The Weight of Waiting ✋️
How waiting can ruin your life ☠️- or give you the greatest gift 🎁
Waiting can be a particularly stressful time, especially if it's for something important. It can also be a really powerful opportunity to practice stresslessness.
Thinking
Imagine you're sitting in a queue of cars waiting for a parking space at a really important event that's about to start. It can get stressful pretty quickly. Maybe you start to criticise the organisers for not allocating enough space. Or you blame yourself for not leaving earlier, or your kids/partner/friend because somehow their actions 2 hours ago led to you being in this situation (whether they did or not!).
Stress hormones get released in response to the mind's reaction and the feelings that accompany them make you feel even worse. Although the hormones are designed to help keep you safe (fight/flight etc ) they don't actually help here at all, and tensions heighten. You're now more likely to get into an accident or have an argument, which could ruin your whole event experience much more than being a few minutes late.
Obviously none of these reactions help improve the situation, but we still listen to the mind that gets stressed or angry or worried. We know it doesn't make it more likely to find a parking space, if anything it's risking you being later. But because the occasion is important we somehow justify these reactions, rather than learning to find a less stressful alternative.
To use the Drop the Banana 🍌 analogy, you hold onto the belief that somehow there should be a parking space for you, or that you should have left more time, and you hold on to that thought - even though deep down you know that no matter how much you stress about it, it's not going to make it happen. If you drop the banana (stop blaming others/ yourself/ the world ), you'll be more likely to spot a parking space, than you are if you're distracted by your thoughts.
Unthinking
The mind likes to think it's more important than it is, so you buy into all the drama. It's these thoughts about the situation that cause the stress, not the situation itself. You can unthink your way out (and drop the banana) by first becoming aware that you're caught in the drama of thoughts. It's hard to do in the moment when it's highly stressful but you can practice doing it in less incendiary moments, like waiting for a coffee, a bus or even when someone is late to your meeting.
Syncing
Next, to drop the thoughts and disconnect from the drama in your mind:
Focus as much as you can on what's literally happening in front of you.
Breathe in & out slowly for a few breaths.
When the next unhelpful thought comes in, don't engage with it, just focus as acutely as you can on what you're actually doing right now.
Waiting in highly charged situations is not ideal to practice being less stressed. Standing in line for a coffee/bus can be a much better time to learn how to drop the banana, and accept the situation, rather than fighting it.
In The Psychology of Waiting, Dr Kate Sweeney studied this and found that you can use the time spent waiting to be a benefit. Rather than getting angry or worried, she says there's the opportunity to use this time to get into more alignment and even use extended waiting periods to do things that will get you into a state of flow (more on flow here).
Try it out next time you are looking for an elusive parking space, or waiting on line for something. Focus more on what's happening around you, and be aware of your breathing. This will help you get out of your head.
The more you can practice being calm in situations where your mind would typically get you sucked into drama, the better your chances of being less stressed when you're in more challenging circumstances.