You have to learn to pace yourself – Pressure
You’re just like everybody else – Pressure
You’ve only had to run so far- So good
But you will come to a place
Where the only thing you feel
Are loaded guns in your face
And you’ll have to deal with – Pressure

–Billy Joel, “Pressure”

I keep looking at this month — and I realize how difficult it is to juggle a hectic schedule. I have been home two days now from a three-day conference for work that was only 24 miles away. I already have data requests stacking up at work because of those three days away. There’s also the podcast’s schedule to consider, which parallels another time frame that is coming up quickly – the OBOD Gulf Coast Gathering that happens in two weeks. So I definitely can feel the need to come back to a point where I can breathe, ground-and-center, and spend a few minutes not worrying about the timing of other things. Not particularly easy, but definitely necessary.

I am sure you – my twelve or thirteen readers – have those moments too. Where you feel like life is spiraling out of control like an airplane at 40,000 feet with an unexpected loss of one of your wings. Its a rather rough feeling. And a place from where you can easily panic.  Definitely been there and done that. And that’s why I spend time in daily meditations.

I have two periods of time in my daily routine that I set aside for meditation:  sunrise and sunset. I don’t even spend a lot of time doing either one – its essentially a moment where I can ground, center, and focus on just being in the moment. And its become such an integral part of my daily routine that I have learned to ground, center and focus wherever I am at in a very quick manner. I cannot relate enough how much this has saved me from throttling a co-worker in the hallways or a meeting.  And the technique that I utilize is extremely simple (for me).

If you have not seen the tree meditation that the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids published on youtube quite some time back – here’s my direct link to it.

Its a very simple, under three minutes, demonstration of a technique that I utilize.  Generally put, while going through the motions of the meditation, I visualize that I am growing roots – reaching deep inside the earth, letting my roots seek deeper and deeper until I find the level of the water table beneath. Then I let myself spend a few moments reveling in the cool, satisfying taste of the water, before expending my energy upwards to let my branches grow tall – feeling the wind pull and tug at my limbs while whispering the secrets it has discovered elsewhere to me.  Now, you can’t always spend time doing the motions within the meditation…but you can spend a few moments taking a deep breath and visualizing your growth of roots and branches. Remember, the depth of your roots determines whether the wind can blow you over or not. Grow your roots deep, and then remember that whatever is affecting you at that moment — it cannot move you off of your balance point. You will stand tall throughout whatever is happening.

Remember, trees grow through all kinds of trauma throughout their lives – provided that man doesn’t come and cut them down. There’s fires, where the success of survival is determined by the depth of the roots. There’s strong winds, where your roots again pull a role. There’s drought – where again the roots play a role in the survival of the tree.  Seeing a pattern here??

As a Libra, balance is important to my everyday survival. Occasionally, I will be set off my balance point – and my world will feel like a top spinning out of control. Grounding, centering and focusing on a single point helps me take on tasks one at a time. And that singular focus allows me to take on issues one at a time. This means prioritizing those tasks into must be done now, must be done soon, can wait a while, can wait even longer, and can wait the longest. Then, you take each one on in singular pieces. Once that task is finished, spend a moment to replenish your balance and reset your focus to the next task.

Granted, I know some folks that will say that this will not work for them…and I completely grok that. Whatever technique and methodology works for one person will not necessarily work or be correct behavior for another. That’s what makes us unique individuals. I do encourage you to find techniques that work for you. In our busy, hustle-and-bustle world where deadlines are placed on nearly everything that we do…we need to develop our own methods of coping with those artificial pressures.

–Tommy /|\