Slow Down

Sometimes I just need to chill out. One of the ways I like to do that is by cranking some tunes. I love music because it can transport you. Music is a machine that can take me back in time. Have you ever experienced that?

There you are … minding your own business, driving down the road or for me, it happens a lot when I’m in the kitchen cooking.

A song comes on and I immediately go back to a place in time. It could be Cooks Forest near Clarion, Pennsylvania where our family would go camping when I was growing up. We always had a radio at the campsite. Those songs that played fireside all those years ago can immediately take me right back to that crisp air, crackling fire, the folding chairs with that scratchy nylon weaving and my family.

Dick Clark was right when he said, music is the soundtrack of your life.

But if you had to put together a playlist right now of the songs that represent this moment of time in your life … what would those songs be?

Maybe a little … Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones?

Perhaps … You Learn by Alanis Morissette.

Or … Good as Hell by Lizzo.

Don’t Stop Believing by Journey is a solid one to have on your playlist.

Want to know what random, throw back, old school song has been playing on repeat in my life right now?

The 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t know it? Well … that’s because most people call it the feeling groovy song. In fact, I don’t know the words to the whole song, or really what it’s even all about. It’s just the first few lines of the song that stuck on repeat in my head. Here they are …

“Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last.”

Why am I sharing all this with you? Because you might need to hear this too. Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last. Those first two words … slow down. I’ve been reminding myself to do that a lot lately. SLOW DOWN, Pamela. I get so rushed sometimes. It leads to becoming flustered and when I’m flustered, I forget things or screw things up. I’m not in the right frame of mind which means I get irritated and when I’m irritated I lose patience with myself and everyone around me. When I lose my patience it just becomes this soup of frustration and overwhelm and no one wants to experience that! Have you experienced that? I think I already know the answer to that question.

So many of us do it. Try to pack too much in. the ‘ever ending to do list?’ We’re in such a hurry to get there. Wherever there is. We think there is better than here. I call this … ‘Better When Thinking.’

It will be better when …

When you’re in high school, it will be better when you get into college.

When you’re in college, it will be better when you graduate.

When you graduate, it will be better when you have a job.

When you have a job, it will be better when you’re married.

When you’re married, it will be better when you have kids.

When you have kids, it will be better when they’re out of diapers.

When they get out of diapers, it will be better when they can talk, walk, … you get the picture.

You’re constantly looking for what’s next. Because ‘next’ is going to make you feel better. Again, you think there is better than here.

Better When Thinking is when you think life will be better when something else happens. What that kind of thinking does is it robs of you now. The present. This moment.

This is all you’ve got. Tomorrow is promised to no one.

I know a lot of you are struggling right now. Struggling with jobs, careers, money. Struggling with illness or the illness of a loved one. Struggling because you have young kids, older kids or you want kids but have none.

Struggling with … what’s next?

Life is made up of struggles, challenges, obstacles … and what you make them all mean.

The struggles, challenges and obstacles are going to happen. It’s part of life but you don’t have to suffer because of them.

A Japanese poet once said, ‘pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.’

In essences, life is gonna hurt, but you’re the one who decides whether or not you suffer.

Let me explain … if I punched you in the nose right now, you’re going to feel physical pain and maybe even some emotional pain. Now, let's say you spend the two weeks thinking… what a jerk, I can’t believe she did that! The next time I see her I’m going to say … blah, blah, blah and you practice the conversation over and over in your head. The conversation that may never happen. And every time you practice that conversation you get worked up, frustrated and angry.

That my friend is the suffering you’re causing yourself. I punched you in the face two weeks ago and now you’re punching yourself in the nose every time you re-live it.

Pain is inevitable… suffering is optional.

I’m no longer causing you pain, it’s you and your thoughts that are now creating the suffering. I know there are some of you that would gladly take a punch on the nose compared to what you’re actually dealing with right now but I offer that lighter example to help show you how much power you have over your own suffering.

One of the biggest ways we create suffering is thinking there will be better than here. Because frankly, you don’t know that. When you get there (where ever it is you think will be better) you’re still going to have pain … it will just be a different kind of pain.

There … isn’t better than here.

Here is all you’ve got.

So slow down … you move too fast,