Aaron Morency

Remember to play

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For some reason I have a reminder set to review this draft post again so I can publish it. Well, my son is now 6 months old and I have no idea what this means or why I set a reminder to publish it, but here it is:

This morning my meditation technique was to visualize a warm beam of light just above the head. If you’re doing it right, the same warm feeling sort of washes over you, from head to toe.

Another recent happening is that we’ve been singing to my 4 month old son. One song goes, “Baby mine when you play, don’t you mind what they say, let those eyes sparkle and shine…”

And here we are now talking and about these two things at once.

Is life about rooting in that warm beam of light while playing in our emotions, thoughts, actions, and state of being? Is it a game? As long as we live in that warming sensation while playing in the world, here we are.

Of course this sounds ridiculous because there is nothing to learn, only to remember. Duh, here we are, let’s play.

When negative thoughts feel so good

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Yesterday, while I was in the shower, it occurred to me that it was easier and more automatic to go to negative thinking. At first I thought, this is just because I’m practiced at it, I need to practice a more positive mindset. But I don’t think that’s it.

After self inquiring a little more I realized, I settle back in a negative mindset more easily, and not even that, I want to feel crappy about myself sometimes, it’s because I don’t have to do anything about it. Oh, I feel crappy, well duh, of course I do, here I am.

If instead I was thinking positive thoughts, very empowering thoughts, I would have to change myself and they way things are. I would have to do something about it, and that takes work.

Now, I know some of you don’t know me but, I’m kinda lazy. I learned this from a young age and honestly, I like it. So no wonder these empowering thoughts are so much work for me and that I just want to settle, the laziness is a comfort zone.

How can I change this state for myself? How can I see myself differently so that I’m not only okay with striving for better, I’m eager for it?

Perhaps it starts with hope. After all, I’ve gone through some setbacks, personally and professionally and I feel beaten down. If I have a few small wins, perhaps hope would return.

But even that is waiting for the outside world to be different than the way it is. How can I change?

Recently I was learning more about the Tao, which, the way I understand it, is being in a place of balance and flow, right in the middle, as we cruise through life. Life is all a bunch of change. We can’t stop it or keep it from doing what it will. But what we can do is be in it fully.

So maybe if I find a way to be in it fully, changes and cruising as it is, I (we) can lean in and enjoy the ride.

Things will change, as I’ve said, we can’t help that. What we can do is be all in for the cruise.

This way its not about not doing things that we don’t want to do or even changing what we don’t like. Maybe those thing will happen, and they automatically will when we choose to give up our own disconnect from the way things are to the way we wish them to be.

This is the way of the Tao and this is the way of being okay with action or non-action just the way it is. If it’s lazy, it’s lazy. If it’s active, it’s active. It might be better to think of this as a state of joy or peace instead of positivity as I was using earlier. Positivity infers that something will happen and it will be good, when, now we know, that may or may not be the case. It will just be as it is.

So lean in to the joy and peace, be positive about that experience and allow the cruising to happen just as it is, all in. Enjoy.

The funny thing about stability

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I love logic and routines. It’s so fun to make a plan and then cruise right on down the path just like it was laid out. And then BAM! There’s a cliff.

I hate cliffs. Not like the real ones, those are pretty cool, I’m talking about the psycho-cliffs. The ones that feel real but aren’t, they’re just made up of thought and emotion. Those can be a doozy.

My son was born a few months ago and at times we strive to establish a routine.

Who am I kidding? We are longing to establish a routine for him and for ourselves. The thing is, he’s not having it. Even the slightest bit of consistency and it’s as if he can sense our pleasure and he say, “oh, you think that’s nice? Watch this!” And just like that we’re back to a clean slate, no consistency whatsoever. No anchor, no tiny bit to cling to for hope in getting our lives back.

Actually, I don’t know why I keep lying to you, my son doesn’t talk yet, he’s only a few months old. Regardless, somehow we keep coming back to the complete unknown and all I want is a little prediction and control!

Is that what this whole natural path of having offspring is for? It happens late enough in life for us to establish some habits and routines, think we have our lives in order, and then it just slips right out from under us. Could it be that it’s natures intent?

What is stability anyway? We say “it’s stable” as if we know it wont collapse. But how do we really know? Do we have the ability to go into the future and come back to the present with an undeniable prediction of what will happen?

Life doesn’t work like that. We may feel as if we have control but we don’t. Just like we may set out a fantastic plan with all kinds of detail and everything might work out that way. But it also might not.

As I take this final moment of the month to publish this blog I feel as if my son is teaching me a new lesson: Get comfortable with uncertainty. But really its not his lesson to teach, it just is what it is and that’s what he’s living out. I think it’s that state of being that we forget sometimes. He just hasn’t had a chance to yet.

Establishing a new habit

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Now I am practicing turning a coin over when I want a cup of coffee. I’ve turned it over twice today already. I’ll turn it over again later when I get to work.

Sometimes its not clear what barriers are in our way and sometimes its not easy to see that coffee (or anything else) can get substituted for the hard stuff we need to do. Oh, I need to get to work, I’ll have a cup of coffee. Having a cup of coffee is much easier than actually getting to work, taking risks, and producing something.

What’s detrimental to this habit is that having a cup of coffee may seem like progress but its not. Your brain just gets it confused with other things that give you good feelings because its always there. You tell yourself that I must do great work when I drink coffee because I was drinking coffee when I did that great thing (over and over).

Reality though, is that its not the coffee. Might as well make it about turning a coin over or some other banal act of fulfillment. Then you can get on to the real work that still needs to be done.

Bam, it’s a nice trick.

Make your reality

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At some point I would like to talk more about risk, but today I want to write about stories and our reality.

Most people think that reality is and we then have to fit into it. I’m not sure that it works that way.

When I was in college I never knew what I wanted to do, I just kept going as an engineer because I couldn’t think of anything better. I would have gotten made fun of if I switched to business because only the people who couldn’t handle engineering switched to business.

At one point I made a decision that project management sounded like it could be fun. This was probably around the same time I decided that I’ve been in college for engineering too long to change. “I might as well get this over with since I’ve made it this far,” is what I thought.

Generally, right after college an engineering student goes off to be an engineer and if they work hard and continue to learn they can become department managers or project managers.

I didn’t. After graduating from college a friend needed help with some precast concrete products and I had already worked for him before so I knew how to fabricate the reinforcing steel. It was a skilled laborer position and I was an engineer, but I did it. That company hires engineers but I don’t think they ever realized I was an engineer while I worked there. I just did it to help my friend.

A couple months later I left that job and became a project manager. I skipped right over the whole engineer part.

I remember during the interview telling my soon to be boss that I don’t have the 4-5 years experience as a PM that he was looking for. He said, “for the right candidate, we wont worry about that.”

Later I found out that they had hired me in part because I took a laborers position to help my friend instead of waiting around for the phone to ring and become an engineer.

It’s funny how things like that work out sometimes. I wonder if it all got started when I decided that project management might be right for me.

There’s more to the story but I wont go on for now. I just wanted to give an example of a story I told myself back in college and where it eventually led.

Despite common belief, we may have more control over our reality than we’d like to admit.