Rush, rush, rush...
And taking time to pause
I took this photo at London Liverpool Street station during September.
My husband and I were staying nearby and I was crossing through the station for breakfast. Then, I was off to the Tate Britain to view the ‘Now You See Us’ exhibition that I first learned about from
right here on Substack.The balcony from where I was standing provided a fantastic vantage point and I paused to watch the bustle of commuters and travellers. Surprisingly, the constant stream of people had a remarkably calming effect over me, and before I knew it a good five minutes or so had passed. Fortunately, I was on holiday and wasn’t in a rush myself.
In October, Katherine May used the prompt of ‘a bird’s eye view’ in one of her weekend journalling activities. I don’t complete as many of these as I would like to but something drew me to this particular exercise. As I began to work through May’s prompts, it struck me how rarely I pause to reflect on things, if only for a few minutes. I often move from one thing to the next with little thought (rush, rush, rush). And then I was reminded of the photo.
A recent example of this rushing mindset is related to work. Earlier this year, I was offered a role authoring some materials for an online education company. It was project-based and involved working remotely. Now a few months later, I am pleased to say that I have completed the project after some necessary revisions (edit, edit, and edit again) — a freelance writing contract complete!
But no sooner had I submitted the payment invoice when my head began squawking: what’s next? what’s next? and the accompanying anxious feelings effectively blocked out any chance of reflection.
One of the questions that May asks in her post is: ‘What does this person worry about the most?’ And when I step back and remove part of myself from this question, the word uncertainty bubbles to the surface — This person feels uncertain about several areas of her life and about the future.
I believe that this sense of uncertainty is something that I have always carried around, but have largely tried to manage through exerting control over as many aspects of my life as possible. Of course, it is impossible to control everything and everyone (who do I think I am?), but May’s exercises helped to remind me that perhaps I need to sit for a bit longer with some of my stickier emotions and thoughts around uncertainty and see where this takes me.
Easier said than done for sure, but it does feels that there is something powerful in stepping back rather than always rushing forwards.
And a link to some science…
There is some psychological research that utilises some of the ideas proposed above by adopting a birds-eye view. One piece of research investigating the area of third-person self-talk (i.e., using your own name when thinking about the self) found that it could help individuals with having more control over their thoughts, feelings, and behaviour! (Moser et al, 2017).
Coming up next week! 🎶
I am off to a music festival this weekend! Each year, Hong Kong hosts Clockenflap (interesting name, right?) and it runs from Friday through Sunday. It is highly unlikely that my husband and I will stick around for the whole event (I mean, not only do I need to sleep, but I also need to go food shopping for the following week, do laundry and so on), but I am particularly looking forward to seeing Air (Friday), and St Vincent (Saturday). Next week’s post will be based around this festival 🎶
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I can definitely relate to this, especially getting comfortable with the unknown. I think teachers are so accustomed to (and good at!) planning for contingencies that it is difficult for us not to account for every possibility and have an idea of what's coming next. We are always one step ahead, as we must be with a classroom full of students. It takes a bit of work to undo that mode of thinking. It's not a bad thing, I don't think; it's just not always necessary, and is a difficult mode to maintain through life.
Oh, 3rd person talk, for sure, works. It's comedy, it's reassuring, it's everything! I've always been struck by how many teachers (in the teachers room) use it to soothe and keep themselves on task!