Latest / Wanzology / Don't Ice Skate Uphill!!
Transcript
- Don’t Ice Skate Uphill Hey, what's happening in what's going on, Yo? Welcome to your Wednesday, and another episode of, you guessed It, WANZOLOGY!!! I am your host, The Wanz, and I am very, very happy to be here. Of course, I'm happy to be anywhere. You should be, too!! Living!! it's kind of a thing. Okay, so, what's going on? Man, I'm telling you, the world has gone nuts. It's getting really hard, it's getting hectic, it's getting wild, it's getting hectic!! So this week I wanted to talk about how we don't make this any harder than it already is. The one thing that we always have control over is us. What we're doing, where we're going, how we're gonna be there, all that good stuff, right? You ever had the thought, “Am I making this too hard? Am I causing difficulty? Am I the one who may be the problem?” It's highly possible, highly possible. I love this movie Blade, the first one, and I'll watch it wherever and whenever it's on just to see one scene. it's near the end and Blade is about to vanquish his enemy and he has this vial in his hand, he says, “Some "mother****ers is always trying to ice skate uphill…”, and then he tosses it in the air and with a swift sidekick, launches it and it embeds itself into the head of his enemy, who then is vanquished. But that one line, “Some "mother****ers is always trying to ice skate uphill…”, that is our topic for today. Do you realize when you're making life harder for yourself? Are you paying attention to such things? Do you know what it looks like when something could be easier if you did it a different way, it could be very, very hard to take advice from people you don't trust. Well, what if you don't trust yourself? Then what? Hmm? Who is it then, aye? it's a very, very fair question and I don't mean that it's something that's immediate that you can see or touch or feel all the time but have you ever just like been going a certain direction and realized, “Damn! This is hard! Is it supposed to be this hard?” Or you've made so many mistakes in a row that you're wondering, “What the heck am I doing here? The day is going so bad. Everything you touch seems to go wrong.” I guess it's like you are leaning into a wind that is trying to blow you back, it's hurricane force wind!! You ever had days like that? You ever felt like that before? When it's just like you are leaning forward and every step, every action is just labored. If you are aware of your feelings and it feels like the world is against you, nothing is going ‘right’, quote unquote, you may be in the grips of ‘ice-skating’ uphill. The solution to ice skating uphill is insanely simple. Don't. Yes, I realize that simply saying don't, isn't very helpful, but you have to be in a certain state of awareness to understand what “Don't”, in this context, means. In this context, “Don't” means don't do something familiar, or it can mean “Don't” fight it, or it can mean taking a pause is not giving up. It's very, very difficult to know which one is which when you're in it. I, for one, have started taking up the practice of meditating. Meditation has helped me understand when I'm not ‘right’, when I am out of balance, when am ice skating uphill, and it opens up my mind, actually, all it does is cause me to take a pause so I can see where I'm at and possibly go a different direction. ‘Cause Lord knows, when it's 11 o'clock in the morning and it feels like it's 10 o'clock at night, then the day is just gonna keep going and going and you're like, “Oh my God, will it ever end?!” It's really hard to like, “h, I'm just gonna get cool with my feelings right now. I'm just gonna chill…Ohmmmmm…” Yeah, it so doesn't work that way. As the saying goes, to solve a ‘problem’, the first step is to realize that you have a problem. So if you're a baseball fan like me, three strikes, that's all you need. Something's not going right a little bit later, again, something's not going right. If it happens a third time, especially in a short amount of time, yeah, I'm taking the time out. I'm taking the time out. I'm gonna go sit down. I'm gonna breathe a little bit, concentrate on my breathing, go over where I've been and why things don't seem to be going very well. More times than not, I find out my head's not in the right place. My heart's not in the right place. Self-will has taken over, which makes it incredibly difficult to be of service to others, which is my jam. I like being of service, right? But you know, like they tell you on the plane, I gotta put my oxygen mask on first before I can assist others. Well, if I'm not able to do that, if I'm not able to realize that I'm about to pass out from a lack of oxygen because I haven't put my proverbial mask on, yeah, I'm useless. What do you do? Like I said, time out, time out! Find a quiet place. Doesn't have to be like a ‘library’ quiet, I mean, just something you know where there's not a lot of mayhem and sit down, and if you feel comfortable, put your feet flat on the floor, sit up straight and take a really deep breath slowly, and let it out slowly. Take another deep breath, slowly. And let it out slowly and you may or may not feel comfortable enough to close your eyes during this process, but the whole thing is you're centering yourself on the inhale and exhale. In, out, in, out. Now I do about 8 to 15 of these and then I kinda like, take my ‘pulse’, what am I doing? Okay, what am I trying to figure out? I'm trying to figure out why everything seems to be screwing up. Where did it start? I woke up, see what I ean? I go back, I give myself a chance to just kind of go back over where I've already been before, that current moment that I'm in to try to understand where I may have gotten off the track. Life is not supposed to be extremely hard. Challenging, yes, hard? No. It's not supposed to be hard, but you have to be able to recognize when you are the one making it hard, which is not easy. It's not easy to figure that stuff out. I mean, you have to be able to put your ego to the side and be objective about yourself. That's hard for a lot of people. Don't sweat it if you don't really understand how to do that, I would suggest I would just Google, “How to be true to myself” and see what comes up, 'cause the whole point of being true to yourself is to be able to interact with your emotions, your brain, the world outside, and have all three of those things get along, maybe even communicate with each other to make your life a little bit easier. After you've taken your 8 to 15 breaths in and out and you're checking to see, “Where am I at? How am I feeling?” If you're still feeling a little tense, a little agitated, do some more breaths. Fine tune it a little bit. Imagine the particles of oxygen going in through your nose, down to your lungs, through membranes. The oxygen actually gets inserted into blood cells as they go past, then they go off and it's the blood highway of your body in, out, in, out. Nice and comfortable. You want to set up a feeling that, “Okay, I don't have to check my breathing 'cause I'm breathing, okay.”, and then you go over, “What did I go through before to get to where I am now?” There's no guarantee that you're gonna see and understand where you may have gotten off the track, but that's not the point. The point is the breathing. What is it doing? The breathing exercise is meant to do nothing other than get you out of the space that you are currently in and into a new space. Once your mind calms down, once your feelings calm down, once your perception is refocused, well, you pick up where you left off, being mindful of what you went through. Now, this whole practice is not gonna work the very first time. I'll just tell you that right now. It gets easier. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the deeper you go when you breathe, you're thinking about all kinds of molecules and atoms and the components that make up your body. Pick a cell and you follow it all the way up and down your leg and to a toe, and then feeds a bunch of cells, and then it's into the vein where it needs to go back, back to the lung to get some more air. And how long does that take? How long does it take an oxygenated cell to get to the furthest extremity of your body back through the heart to the lungs? Do you know? I don't know. One of the greatest things about being human is that you can imagine things. You can imagine what it's like. Don't be that person who always feels like life is a struggle. Life is not a struggle. There are situations and circumstances in life that seem like they're a struggle, but overall life is not a struggle, it's a journey. And sometimes the road is rocky. Sometimes the thorn bushes are everywhere, and you can't get away from them. Sometimes it's raining and it just feels like you're slogging through a foot of mud. Sometimes it feels like Dorothy and you're walking the yellow brick road, point is don't be that person who's fighting it, trying to ice skate uphill. You need to be able to recognize when you are making your own ‘sauce’, when you're whipping up a mountain out of a rat turd, when you're setting a fire, just so you can come and put that fire out. We do these things to ourselves without even realizing it, so you must be careful. You must be careful, and you must be on guard. Okay? Remember, don't be one of those who's trying to ice skate uphill. Life is not supposed to be hard. Life is supposed to be educational. Every step there can be a new lesson, but only if you're paying attention and your mind is open. Um, yeah, I sound kind of funny because I once again have a cold and I'm not sure how that happened but probably has something to do with me getting rest, and I think I shall try to get some right now. Yeah, right now, now. How about now? Now!!! I'll see you next week.