Latest / Wanzology / Staying Right Sized
Transcript
- Staying Right Sized Yes, sir! Yes sir! Yes sir! Hey, what's going on? Welcome to your Wednesday, maybe Thursday, it depends. You know, life moves pretty fast, as Ferris would say, “If you're not paying attention, you might just miss it.”, and that's true. That is true. I am your host, The Wanz, here we are in another episode of the WANZOLOGY!! Here we are in January and I don't know about you, but the resolution bug has finally dissipated. That means I'm right back where I started from. How about you? How's your resolutions going? Are you having a dry January? Have you made every workout goal that you started? Well, I wish you all the best in those endeavors. Today I want to talk about being right sized. For those of you who don't know, right sized is a recovery term, meaning, one stays not too big on themselves, not too small on themselves. Kind of a Goldilocks thing, yes, yes, yes, but everything seems to be middle of the road copacetic, right sized. There are those who think so much of themselves that no one else comes before them, right? The exact opposite, there are those who think so less of themselves, that they always consider themselves to be all back of the bus and stuff. Think of a two lane road, there's a one lane going one way and one lane going the other, and down the middle is stripes, right? And on either side of the road there's a solid white line. Now, the solid white line marks inbounds versus out of bounds, but it's that middle line, the middle line is the important one. It has a width, and it has a length. Each stripe marking a distance. When I refer to staying right sized, what that means to me is that you're right in the middle of each stripe. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? When life is going well and you are not stressing, you may be busy, you may not, but you're not bored and you're not stressed out. Everything's just kind of in the middle. That's what right sized is. You're going amongst your people doing your thing, and you are available for those who need you or would like to have you around, and you're not dissing anyone who, let's just put it this way, you are not short-changing anyone who wishes they had your time. You are just involved in whatever it is that you're doing. You're not stepping on any toes and no one is stepping on yours. That's being right sized. We tend not to notice when that's happening. We tend to really focus on the extremes of, “Oh my God, the whole world is on fire!”, versus, “Oh my God, it's an ice age and nothing is happening. Nothing, nothing, nothing!”. Which would you prefer, the world being completely and totally on fire, or the opposite? Now, would you rather have things just be right in the middle? I don't mean in the middle being, how you say boring. What I mean is, each day is 24 hours, right? Each day has its own dynamic. This Wednesday is not like last Wednesday, and the odds are pretty good that it's not gonna be like next Wednesday, you feel me? So when I say right sized, I mean that everything's being handled that comes up and then you go onto the next thing and it gets handled, and then another thing comes up and you handle it, and before you know it, the day is done and you're putting your lovely head on the pillow to go to sleep, only to wake up the next day hopefully, and do it all again. But as I said, every day is different. With billions of people on the planet, how could you possibly believe that one day is exactly like the other? Your perception might be wrong. It might feel like every day is the same. You might perceive every day as being the same, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what it is, does it? Subtle differences. It's those little differences, right? Those are the things that matter the most, it's the little differences. Not the big ones. I have a friend, he's always told me, we make all these little choices not realizing that all the little choices are the things that add up to the big choices. Now, if you think about that, how many little decisions have you made? Like even in the past, I don't know, five minutes? What have you done? Are you like moving and grooving while you're listening? Are you sedentary? Are you in your vehicle? Whatcha doing? You're making decisions whether you realize it or not, there are things going on in your world that you're a part of, and it just keeps perpetuating itself, it keeps going and going and going and going. All the while, you have a certain perception of yourself as you keep going and going and going, when you think about it, how do you feel, okay? I hope you don't feel fine. Fine is bad. Fine stands for effed up, insecure, neurotic, and egotistical to me. I try very hard not to be fine. I like being okay. Okay is that middle of the road for me? I'm not bad and I'm not really good, I'm okay. Are you okay? Think about it. Are you just like ‘happy-go-lucky’, moving along, moment by moment? Nothing really is out of control, well, the world's out of control, we know that. But I mean, for you personally, do you feel like you're out of control? Do you feel like the world is crushing you or do you feel like you are crushing the world or are you somewhere in between? That in between place, that's being right sized, and it varies, right? Just like the road I was talking about earlier, each lane, one side is good, one side is bad, and it has a width, a depth, and sometimes we vacillate too far to the right and everything is really, really good. And sometimes we vacillate to the left where things are really, really not so good. Things happen. Life is happening to everybody, not just you all the damn time. People are born, people die. That's just the way it works, but what does that have to do with you, this way it works? Well, depending on which side that you're on, which side you've vacillated to, you have what's called a perception responsibility. I call it that, a perception responsibility. You must perceive, self-perceive, where you're at, what you're doing, and what that effect is at any given time. Now when you don't pay attention, when you're just moving and grooving and doing your thing, regardless of anyone else that's around, well, that means that you're probably being way too far to the right because those other people are trying to do exactly what you are doing, running into you and unbeknownst to you, you're screwing up their program, or vice versa. You run into them and they're screwing up your program, and that means you're all the way to the left. Do you know where you're at with your people? Strangers? Family? Where are you? Right? Left? Up? Down? These are all changing variables in our lives. At any given time, in any given moment, what you do affects someone else. So if you are feeling really good about the fact that you just found $20 in the pocket of a coat that you haven't worn in God knows how long, well that's great. What about the person who's got a hole in their coat pocket and they lost $20? I'm not saying that you found what they lost, but you can imagine what it would be like to lose money that you thought you had. Doesn't feel very good. Not as good as finding money you didn't know you had, right? Well, that's what I mean. The self-perception angle is this, you need to be aware, cognizant of where you're at, at any given time. It's not very hard, and most of us do it instinctually. It's only in those little extreme moments when the result of a choice puts you either way far on the right or way far on the left, and when you're way far on the right, you gotta reel it back in a little bit, tone it down a little bit, and when you're way far to the left, you need to pump it up a little bit and realize life isn't really that bad overall, this is just a phase, this is just a moment this is just a part of a day a month, or a year. A nd when you really start getting good at this, you'll find that it's not about being to the right or the left as much as it's being in the middle of that stripe that's running down the middle of the road. That's the goal, but that stripe has a width, and a depth. Are you navigating that very well? Do you understand what I'm trying to put down here? Life is full of variables, and we must be able to ascertain where we are at any given time so that we can adjust and be more right sized. Now whether that involves chopping your ego down a little bit and looking at a stranger, and when that stranger looks at you, you just go, “Hey, how's it going?”, and all of a sudden the stranger has a smile on their face. Now you really don't know why they have a smile on their face. Maybe they're just happy to see you, maybe it's you acknowledged their existence, maybe you didn't do something bad to them and the result was they smiled and said, “Hey, I'm all right, how are you?”, and them saying it back makes you feel some sort of way. Not bad, not fantastic, that's right Sized. Being right sized means you are not pushing and you're not pulling, you're existing. That's the way life is supposed to be. But as I said, life is not a static thing, it's always moving. Just like everybody else that's around you, whether you be in your car and there's other cars around, or if you're taking a walk and there's other people on the pathway, on the trail, or you're on a bicycle, there's other people going one way or the other. Either way, you are part of a very, very large, large thing, and that thing is life. Now, you can choose to just mosey and not really pay attention to anything, ot cognizant of who you bump into or who you affect negatively or positively, or you can kind of, not in a stressful way, but kind of have your head on a swivel, always looking around. “What's around me? Who's around me? What are they doing? What am I doing?”, since you can't control them, “What am I doing?”, that is where the rubber meets the road. Staying right sized is that question, “What am I doing and who does it affect?”. When it doesn't seem like anybody cares, normally, that means that you're pretty right sized. That is if you're not too far down to the left or too far up to the right. Lastly, think of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. It goes back and forth and back and forth. The whole idea is to keep passing that middle. You go just as far to the right as you do to the left, you just keep focusing on getting to the middle. Now, here's the weird thing about grandfather clocks, usually that pendulum never stops. Usually it goes just as far to the right as it does to the left, but it always passes that center because that's the goal, to stay right sized somewhat in that middle area. Get it? Got it? Good. May you be very center focused on your journey today. I am your host, The Wanz, and this has been another episode of WANZOLOGY!!! Go forth and find your center. I'll see you next week.