#2 Space is the Place…

Another one of my online mentors is Seth Godin. He writes a short email that he sends out every day that he also curates in an archive so you can pull up previous posts.

A few days ago he mused about how it is the space in your sock drawer that makes the container useful Same for your file cabinets – the unused space is what makes it easier to find things and ready to hold more stuff .

When the sock drawer or the file cabinet is crammed full it becomes a pain to use. It’s value plummets.

I had his musings bouncing around in my head and it occured to me that the same holds for my mind (or is it my brain? – I’m not sure). And that is one of the reasons that people meditate. To develop an awareness of the space between thoughts and cultivate a spaciousness that allows for clear thinking.

You are reading these words on some kind of device that is incredibly powerful. And this same device used with a mind that is clear and intentional can leverage results that would have flat out astonished my grandparents if they were alive now to see me in action.  But the same device can also fill your mind with so much information that there is no room left to move.

Every day I pick up the double edged sword of digital technology and I have some ratio of using it and it using me.

I grew up in a family of hoarders and I am all too familiar with the clogged, claustrophobic, exhausted feeling that comes from being in that kind of space. And it is a lot like the way I feel after a session of binge watching almost anything – the value of the experience plummets at a certain point, but the momentum is too great to stop. I believe the exhaustion is intentionally engineered by the people who make binge watching possible. Why?

One clue is this quote from coach Vince Lombardi: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

Once your mind is clogged and your courage is rendered inactive, it is much easier to program you and trigger you into spending your time, attention and money in ways you never would if you were rested and clear.

Vince Lombardi’s warning was a way to motivate his players to do enough work to bring up their conditioning to the point where they would not be exhausted in the 3rd or 4th quarter of a game.

It can also be a warning to us to build up our internal resistance to the tsunami of stimulation waiting for us every time we use our devices. Two things I can think of that will give you a little space when you notice you are getting sucked into the digital abyss: 1. Mel Robbins 54321 as a pattern interrupt. and 2. take a deep breath…

If you are lucky, you will then sieze the chance to regain control of your mind.

I have mixed results with my own efforts in this arena. One reason I am writing this is because attempting to teach something is one of the best ways to learn and get better at it.

I hope you found this useful – thanks for reading this!

Richard