Notice the Urgency Before You Obey It
Something happened to me this morning that showed me just how useful the practice of noticing can become.
Dr. Ellen Langer often suggests a wonderfully simple mindfulness exercise: look at something familiar and deliberately notice three things you’ve never noticed before.
I’ve been practicing that.
And this morning I noticed something less charming than a tree, a building or the neighbor walking her dog.
I noticed I hadn’t gained a new subscriber in 48 hours.
Immediately, the old urgency appeared.
Write something. Publish something. Do something before people forget you’re here.
Then I noticed that.
And I realized something important: if I rushed off and wrote an article simply because I was uncomfortable, the article wouldn’t necessarily serve my readers.
It would serve my urgency.
That’s a very different thing.
So instead of obeying it, I asked myself what I actually wanted to do today.
Paint.
There’s a commission waiting on my easel, and that’s where I’m headed.
Maybe that’s one of the real gifts of practicing mindfulness. We begin noticing not only the world around us, but our own automatic reactions.
And once we notice them, we have a choice.
Urgency does not automatically deserve obedience.
Try this for seven days. Find something you see all the time and notice three things about it you’ve never noticed before.
Then start noticing yourself.
That’s where things get interesting.
Anyway, if you like the idea of moving through your days with more trust and less urgency,
And you don’t want every anxious thought deciding what you do next,
You might want to subscribe to The Daily RE-Wire. That’s exactly the kind of encouragement I’m here to give you.
