware of it is a gift we can give ourselves, a reminder that\u00a0we\u2019re not living in a constant emergency. We don\u2019t have to fix our lives or\u00a0trade them in for a newer version. We don\u2019t have to do anything about it. It\u00a0keeps us alive, it\u2019s designed that way, but when we become conscious of it, it
does more than keep us alive. It reminds us to become present in our lives, to appreciate\u00a0the love and beauty around us, to grieve what needs grieving and helps us\u00a0feel connected to the world around us. Disconnection is painful. Connection is\u00a0a balm that will lessen our pain.<\/p>\n
Taking a pause to\u00a0breathe has become my coping mechanism. What\u2019s yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Red Light, Green Light I had a ghost\u00a0writing client who was a highly successful motivational speaker. Her life\u00a0seemed enviable. She had a recurring infomercial about transforming panic that constantly\u00a0lured a huge audiences of followers and she had all the accouterments that came\u00a0along with earning the big bucks: a house in Malibu, an ocean view, luxuriousItalian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2654,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions\/2654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}