I have this visualisation that I really like. I call it Forcefields and Wavelengths1. On a good day, the forcefield is wide ("I can do a lot of stuff") and it is strong ("I can do them well"). On such a day, the wavelength is smooth and slow, like the ocean's strong swell; anything you throw at it just gets swallowed up and absorbed.
Days like this are great: you get 6 out of 8 things done on your todo list, handle 3 surprises with ease, and come home with the energy to go to the gym and get groceries on your way home 2. These are the good days. We like this.
The bad days feel impossible. You only have to do 3 things and you can barely start them. More things come at you than you thought were possible. The waves crash; the forcefield is weak. It's hard to eat and you slept like shit3. Everything feels sped up and erratic. These are the bad days. We hate this.
The motivation for this post came from such a day. Nothing particularly stressful happened immediately but I had a lot of plates spinning and I couldn't afford to drop any of them. Deadlines. Accidents. Pressure. Anxiety. There was too much to do, and it all had to be done by yesterday. This all came to a head one afternoon when I realised I had been holding my breath at my laptop for the last 15 minutes, and I started hyperventilating.
After a glass of water, I decided the right thing to do would be to meditate. I sat down, without setting a timer, and started taking in a few deep breaths. For the first 5 minutes, my brain was still in a frenzy, freaking out that this or that needed to be done– no, this one– now that one. These thoughts bounced around the shaky forcefield, barely holding them together, and the wavelength felt less like an ocean on a calm day and more like a blow up pool in a tornado.
I closed my eyes and started counting my breaths. And with each breath, the forcefield started to close in a little. And as it closed in, it grew a little stronger, more dense. Thoughts that were pinging around before started to slow down. You can't see something that zips by in front of you, thoughts are bit like that too.
After some time, the forcefield became just a wrapper around me. From there, each breath strengthened that armour 4. No thoughts for now, no todos, no tasks. Let's just build back up to baseline, and beyond. With each breath past baseline, I felt a little stronger, more stable. Once I felt ready, I could push that forcefield out a little, let some thoughts in. Not all at once, but bit by bit.
It all feels a bit hand-wavy and woo-woo. But it worked for me and continues to.
You can do this timed, as I often do, with the timer on your phone. The issue I found with this was that it took active involvement to stop the timer, and the BIP BIP BIP BEEP of the timer really does wonders to tear you out of any semblance of peace you might have achieved in your sit.
For this reason, I highly recommend Sit. by Rafał Pastuszak . I also strongly suggest reading this post by Pastuszak.
A description of Sit. from the post:
Sit. is a brutally simple alarm clock, not much more complex than an egg timer. You choose a length of time to just sit in silence, set it and forget it. When that time is up, a gong gently brings you back and then repeats every minute until you switch it off – so you don’t lose track of time.
Most of the time, I use this to sit—just sit—without counting breaths or explicitly labelling it as meditation. It might sound like a waste of time but it triggers the same thing that having a showers do for shower thoughts. A lot of secondary, tertiary sources cite research indicating that just sitting lowered stress, increased productivity, more creativity. There's even a Dutch word for it niksen which roughly translates to "doing nothing". You might come up with that million-dollar idea, remember that thing you had to do, remind yourself to reach out to that friend, but now you don't have to get wet.
So do yourself a favour. When you're feeling like the world is going to end, stop for a second, take a breath.
And just sit.