Birthday Reflections
Today I hit the official marker of seven years to sixty. I am curious if in your family, like mine, you have people that mention that they feel younger internally than their actual age? Or have people that are stuck at an younger age in your mind? In our case, my kids all joke with one another about the impossibility of them all being in their 20s. Playing around at holidays we hear things like: “Shut up—you’re 12”. “Whatever, you’re like 16, what could you know about it?” All is in fun, with enjoyable smirks as they banter about how they have each other stuck at a particular age in their thinking.
For me, my parents are in their fifties. Not any more of course, but my default picture of all my folks, parents, step-parents, parent in-laws, pretend parents who are mentors, etc. is that they are all in their fifties. And, they are not just in their fifties, but exactly fifty—or the early side of the fifties. My brain truly wrestles to think of myself in this age bracket. When I turned forty-three and considered being seven years to fifty (yes I pondered a blog of that name as well) it was strange to be close to fifty. It was strange because my parents were locked in my mind at that age. However, there was still a gap, so grasping being in my 40s was easier. Turning fifty just weirded out my brain space.
The concept of my brain being stuck on something lead me back to the story I had absorbed about aging. My internalized narrative is that our minds, habits, and behaviors can become more rigid over time. This is more conventional wisdom than fact, but I had absorbed it. In fact, if you’re a nerd like me, and occasionally read studies on “neuroplasticity” and “cognitive flexibility”, you might start to push back on this conventional wisdom. But the fact remains that generically a greater percentage of us get more locked into patterns of behavior and thinking as we age. These patterns help keep us feeling safer and take less energ—which on all accounts seems really fair. Someone once said that ‘aging is not for the weak’.
The epiphany that struck my brain a few weeks back is that I want to be able to conciously choose my times of flexibility and rigidity. I would like to “not do’ what is natural to do. The very point of this blog is to help me keep aware of my natural tendencies and purposefully stretch myself over the next seven years (if I am blessed to have them). The idea seemed easy but I found out one day into this journey that the practice is already challenging.
Backstory: I have over thirty years working with data in computer technology. This experience included dabbling at times with website and email construction using HTML coding. On my birthday, I decided I’d set up the website for this blog concept. Of course it was going to be easy jumping on SquareSpace, designing a site, purchasing a domain, creating some content, and…boom! I’m a blogger!
Well, I ran into some challenges that soured my mood and had me rethinking this ‘stupid’ blog idea. These challenges were, of course, nothing that my twenty three year old, bad ass, Gen-Zer could not fix. But the blog idea took the initial frustration of a few small challenges while I blamed the technology for its lack of flexibility.
The truth is this: what I ran into was myself. The tools are actually far more flexible than ever. If someone’s intuition was formed around the experiences of the last twenty years, the interfaces and flow feels more natural. In my case, my intuition and expectations were set in another time and in other contexts. I had ‘fixed’ ideas of timing for a domain to register. I had ‘fixed’ logic on how a creation tool should be designed. And, I had work-related stored frustration around feeling stuck in a technology learning arc.
Yesterday I wrote an entire post on listening to the rhythm of life and leaning into each moment with more openness and flexibility, while also stepping over being scared at times. And today, on my birthday, I am blessed with the opportunity to try out such flexibility. My intuition and inner rhythm, was whispering for me to do one thing at a time in this new adventure. In my gut I could hear the present wisdom say, “Do one thing today. Just purchase the domain name and enjoy the progress. Save designing for a day when Aspen (my twenty-three year old, bad ass, Gen-Zer) is around”. Simple dance steps to be taken in order.
I, of course, ignored all that and forged ahead. This led to feeling stuck and frustrated. In the end, I learned that had I waited there would have been several insights I could have received from said Gen-Zer that would have allowed for more enjoyment and less struggle. As they sometimes say sarcastically, “Shocking!”.
The surprising take away from leaning in on day 1 was how I can skip being present to myself and trusting my own inner knowing. I slipped right into my patterns of accomplishment, going it alone, not asking for help, and not waiting for additional insights or support. I knew in my gut that I should just do one thing today and enjoy that simple start. I missed an opportunity to be present to myself and enjoy all the possibilities. Instead I got stuck in what wasn’t working.
My motives to go into this new adventure were not bad. I was excited. I like this idea of paying attention to the next seven years. I wanted to launch. It even felt like adventurous flexibility. In a way, it was. And, I also missed the joy of dreaming and the potential for collaborating. Instead I activated a stress cycle. Yuck! At the end of this day, my brilliant, creative, artist Gen-Zer had to run more of a rescue mission than a collaborative work.
My new next level awareness is that stretching can be found in slowing down. I can just be with myself, for a moment, in the joy of the simple things. “Shocking!” This sounds a bit like a poster with a picture of mountains (“Just slow down and be with yourself”) but it was real. I could have done just the one thing. It would have been new. It would have allowed the stretching to happen and seen me enjoying the moment as it sank in and integrated.
Flexibility 101–Lesson 1: Slow down and be present in each step—one at a time— when the rhythm invites me to expand.