Has someone ever said to you “just put that thought in your parking lot?” i.e. great idea, we'll get back to it later when there's more time, money, resources etc.
Or perhaps you might have had someone say to you “you’re such a great visionary” i.e. love the ideas, now how’re we going to do it?
Well I’ve heard it. Sometimes I have so many thoughts running through my head that my mental roadways start to get full of traffic jams. In those instances no “cars” get to move forward because everyone is stuck. I just need some parking lots.
Last month was a particularly traffic jammy type month. I think maybe because it was the start of a new year so I was so eager to jump ahead and get going with plans, new yoga workshop ideas, connections I wanted to make, and interesting people I hoped to meet.
Yet, by the end of the month I had little to show for it, except for a pair of baggy eyes, and an overbooked calendar.
My head was ready to explode.
In yoga and other energy healing modalities, they might say I wasn’t fully “grounded”. I was in my upper chakras of sight/vision and not my lower ones of manifestation, feeling, and creation. I wasn’t fully in my body, I was in my mind, living in the realm of ideas, and not really getting anywhere, just getting overwhelmed.
I had ODed on ideas.
I was paralyzed and didn’t know which way to go because everything seemed so interesting and important. I was in a major mental traffic jam.
Or if each idea/plan/vision were represented by a post-it note, I had no board to post them on. My mind was cluttered with beautiful, multi-coloured stickies, but no wall to stick them to!
With the help of a very dear healer of mine, we spent some time mind-mapping out all of my mental post-its, dumping them onto a table, noticing which were taking up lots of my energy, which I wished would take up more of my energy, what I could park/throw away, and highlighted what I needed to move forward.
Aside from helping me prioritize, this visually showed me something even more interesting…my ego!
My ego was at fault for creating this post-it insanity or this mental car pill up.
I had never really thought about it this way, but yes, all my ideas and eagerness to pursue them right now, was simply my ego taking over (not to be confused with being egotistical, or self-centered).
So I spent some time contemplating this ego.
What was happening in this state of un-groundedness, was I was allowing my ego to orchestrate the symphony of post-its up there. He/she/it was telling me “I want to do it all, I can do it all, I think everything is interesting and worth pursuing, do it…NOW!”.
The problem was, nowhere was my ego telling me what to do first or where to start, or reminding me that I had choice. Ego was not providing me with a bulletin board for support.
So I called in my good friends humility and patience. They helped me sort things out.
I realized that yes, while I find so many ideas interesting and often want to pursue them all, I need to be gentle and not expect my physical self to be able to keep up or make all the ideas into reality.
As soon as I saw it was my ego trying to make me do all of these things, it changed how I approached my list. Even though it wasn’t coming from a place of self-centeredness, it still meant that some inner part of me felt I needed to accomplish it all – that’s ego.
So I created a sort of separation from the ideas, allowed myself to step back, and to say, “who is really driving this urge to get it done? Who is telling me it’s all important?”
And so from now on, I hope to pause before getting overwhelmed with pursuing intriguing ideas and plans, take a look at the mental post-its and remember to always call in patience and humility for help.
What are the post-its that are floating in your head? How might you see them differently if you were to ask yourself “where are these coming from?” and “Who says I need to do them?”
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