I’m a sporty kinda guy. I do this thing I call “Jumpin’-Jack Jog” : I hustle my way along the running path at one of my favorite urban greenspaces and, every time I reach a park bench, I stop to do 25 jumping jacks. ‘Round and ‘round I go, joggin’ and jumpin’.
This morning, though, something bugged me : Because I had been counting up all those jumping jacks (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24-25), I mindlessly started counting my jogging steps, too. So, I found myself zoning-out around the path, locked in a repetitive cycle, pointlessly counting everything. 1-2-3-4-5...
It really got on my nerves, so I employed some good ol’ self-talk to thump my brain out of that rut : “Okay”, I growled, “this is just a jog. Stop counting! The ticker in your head is nothing more than the 1-2-3-4 rut left over from counting the jumping jacks. You don’t count the footsteps in a jog, you just… do it! So, look up into the sunrise, and smell the jasmine. Snatch a bloom off the next oleander, and quack at the mallards in the pond. Just be in this moment, and flow with the rhythm of the strides and movements.”
Well - wadda ya know! - that incessant 1-2-3-4-5-6 drumbeat was erased! I thought my way out of the rut in my head!
Aaaah, you clever Exers figured me out, right?
Yes, the exact same thing can be gone during a crave!
Self-talk is so powerful, my friends. It really is. And, it…truly…works!
Around here, it’s a good thing to talk to yourself!
(And, to quack at ducks…)
STORM: 836
(This blog was a lot longer, but I sliced out a few paragraphs about what self-talk has meant to me. I’ll share those thoughts in tomorrow’s blog, instead.)
