One way to screen out the thoughtless-emotional pulls is to get very deeply involved in breathing. Slow and deep. My 5 Breaths Technique (https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/106742) Part of my strategic self-care for entrepreneurs class is really powerful for this. And then look at the voices. The more urgent they are, the less likely that they are coming from wisdom, and thus the less you ought to listen to them.
Because forest fires complicated the fact that one million visitors were never, ever going to do anything other than hopelessly jam the 2-lane rural highways that constitute most of the great state of Oregon, hubby and I spent 12 harrowing hours creeping along in the blazing hot sun, in scrubby open rangeland where stopping for a call of nature was NOT a good idea, before exhaustion got enough people pulled off
the road that we could start moving, and eventually get home.
Thinking about it, though, I can see some points at which hubby and I used the techniques that I teach.
1. We couldn't get lodging close to Madras [$500/nite? My soul rebels.] so we decided to drive through the night the night before the eclipse and then drive home, planning to take catnaps as needed.
Our first "5 Breaths and then combine analysis and intuition" decision point came after 4 hours creeping 18 miles, when we found a modest and cheap motel for a 4 hour nap (my idea) and a hot dinner in place of snacks (hubby's bright idea). Stopping after 4 exhausting, physically and emotionally, hours kept us from getting overwrought. We woke feeling 1000% better after sleep and a meal. The modest cost was worth it. We came to this with a combination of the calming 5 Breaths and a clear, analytic Amen!
Our first "5 Breaths and then combine analysis and intuition" decision point came after 4 hours creeping 18 miles, when we found a modest and cheap motel for a 4 hour nap (my idea) and a hot dinner in place of snacks (hubby's bright idea). Stopping after 4 exhausting, physically and emotionally, hours kept us from getting overwrought. We woke feeling 1000% better after sleep and a meal. The modest cost was worth it. We came to this with a combination of the calming 5 Breaths and a clear, analytic Amen!
But stopping isn't always the answer.
2. After another 5 hours of hell, we saw more and more (mostly Californian) cars pulled off the road to sleep by the side of the road. Parked 6-7 deep at the rest area, it looked like every photo of a natural disaster that you've ever seen. We really wanted to stop at midnight, but my analytic side agreed with my wisdom that we needed to keep going, because eventually enough people would quit to sleep that we could do more than creep and park, creep and park.
I was right. Eventually, US 97 was a road again, as the Good Lord intended and I insisted again on pushing on all the way home across the mountains, while those tens of thousands were asleep and the road was clear. When the sun came up and all those sleepers got back on that poor 2-lane road, hell descended again for another 6 hours.
5 Breaths allows you to get loose of the amygdala's death-grip on your mind, and you can think deeply and well. And a 12 hour ordeal won't turn into an 18+ hour hell.
Check out the totality photos in the previous post!
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