Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: stress

  • Theme:

    clockwork man: time uses us

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Since the invention of the clock, time can be wasted, which converts time into a resource to be controlled and mapped into productivity. Time can be used and optimized, pushed and manipulated, for our desires.

    Instead, consider that time can use us.

    Each process takes the time that it takes. Time guides our reactions and dictates outcomes. More is not possible; only acceptance (acquiescence) to the pace.

    There is fear in the simplicity implied: we are only a mechanical appendage of time, a clockwork man performing at a heteronomic tempo. Yet, this reality has always existed and is quite preferable to modern anxiety and pressures of escalating production.

  • Theme:

    pernicious pressures

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    The pressures surrounding us (work, economics, social, commerce) attempt to “decode” and disintegrate us under the pretense of giving ourselves back to us.

    That is to say: you can’t find yourself by following the system’s logic (as it dissolves you).
    More clearly, you are already “you” without capitulating to pernicious pressures and duplicitous promises.

    More importantly, you already know what you are here to do (your purpose); you are looking to the system because you have not allowed yourself to embrace it.

  • Theme:

    The stress trap

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    You are obligated to do something unpleasant, so you turn it into a chore or task.
    Your body notices the stress and amplifies it.
    The trap is to remain yourself while under this excessive strain: to be authentic, kind, and empathetic, to be reasonable and open instead of the tight, narrow thing your body wants you to become.

  • Theme:

    Choice is free and forced

    , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Every choice is a forced choice. It is also a free choice.
    We must be forced to choose, at which point it seems we have no choice, but that moment is a culmination of previous choices and external pressures (the frame in which we exist).
    Once realized, we cannot unsee the potential to reject or reframe our choice, which is the choice: to choose how to see your choices in a new light.

  • Theme:

    First and last impressions

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    First sight overwhelms.
    In between, we hardly look afresh.
    Last sight refreshes the familiar into something clear, enriched with a depth of experience that births it as novel once again.

  • Theme:

    courage from exhaustion

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Perhaps it takes courage to be disliked.
    However, exhaustion provokes the same response: your core authenticity is exposed and governs your interactions without politeness.

    Exposing your needs over niceties can appear as courage and empower you to be more fully yourself.

    Courage arrives late: courage comes after the act and after the proving, but once there, it can aid you in the future.

  • Theme:

    stress is a wonky shopping cart

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Stress thwarts open awareness through intense focus, utilizing the Left side of the brain. Peace allows the non-verbal Right side of your brain (subconscious?) to drift insights and pattern recognition to the surface.

    Conditioned to insecurity (precarity) we are experiencing asymmetry.

    This produces a constant need for effort as if your shopping cart is pulling to the Left and producing a hideous racket drowning out subtle appreciation.

  • Theme:

    To be you let go

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    When hanging by a thread, things are going wrong.

    The most challenging thing to do is relax and let go.

    To grip tightly is to become paralyzed, only to be a frozen version of yourself.
    Letting go allows you to be you again: to be you requires motion and flow, so just let go.

  • Theme:

    burned out

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    “Burned-out” is a linguistic reference to rockets.

    Today burnout implies you have a weakness: a stressed gasket or aorta, an o-ring or an esophageal sphincter that can’t handle the pressure. Your psychological ‘deficiency’ manifests as physiological incapacity: you can no longer keep up.

    More accurately, burnout is from overuse: a system burns you as an expenditure to test limits.

    In this framing, you are a sacrifice on a pyre of productivity: a captive burned to appease monstrous gods.

  • Theme:

    The stress undertow

    , , ,

    °

    1–2 minutes

    Stress happens. You ride the wave at the moment, feeling gleeful at your balance, but you get caught in the undertow at some point later.
    The fantastic thing is to stay afloat as long as we do. The real trick is to ride the undertow with as much grace.