Remember the childhood game of hide ‘n seek? You’d find a place to hide and the seeker counts to 100 and for those 100 plus seconds you could not be found. Your heart would beat faster with the thrill of being undiscovered for however long it took.
What is it that you do today to feel this same feeling, connecting you to the present moment where no one can find you?
I am betting you don’t feel that awesome feeling very often. I know I don’t. With our phones by our sides we can always be found or gotten to. Stress is but a few seconds away or worse, it’s with us constantly as we await that next text or call.
In yoga and meditation we practice being in the now, or as Ram Dass says, “Be Here Now”. Calmly we go deep within ourselves, breathing consciously and allowing ourselves to hide out from the rest of the world. It’s our time to do this. But that’s only for about an hour if joining a class, or shorter yet, with a 10 minute guided meditation.
We all know friends who when we golf or dine out with them they leave their phones on, light- side- up, as they await a call or text from another friend or a needy family member. Clearly, they are not “on call” to do emergency heart surgery, but they want to feel relevant, needed, important, and thus the phone is always by their sides. Your time with them comes second to whomever they anticipate a call from. When you call them out on it they have their rationalization: “Oh, I’m waiting to see if my son got his car fixed, or my daughter is having a hard time with her break up.”
There will never be a time when everyone you know is safely in place and would not have a need to call upon you, that’s pure fantasy. But as my pediatrician used to ask me when I’d worry about something silly concerning a child, “Do you want to live in that space?” My answer was always, “No I don’t”.
Most things don’t require an immediate response. Remember that a major cause of stress is feeling you are “on call”. By eliminating this major cause of stress you are helping yourself profoundly.
A side benefit to not quickly responding to friends and family is that you are training them, teaching others that your time is not all about responding fast. You might be doing other things, off line.
So how do you go about protecting that “unfound” time for yourself ? This requires leaving your phone in another room where you can’t hear it, or better yet not taking it with you when you go out for short periods. I know some of you will find this scary. What if my elderly mom falls and needs me? What if my husband needs me to pick him up after getting a flat tire during his solo bike ride. I get it. So try at first to find those times when your mom is safe and your husband is not bike riding to embrace those precious hours without being found. You can always build as you go, adding more time. A short walk can become a longer one. It’s all part of training your own mind to look around and really see and feel vs. habitually calling or texting someone to share what is on your mind.
Today, in that pursuit, I took a walk without my phone for 20 minutes at our Lake Home, telling my husband I’m heading out for a walk. I didn’t tell him I didn’t have my phone, going full in on this experiment. I did start to feel anxious when unable to share a picture or tell my husband what I learned from a neighbor who it turns out is not selling his home. Then I remembered what my message therapist told me just yesterday. “Pick up a round stone and rub it, like a worry stone, and put your anxiety into the stone”. And it worked. Try it. You just may find it liberating.
Make a commitment to find your “hide ‘n seek” moments, as you did so many times as a child. Your mental health will thank you.
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