How does that saying go again? The one about the best way to make God laugh is to make plans? Well it must be a constant pantwetter up there because I have never realized just how obsessively planny we all are until now.
Here’s how the conversation goes when I tell someone I’m in town:
Them: How long you here for?
Me: Until I decide to leave.
Them: But, so, where are you going next?
Me: Excellent question.
They look at me like I’ve sprouted a unicorn horn.
Them: So you really don’t know?
Me: I have lots of ideas but I’m just going with the flow right now.
At this point they usually become irritated with me. Like I’m withholding information or being unnecessarily mysterious or wisenheimery. Then they ask me how long I’ll be in town again (I swear, everyone asks me twice) before they get it.
It’s taken a while to sink into my own brain, and it’s still sinking, actually.
It’s like when you first hear that someone’s died or you walk into a room full of balloons and people screaming “surprise!” in your face or you realize you’ve locked your keys in your car…it takes a second to register. It’s not the reality you’ve been working with up until that very moment and, er, it does not compute. Not right away anyhow.
Most of us are completely oblivious that we’re working with a reality at all, but we are. We’re working with it hard, gripping it tight with white knuckles, defending it with our lives and those few times we let go can literally be like slipping into a dream.
And, as we all know, anything goes when it comes to dreams, which is why we tend to use the aformentioned white knuckled approach to life.
Due to the fact that I officially have no address and a business that I can run from anywhere in the world, I have been handed the ultimate opportunity to truly let it all go and see what the hallowed NOW has in store (I’ll let you know if it’s everything it’s cracked up to be).
Yes, I have things on the calendar – calls with clients, speaking engagements, writing deadlines, etc. – but because place and time are so fluid, it’s allowed me to exist in a sort of suspended reality, where it all could, or couldn’t, change on a dime.
I buy one-way plane tickets, pack hiking boots and heels, refuse to make plans with anyone who gets crabby if I need to change them and, most importantly, immediately squelch my blathering inner-hysteric whenever she attempts a bout of seriouslyholycrapwhatthehellamIdoingwhereamIgoingshouldIdoChristmasinNYthisyear and stay in the zone.
Which is something you can do too, even if you still have an address.
The perfect possibilities and suggestions and invitations are constantly presenting themselves to us, but we’re often so caught up in our planned out lives that we don’t see them. We’ve been so conditioned to be in control, to keep things orderly, to stick close to the familiar, that we’ve cut ourselves off from the almighty flow which is where the real fun ride is.
When I really truly am in the zone, new clients appear out of nowhere, free apartments in foreign cities are offered up, international speaking engagements happen, dear friends are randomly bumped into on the street and I catch not 1, not 2, but 3 express trains right in a row, getting me from Westchester to Brooklyn in record time.
Here are 5 simple tips to surfing your own tasty wave:
Breathe. Deeply.
Listen to your inner voice.
Do exactly what it says.
Say thank you. A lot.
Don’t worry, be happy.
