August 1st - Time out

August 1st.
I am grateful for a lesson I just learnt and need to put in to practice more often. This is the lesson of taking a time out, slowing down, taking a deep breath, maybe a few more, calming down and to just be still and quite. And what I mean by being still and quiet is by slowing down my thinking or the running thoughts in my head.

I was tense today, I was tense all day today. I had all these plans in my head to do many many things. In fact, I have a white board full of things I wanted to do today. But my wife had other plans and needed my help. This threw my plans off track.

When I got the chance to do one of my task, I would get distracted or asked to help with something else, pulling me away from the task. This again throwing my rhythm and flow of completing my 'to do ' list successfully.

One hour ago, I put so much pressure on myself to try and complete all these tasks, that I ended up feeling so tense and frustrated. I tried multitasking and realising that the simplest of task were not going according to plan, and I ended up giving up on trying and sat in the bathroom with my hands in my face, shutting everything out. Until my wife walked in.....

She helped me up, sat me down and told me to read a book that she gave me until she comes back. This allowed me to calm down, de-stress and stopped me thinking of my 'to do' list. After 10 minutes she walked back in the room to see if I felt better, and I did.

I am grateful for having that 10 minute time out session, and for my wife making me do it. This forced me to slow down my thought and mental process of doing what I needed to do. Now that I have calmed down, I can think clearer, be more precise with what I am doing.

I think every now and then we do need to force ourselves to take a bit of a time out, otherwise we just run ourselves down, become tense, sometimes become someone we aren't or don't want to be and turn a want into a need, becoming too focused on things that really aren't important in the first place.