What Matters, Remains.
Over the past couple of days or so, I was in Moab. Thats in Utah. Which is in between Nevada and Colorado. Meaning its between bunny slopes and the Bunny Ranch.
Yes. Right about there.
My friend Francisco Dao runs a group called 50Kings. Its easy to compare it to The Lobby, or Summit Series or TED, or many other membership(ish) driven organizations that tout a high quality group of folk. What I like about 50Kings is that its limited to no more than 50 people, and the folks selected to attend are selected because of their diverse value and backgrounds. Basically, most of us that attend are people you never have heard of, but by the end of the event are thankful to know.
Back to Moab. This event, after having a cattle drive somewhere cattle-ly and a pirate war in the British Virgin Islands, this was focused on doing several things like downhill mountain biking, off-roading, white water rafting, and the coup de grais, swinging from an arch at speeds in excess of 60 mph.
Of course, there were wonderful dinners, nights filled with Werewolves and a few things that will always stay among us Wampires.
And in what seems like a counterintuitive move, I skipped it all (well, except Werewolf). Why would I spent the money and time to travel a few states over to just skip the majority of activities?
Because I wanted to challenge myself.
Its thrilling and exciting to jump from a mountain or hurl yourself down one on a bike, and you learn a lot about your level of bravery and ability to face fear, but I know my limitations there. I have done enough to know where that line is in the sand. What I didn’t know was if I could spend time with myself for days on end with minimal distraction and noise (both internally and externally).
Cell phones didn’t work, internet was spotty, so my time on Twitter and Facebook and, more importantly, email, was limited. After a day or two I realized that the social network noise so many of us complain about wasn’t coming from the output of my connections, but from my desire to not miss a thing.
Its not the number of connections I have to the people around me, regardless of the depth of our relationship. Its my desire to listen.
Take that and couple it with the thoughts going through my brain about our business, other businesses, new ideas, my life, my faults, my negatives, my positives, my family, my, well everything, and its no surprise that I throw my hands up and yell, “enough!”
We, as technical beings, lean on technology to solve this issue. Companies like Radiant6 and HootSuite are sold for, or raise boatloads of cash to solve this problem – but technology is not the solution.
Each day I woke up, and went outside and sat by the river. I closed my eyes and listened to the river flow by, the wind power through the trees, and whatever natural sound was around me. I used my ears to listen – not my eyes, which is what social media forces us to do – to take what should be auditory stimulus and makes it visual – and, while it was really hard to sit still for just five minutes, I started to note a change in myself.
First, after about two minutes, I started to feel my shoulders and back relax. The thoughts that were running around my head at mach 10, slowed to mach 2. I could parse them more easily, which led me to dump the unimportant ones quickly.
By minute three to three and a half, my thoughts had slowed almost to a stop. I could pull out the one or two that I wanted to spend time with. Instead of getting spun up on that idea immediately, I marked it for “thought later” and set it aside. And, strangely, the stress and worry that sat in my heart started to abate.
At minute five, I opened my eyes, and found that the sounds I heard continued, my thoughts stayed at a manageable pace, and more importantly, I was ok. Okay to just be.
As the day progressed, I found that I was able to deal with the thoughts I set aside more logically and clearly. Things didn’t seem to fire me up as quickly. I was more relaxed and focused.
I did this for four days, and have continued to do the same since returning to California, and the feeling and focus has continued. I cycle through ideas more quickly, make decisions more emphatically, and more importantly, am willing to stand in the firehose of social media and let the majority of it pass me by.
By doing what has always been impossible for me – taking five minutes for myself to be completely silent internally and externally – I learned an amazing lesson:
What is missed is missed. What matters, remains.