Choose You
I did an interesting experiment recently. In the middle of a busy work week, I stopped working. For the next 36 hours that followed, I did nothing else but choose exactly whatever I wanted to do at each passing moment. No emails. No to-do list. No house chores. No responsibility. No obligations. None of it. As the hours unfolded, I also placed my smart phone on airplane mode quite a bit. I did whatever I felt like doing as soon as I felt like doing it.
In the days preceding this, the concept of “fear/control addiction” showed up for me in online media via two entirely separate sources. The concept goes something like this; when we attempt to control our day-to-day lives through incessant activity, we can stifle a cosmic force or some higher intelligence that knows exactly what we want and the best way to get it to us, or it knows of something even better to manifest than the specific object of our desire.
I did this experiment without any offline interaction with others so I could cater to any of my whims at any time. As the hours began to unfold, I took a nap or two. I slept in a bit. I cooked some gourmet meals for myself and also took myself to a local restaurant for dinner. I took a walk along the Hudson River at sunset. I called a few friends to chat about nothing in particular. I played rock and roll music louder than usual as I danced a bit at times and strummed a few chords of air guitar. I basically took it easy and engaged in whatever looked like fun.
During the last 12 hours of this, I called a friend to ask him a technical question pertaining to water purification—his line of work. I wanted to determine the acceptable pH level range for drinking water. My friend said, “This is funny. I’ve been thinking about you the last few days, but I’ve been too busy to call.” He continued, “You know that project you’ve been putting together? I belong to a group of local business owners that share the same vision, and our group’s leader had to suddenly vacate her position because of a family emergency that required relocation to another state. I can put you in touch with all the group members.” Later, two more significant opportunities showed up as I continued to “choose me” through the course of the day.
Perhaps this good fortune was a cosmic force or higher intelligence at work, conspiring to help me. Who really knows? In any case, the point is that I tried something different and it actually worked out to my benefit. Had I done nothing new and changed nothing about my day-to-day activities, I perhaps would have received the same results that I always did. Needless to say, I was so happy with the results of my experiment that I’ll be conducting it again very soon. Give it a try. Choose you for a day or two and see what magic might occur.
Jerry & Pat Hocek, Publishers
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