Walk, Don’t Run

About two years ago I decided that I needed to make a change. A life goal, something to strive for. It was the end-result of me doing my usual mad dash out the door on my way to work. I heard the words “Walk, Don’t Run.” Like a lifeguard in my head something was telling me to slow down. It got stuck in this continual loop inside my brain. “Walk, don’t run. Walk, don’t run”. It meant something. There was a change in my life that I needed, and this was its genesis. The idea stuck with me the whole day. It had a lot of weight to it even though it sounded so simple.

It’s probably why I glommed on to it the way I did. My brain likes small bytes. Especially those small bytes that are strong enough to carry a larger meaning. It simplifies my ability to keep those ideas with me and with “Walk, don’t run.” I really felt like I was on to something.

Two years prior I had commenced the small steps that would be the building blocks of this new-found philosophy, never realizing it. Now that I had a more concrete idea of what this could mean I decided that “Walk, Don’t Run” was my goal and I was going to start to implement it.

But how did I get here? Without knowing it, for most of my adult life, I had trained my brain and body to be in a rush most of my waking hours. It’s exhausting and terrible, and the consequences were many. It touched every part of my life and every person in it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the realization of all this came to me after a few months of a budding meditation practice I had begun. It was those times of quiet that put the spotlight on my need to rush and the resulting insanity that came with it.

Meditation has become part of my daily routine. I could go on for days about the positive effects of a daily practice, but that is an entirely different discussion. I’ll say this though, meditation was paramount in giving me perspective. It is because of that practice and other changes I made that I was able to see with great clarity the energy I was wasting.

That wasted energy fueled my bad days into weeks, months and years. The proverbial hamster wheel was where I operated. Running at breakneck speed and making no progress. It’s exhausting; and demoralizing. All the effort I was putting out and zip, zero, zilch to show for it. What’s worse is, like the hamster, I didn’t even know I was on a wheel. I was just running full speed because my instinct told me to.

So, what does my hamster wheel look like? Allow me to pull back the curtains and explain what life prior to “Walk, Don’t Run” looked like.

6AM, the alarm goes off. I hit the snooze and start my 9 times-tables routine: 6:09, 6:18, 6:27, 6:36. My wife has already been up for an hour, but she leaves at 6:30 every morning which means I oversee getting my boys off to school. I hate mornings. The drinks I had the night before punctuated my disdain for the early morning and it didn’t leave me very chipper come sunrise. The prospect of getting out of bed was the worst thing I could imagine.

Every. Single. Morning.

Most mornings I was a jerk. I was the bear whose hibernation was disturbed, pissed off to no end, and everyone in my vicinity paid the price for me having to leave my cave. I woke up angry. My head hurt. I was dehydrated from the booze and my stomach was queasy. There was no real thought to the day ahead. Self-preservation was the only thing I could think of. I was a walking time bomb waiting to go off.

Angrily I would throw the covers off, standing was difficult, equilibrium didn’t exist. My head was spinning, my mouth a combination of stale beer and cigarettes. Neither of which helps my stomach which is vengefully sending reminders to my brain of the crap I put in it the night before. I have this thought that if I open and close my eyes really hard it will magically remove the chaos I’m in. Not a chance though. I am instantly aware of how awful this day is going to be, and I have been out of bed for a grand total of three seconds.

The result is that I hit the ground running. “WHERE ARE MY SOCKS? DAMNIT!!  I LEFT MY SHOES RIGHT HERE!! I KNOW I DID!! BOYS! HAVE YOU SEEN MY BELT???”  All those questions being screamed full throat as I attempt to dress myself.  My head is engulfed in fog, and I am having trouble negotiating the path in front of me. None of that information is making it to the part of my brain that’s currently in overdrive trying to calculate how late I already am. Like an idiot, I run out of the room to try and get the boys their breakfast. That was a mistake.

At a height of 6’0” my waist is right at 36” off the ground (the exact height of all the door knobs in our house). Why does that matter? Try running out of your bedroom full steam only to get your belt loop caught on the door handle. It feels like a stuntman being pulled back on a zipline. My brain is like a crash-test dummy slamming into the front of my skull. The headache I woke up with explodes into a full mushroom cloud. It’s enough to almost drop me, but this shit-show isn’t over with.

 “ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?!?!?!” I scream at the top of lungs to a doorknob that can neither comprehend nor respond to my question. It gets worse. Tears start to form as my arm flails backwards trying to unhook myself. “Why have you forsaken me?” is literally repeating in my head. I’m convinced that God is punishing me for waking up late.

All the screaming doesn’t fix my problem though, I am still dangling from the door. My immediate issue is leverage. I’m too concerned with this situation being over to deal with what is happening in real time. My insistence on leaning forward, brought on by need to get out of my room, is in complete disagreement to what I should be doing. I’m like a fish flopping on the deck of a boat confused as to what has hooked me and terrified as to why I can’t free myself from it.

I stop freaking out enough to move in the correct direction to break myself from the doorknob’s grip. THANK GOD! I needed a win, but this sucks. I haven’t even gotten out of my room yet and this is how my day is starting.

That’s the first of many battles that make up my daily war with myself. Getting out of bed late sets the stage for the rest of my day.

I get to the kitchen and I am frazzled. I’m just trying to do the next thing in front of me, but it’s difficult. Trying to make the boys’ breakfast and get their lunches ready is a big deal. Spill their OJ...BIG DEAL. Can’t find the mayo in the fridge…BIG DEAL. One of the boys can’t find their shoes….HUGE DEAL!!! Mind you, my boys are front and center for the show. They are witnessing an actual mental breakdown. What are they thinking?

With each successive mishap my anger detonates. It’s like I’m dancing in a minefield, but not like in the movies where they skillfully dodge the blasts or get out of the way before they explode. Not me. I’m hitting all of them, and at each one I hit, “Are you fucking kidding me?!?!” flies out of my mouth. I can’t imagine what this looks like, I know it can’t be good. I’m 45 years old and I lack the basic skills to deal with a misplaced shoe.

I could spend the next ten pages outlining, in detail, the entirety of my insanity. For time’s sake let’s just say my morning routine is the primer on the pump for the rest of the day’s inability to sanely operate. I’m literally running out the door to get my car. It’s frenetic. I spend my entire day trying to catch up. Traffic problems because the people in front of me can’t seem to understand how late I am, and why I need them to remove themselves from my path. Computer problems, because I can’t find what I need when I need it because I was in a hurry when I saved it I have no idea where I put the file. It’s endless and all of it is terrible.  

The totality of my situation culminates with me being physically and mentally exhausted by the time I get home. I’ve spent the better part of 11 hours fighting everything that presents itself to me. I’m zero help with my kids, nowhere near helping with dinner or dishes…because I’ve had a tough day. And at this time in my life…because I deserved it…multiple drinks are had and that is just setting the stage for my next “Theater of Pain” set to start again at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

Change had to come. Period. Quitting drinking and drugging was my first step, but that’s a whole other chapter to this story. Suffice it to say, once I quit drinking and drugging I started to notice all my out of control behavior. Which brings me back full circle to “Walk, Don’t Run”.

The recognition that I was hamstringing myself every day began to crystallize as I sobered up. The constant state of “rush” I was in needed to be alleviated. It seems like such a simple thing to say but I just needed to give myself more time. My procrastination to begin the inevitable…a normal day of work and family…started me at a deficit every morning and working from a position of fear that I won’t get done what I need to in a given day makes for really bad decisions.

“Walk, Don’t Run, Ross”

How though? Well I can say now after two years of implementing different things with the occasional tweaking it’s worked in ways that have to be experienced to be understood. One of the ways I was able to make “Walk, Don’t Run” work was through a mediation practice that I mentioned earlier. Mediation was a gamechanger. I have a 20-minute routine that helps me intentionally slow myself down. Starting my day with that practice level-sets me in calm. It’s not a planning period. It’s not done to figure out what my next steps for the day will bring. Rather it’s a way to slow down mentally, to set the pace for my day, a pace that I will strive to keep for everything else I do. It helps me to walk, not run. I haven’t missed more than a couple of days in two years and the cumulative effects are paying huge dividends with regards to staying calm during the day. 

It’s a practiced thing at this point, but the first time I did it I was super intentional with not rushing. I would tell myself “Walk, Don’t Run” as I brushed my teeth, as I put my keys in my pocket and put my shoes on.  I gave myself time to do things and sans the hurried pace, life just started getting easier. By walking out of my house and calmly getting in my car, I set the pace for my trip to work. I left with plenty of time to get to the office. It’s so stupidly simple but my God does it work. Now I get to watch people on the road freak out about the smallest thing knowing that I did the same and it just feels good to not have to do that anymore.  

 “Walk, Don’t Run” is where it is at for me today. I’m enjoying my sanity. I am enjoying my peace of mind. It feels good to slow down in a world where everyone puts pressure on themselves to speed up. It feels good to ease my way throughout my day rather than fight everyone and everything around me. It feels good to walk into my backdoor at night having completed a day without rushing. It feels good to Walk, Don’t Run”. Give it try, it sure does work for me.