Getting Patrick Swayze with Impulsiveness
Turning the battle into a dance you can lead
Impulsiveness is a shifty bastard.
They’ve led to some of my greatest triumphs:
Paddling into a sucking pit of a wave that’s on the wrong side of safety.
Freefalling for a split second during the drop in, that moment of stomach-lurching panic, then sticking the drop against all odds to race off infront of the foam ball that’s trying to swallow board and limb.
There you go Old Mate! Nailed it! Told ya!
Guiding my legs toward the girl and into a conversation before my brain can give me all of the excuses not to…
Left leg, right leg, champ - there ya go. Yep, now say something or she’ll think you’re mute or a mime. Nobody wants to date a mime.
Giving that dude, who looks like he hasn’t had a shower in many moons, the $10 I always carry in my wallet before I can self-rationalise that there are support systems in place for ‘these people’...
Yeah there is, but they’re overwhelmed. What can you buy with $10 anyway? Not even a pint! Help a brother out!
They’ve also been my arch nemesis:
Beginning the next thing instead of double checking the first thing, because there’s many more things to do before the working day ends.
Having the thing come back to bite me in the arse because I’d made a mistake. Making the rest of the day more stressful than it needed to be…
You fell for that one again?! Classic! Never gets old!
Buying the shoes because they’re a crazy price.
Not needing or particularly liking the crazy-price-shoes.
Not ever wearing the crazy-price-shoes that now reside in my cupboard and my subconscious.
You know you’ll never wear those bastards, right?! Going to make a nifty clothing donation in about six months though, fella! Good going!
Picking up the phone to check for notifications during a work sprint.
Come on mate, someone SURELY messaged you in the last 5 minutes. That draft post you’re writing isn’t going anywhere! Just a little check. And maybe a Tik Tok. And a quick skim of the news… I wonder if there’s a discount on thermals at the moment…?
I used to perceive my relationship with impatience as a battle.
Good vs. Evil.
It was exhausting.
It wasn’t until I realised that I could never actually win the battle and, if anything, it was more of a dance, that I began to find some semblance of sustainable balance in the relationship.
Like any dance; sometimes you lead and sometimes you’re led.
The trick, for me, has been to identify my role in this jig at any given moment and to default to a couple of simple circuit breakers when I don’t want to be Jennifer Grey to my impulsiveness Swayze.
By the way: how great was Swayze?! Can you believe Dirty Dancing did $214M USD at the box office back in ‘88?! Believe it.
Begin the day with a mindful routine
For the best part of a decade I’ve been beginning my day with a set routine and it’s without a doubt one of the single most beneficial moves in my lead-the-impulsiveness-dance playbook.
Despite many iterations the three key ingredients of my routine always remain the same and it can take anywhere from 10 - 30 minutes:
Tea
Breathing and meditation
Movement
This trinity seems to be just the right mix of focussed activities I need to shift my brain into a ‘relaxed state of presence’. Yes; I still want to start flipping through news feeds but I have the awareness (and generally speaking; the control) not to begin that dance…
Work in sprints with Mindful Smoko (break) intervals
Breaking my day up into work ‘sprints’ (timed intervals of a fixed duration) with intermittent breaks has been a game changer for me.
Without setting these parameters around my working/break cycle I am waaaaay too prone to distraction, finding myself lost in actions/wasting time/thinking about snacks.
It’s also one of the key methods I’ve employed and refined that has allowed me to transition from being a former ‘5 day a week marketing agency grinder’ type into a globe trotting senior professional who hasn’t worked full-time since Spain last won the World Cup and Obamacare was created.
Oh, and ‘what’s a ‘Smoko’’ I hear you ask?
Well, any Australian reading this will probably know and if not, just watch our unofficial National Anthem.
The following is a good starting place to plan your first Mindful Sprint & Smoko and remember; you can alway adjust the duration of your ‘sprint’ depending on your energy levels.
Feeling good? Maybe sprint a little bit longer.
Getting tired? Reign that sucker in a little.
The key to success/warding off impatience is to never exceed 1.5 hours (90 minutes) without taking a mindful break. Unconscious loss of focus (and essentially: productivity) can begin as quickly as 30 minutes into a sprint and this loss increases as your time without a break extends. You’ll find that once you’ve burned your wick too low you’ll be much more prone to bad decisions (and hasty actions).
I tend to sprint for 1 hour before noon and 45 mins after. I’m a lark, for sure.
Work sprint: 30 mins to 1 hour - you do you…
No checking phones, reading news, making snacks or any other stuff you haven’t realised you’re unconsciously doing too frequently with no purpose other than to not work.
Break length: min. 10 minutes
To make your break mindful (or as I like to call it: a Mindful Smoko) you need three ingredients: routine, movement and breathing. The aim here is not to bring your work with you and be trying to consciously solve problems - we want to switch into (dominant) Alpha brain wave state which requires a shift/relaxation of focus.
A powerful little Mindful Smoko could look like:
Leaving your desk space and going outside
3x rounds of 4 second in (nose), 8 second out (mouth) belly breaths
5x shoulder shrugs forward then back. 5x Neck turns left right, then up and down then side to side (ear toward shoulder)
5x Hip circles in either direction - this is a great one to impress the neighbours. Be careful around pre-schools.
There are all sorts of other goodies associated with performing your new ritual which I delve more deeply into during my (live) Mindful Smoko workshop but this guide should introduce you to a path towards working and feeling better.
Now get dancing, Swayze.
Be your EPIC
- Michael (Mike) Drohan
We out. 🙇