Transcript

Un-Manageable · Wanzology

Un-Manageable What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? That Marvin line will never die. What's going on? This is The Wanz, and you are in another episode of WANZOLOGY!! What's going on? How you doing? How yo’mama do? Oh, you'll have to forgive me. Mayhem has infected my world. You know that feeling when mayhem comes and just takes over everything and it doesn't matter what you do, it never ceases. Too many things happening at once. Ziggin’ when you should zag, moving, when you should actually sit still. Mayhem, I tell you, it's a thing. In my experience, that is a sign of your life being unmanageable. Unmanageable, meaning there are too many plates and not enough sticks. There are too many marbles and the table is too wide and it just tips and you can't keep hold of everything and things are falling on the floor and breaking, and you are missing appointments and you forget to text this person back and you forgot to put salt in the recipe and so it tastes like paste. Humans think that they are very, very good at multitasking, being able to do many things at once. It's a nice thought, but reality is somewhat different. I'll be gentle. I'll be kind. Unmanageability is a direct result of disorganization, disorganization. If you had your life organized or if you had things organized, there'd be no problems. The thing that comes to mind for me is the silverware tray. Every slot has its own utensil, spoons, tablespoons, salad fork, dinner fork, butter knife, and very rarely do people mix these up. Very rarely do they put the tablespoons with the butter knives, the salad forks with the teaspoons. Every slot has an assigned utensil. You ever been kind of upset, kind of taken back by all the spoons being in one slot? You have to sort through the big tablespoons to get to the teaspoons. Or the same thing with the forks or having a butter knife and steak knives all in the same slot and the steak knives, the handles just don't coincide with the handles of the butter knives. You know, it bothers you. How do you know it bothers you? 'cause you take the time to straighten it out and you organize everything to match these spoons, match these spoons, and this fork matches this fork. Now imagine that tray of utensils, silverware being your life. Your life is so not like that, is it? I know mine isn't!! I mean, I think about it in my head and it's like, wow, what? I wonder what that's like. I wonder what it's like to have order, systems straight and everything in its place and a place for everything, I wonder what that's like. I mean it happens, but maybe for about two or three minutes. It probably happens when I'm sleeping and if it happens when I'm sleeping, I missed it, but you get the idea right? When it feels like mayhem has completely infected everything in your world and you're running hither and yawn, trying to put this with that and making sure that you call this person back or you email this, or don't forget to pick this up from the store before you go home and all the little trappings of life that make life complicated or at least agitated, have you ever been in the center of that storm when things are just incomplete and total disarray, unmanageable, mayhem, and thought, oh my God, how am I gonna, how am I going to stop this? There used to be a cartoon called The Jetsons, and one of the main characters, George has to walk the dog on this conveyor belt and a cat comes by and all of a sudden, the dog starts chasing the cat and George can't keep up with the conveyor, the conveyor goes nuts, and he can't keep up. His legs are going so fast and he starts screaming, “Jane! Jane! Stop this crazy thing! Help! Jane!!!”, and he is just like running frantically. Sound familiar? Was it a Tuesday? Was it, was it a Wednesday? Was it an hour before you recorded a podcast episode? But I digress. So you understand life gets really busy, seemingly all of a sudden. All of a sudden, it seems like you can't really get your arms around what's going on. This is what I mean by unmanageability. Your life is unmanageable. You may ask, if I'm in that situation, what do I do? The answer is nothing. And I mean, you can do nothing for a minute or two, just do nothing (awkward silence). But in that sense of doing nothing, there are still other things happening. I mean, all that mayhem is still swirling moving and shaking and all that other stuff, you're just not with it. This is where your superpower comes into play, your superpower. You know that one that you've always had since you can remember that your parents ingrained in you and trained you with, that superpower of choice. There was a song by a rap duo back in the day called Black Sheep, they had a joint called “This or That”, “You can get with this, Or you can get with that. You can get with this Or you can get with that. You can get with this Or you can get with that. I think you'll get with this, 'Cause this is where it's at!” It's great because if you can have that mindset, then you're sorting the mayhem. And mayhem sorting is kind of a undeveloped and not very exalted skill in those times when it seems like life is like crazy. Being able to sort this crazy from that, really crazy from that, not that crazy, is a skill and it is the key to start heading towards making things more manageable as opposed to being unmanageable. You know, you are in those fits of unmanageability and Lord help you. It's like being in a tornado. Round and round you go!! Just seems like the merry-go-round is completely outta control, all the horses are jumping off. You're hanging on for dear life, “Can't wait to see what's gonna happen next!!” Take a minute, jump or step off the merry-go-round and let it go a couple of times around without you so that you can sort. All the things that are going on in your world, you have the power to basically pick one, just one. Doesn't have to be a big one, doesn't have to be a small one, doesn't have to be a new one, doesn't have to be an old one. There are no rules, but you must pick one and only one. I would suggest picking the smallest of all the things. And the reason I say that is. If you had to go from the first floor to the second floor and the only thing available is the stairs, are you looking all the way at the top when you take that first step, thinking how long it's gonna take? Or do you focus on that first step and then the second step and then the third step all the way to the top of the stairs? Maybe you're one of those people who are in between, you look at the first step and the second step, then you start looking up to the top as you keep climbing, and every once in a while you look down to see which step you're on so you don't trip. Which one are you? The metaphor fits very well into unmanageability. When your life is unmanageable and you step outside for a second, the swirling crazy, that is your life at that moment and you actually watch it going round and round without you, that is the moment you get power. Now, I wouldn't advise taking a long time to choose but choose you must, or else your life will spin out of control, and Lord knows, nobody likes that. Nobody likes to have an out-of-control life. It's a lot of work being out of control all the time. Not knowing what's gonna happen next all the time. Feeling like you have no direction, no purpose all the time. I can't speak for you, but for me, that is the one-way train to depression. But this technique of stepping outside of things, and as I've said in other episodes, I've learned a little bit about meditating and. Centering my physical being around my breathing when I become aware of my breathing and can shut mostly everything else out the mind, my mind, gets a little quieter, a little less problematic, and nuts and crazy. It's like I put things in slow motion in my head so that I can see them better, and I try to take my time and pick the smallest thing in all the mayhem. The smallest thing that I would really like to take care of, the smallest task that I would like to finish, and I do that one. Once I finished that one, I pick another one, little bigger, maybe same size, and all of a sudden, before I know it, all that mayhem is gone because I've accomplished some thing. I have less things to think about. I have less swirling like when the tornado actually spins itself out and all of a sudden the clouds clear and the sun shines through and all is calm again. Life is manageable again. Sound crazy? Sound impossible? Sounds ‘fill in the blank’. My experience has been when I'm aware that my life has become unmanageable, I am also aware that I can stop the merry-go-round whenever I want. Nobody else is living my life. Nobody else is making any choices for me, nobody else is driving my boat. Pops used to say, “Make sure you're driving your own boat! 'Cause you really don't have time to drive anybody else's.” it's true. Remember what they tell you on the airplane? When the oxygen mask comes down from the ceiling and you pull the mask towards your face and put it on your nose and mouth, pull the straps on the side to tighten it, don't worry about the bag, oxygen will flow even though the bag doesn't inflate, and then comes the lesson: Make sure to put your own mask on before assisting others. So if your life is in mayhem, you're really not gonna be that useful for anybody else until you have calmed your mayhem. I mean, you're only human. If you're listening to this and you're understanding the words, I'm pretty sure you're human! Or a really, really, really smart dog, but the truth of it is you have more power than you think when your life becomes unmanageable. Y ou can take all the spoons outta the tray and just leave one slot empty, if you like. I mean, it beats taking all the silverware out of the dishwasher and just pouring the silverware and all ‘willy-nilly’ style. And Lord knows, each of us has that little anal-retentive fabric in our head that doesn't let the big forks sit in with the small forks, forks and spoons cannot be in the same slot. No one gets along with the spoons, they can't go anywhere except with other spoons. It’s the same with forks, segregation. That's all it is, it's just segregation I tell you!! If you feel like your life is swirling and swirling and swirling, once you're aware of it, that's when you can pause. That's when you can step outside of what's going on and watch it happen, sort and decide. And before you know it, there are enough sticks with plates on them and the plates will keep spinning and lo and behold, that myth of multitasking is actually disguised! It's a disguise for having things being taken care of a little at a time, and you're taking care of things one at a time, but it goes by so fast. It seems like everything's happening at the same time, and that's multitasking. But without the ‘sort’ process, without the awareness that comes before the sort process, all of this is really, really, really, really difficult to manage, hence the word, “unmanageable”. So when life starts to spin, when it feels like things are just going outta control, try to remember that you have the power to pause and ask yourself, “Wait a minute, what the hell's going on right here? I have four things I need to do. Which one's the smallest? Let's do that one.”. Just start with one. It only takes one. One will lead to two, two will lead to three, and so on and so on, and before you know it, life is manageable again. God knows, nobody likes to stay in the state of unmanageable life. Unmanageable living is horrible. It's a lot of work leads to a lot more problems than it does solutions in my experience, that is. Right on folks, thanks for tuning in this week. I really appreciate you being out there somewhere. There's a song in there somewhere, but I'm not gonna worry about it onto the next people!!