The attendant handed us our mini-clubs, balls and a scorecard. I asked my niece whether she or I should be the scorekeeper.

“Let’s not keep score,” she said.

Wait—was this even an option? Since it was her date with Aunt Janet, I let her set the rules. No scorecard.

We ambled along, taking as many strokes as we needed to get the ball through moving doors, up anthills, and into 18 holes. We helped each other out, standing in front of water traps so the other person’s ball wouldn’t go too far astray.

Miniature golf is a lot more fun when you don’t keep score.

Where else am I keeping score, when I don’t need to be?

I like going to conferences—the stimulation, the connection. But it’s also exhausting and draining. All those ideas crammed into my head for days in a row. All that intensive notetaking. All the small talk. After a couple of days I melt down—hyper and spacy at the same time, overcaffeinated, overstuffed, worried about whether I’m getting everything I came for, and incapable of articulating a coherent sentence.

I tried something different this time, something I took away from the Wisdom 2.0 Conference last February. At that conference last winter,  I was surprised that I didn’t go into Conference Burnout, and that I was able to relax and enjoy the experience more than I typically do. One reason is that, every day, everyone in the general sessions spent a few minutes sitting in silence. OK, this was unusual! — maybe not for the mindfulness community, but certainly for a conference setting. I found myself letting go a bit of my standard fretting over what semi-famous people I must try to connect with, what action points I must act on. I was able to let things unfold. I even offered, and led, a spontaneous breakout session on one of my workshop topics.

Hitting “pause”

So a few times at last week’s conference, when I felt meltdown approaching, I just paused. Wherever I was—standing by the coffee bar, sitting in a meeting room waiting for the next speaker—I closed my eyes and took a few slow breaths.

It worked. I got my brain and body back.

I had some minor concerns about whether this looked weird. It seemed like the majority of people didn’t notice—they were too busy running around being hyperstimulated themselves. Invariably, though, after a minute or two, somebody would come over and say, “Oh, meditating, eh?” or “Having a quiet moment?”  At that point, part of my mind would wonder, “Huh, what would make a person interpret closed eyes as an invitation to come over and chat?” A bigger part of me was receptive and found it kind of cute. Maybe they were looking for a little vicarious calmness. Maybe they were just curious about this unexpected behavior. I rolled with it and had some pleasant, quiet conversations—more testament to the benefits of breathing.

I made the decision on one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever experienced in the garden. It was foggy yet a little warm, with a misty beginning-of-the-world feeling, birdsong stirring the stillness. Ah, I thought, this is why I keep coming here. This is why I can’t let go.

And then it occurred to me: But I only feel this way a couple of times a year. The rest of the time, even thinking about the garden makes me feel pressured, discouraged, resentful. Something that’s supposed to be a pleasure is for me a burden.

As if to support this revelation, the free compost I’d applied a few weeks earlier had turned the plot into an oxalis bed. (Lesson: Never accept free compost!!)  That merely confirmed the decision I’d just made the moment clarity dawned.

For a few days after sending in my resignation, I had pangs of regret. What if I’d torn out the flowers and grown more vegetables—maybe vegetables would have made me happier?  Couldn’t I have learned to be less of a perfectionist, mulching the weeds instead of pulling them out by the roots, accepting that pests are part of life, recognizing that nothing is ever finished?

But mostly, I’m relieved.

So what kept me hanging on for so long?

One big reason was the sheer length of time it took to get the plot in the first place. I was on that waiting list for six years! No doubt the behavioral economists have a name for this phenomenon—overvaluing something because it’s hard to get.

But I also loved the blueberries (a love tinged with frustration, as I had to fight the birds for them). I loved the “volunteers”: wild arugula, tiny wild strawberries sweeter than any strawberries I’ve ever tasted, tomatilloes, johnny jump-ups, poppies. Those volunteers were easy to like because they were hardy and came with no expectations—they were delightful surprises from nature.

I guess I’m talking about tradeoffs, and the emotions and hopes that kept me from seeing the tradeoffs clearly. I was clinging to what I thought gardening would give me—satisfaction, fun, community—and not acknowledging what I was actually getting (not much of any of those things), or the cost.

My neighborhood farmers’ market sells blueberries all summer long. I transplanted a few wild arugula seedlings to Mom’s backyard. (Thanks, Mom!) I can still visit the garden on misty mornings, free of the responsibility to make it turn out a certain way.

Worth asking: When have you held onto something because of how you thought it was going to be, rather than how it actually was?

Some useful life skills I got to practice during the three-hour workshop:

• Be average. Don’t worry about whether your idea is funny or sufficiently creative. Say the obvious thing.  Stories need the obvious to move forward. Also, what’s obvious to you may not be obvious to others. Jump in!

That means if a scene calls for a car, go ahead and be a car. You don’t have to think up a submarine or giraffe. (Although if you thought of a submarine or giraffe instead of a car, that’s cool too.)

• Let go of control. Your partner might have a different idea than you do of where the story is going. Together, you can take it in completely unexpected directions.

If you pretend to hand your partner a baby, and they say “Thank you for the cat,” and you say “No, but it’s a baby,” one of you then has to spend a lot of time explaining why it’s a (baby) and not a (cat) and the scene spirals down from there. You’ll have a lot more fun if you just go with it. (A humanoid cat?) It’s fun to share control. Seriously!

• Take a Circus Bow. When something doesn’t work, do a Ta-Da: “Yay, I failed! Yay, I let go of the trapeze! Missed the other trapeze and fell into the net! Applause for me!”

• Remember you don’t have to do it alone. Other people will step in when you’re stumped. You’re looking out for each other. You’re in good hands.

My bodyworker, Roy—who got me to exhale to such good effect last summer—recommends roll-away breaks every half hour or so.  Roll chair back from computer; turn away from screen; take three breaths, focusing on the exhale (the inhale will take care of itself); and let your eyes be non-engaged for a few moments, either by closing them or gazing into the distance.  Optional: stand up. He also recommends resting by lying back over a bolster (or rolled-up blanket) at least once a day.

I have to make these breaks super-simple and inviting, or I won’t take them. The elements and what I need to make them work:

• Every half hour. Every 40 minutes might work better. I’ll experiment. But in any case, I need regular reminders that don’t annoy me. A screen-interrupter would be annoying. So would an alarm. How about a meditation bell? One that I don’t have to download? I’ll try this one.

• Turn away from the screen. The optional standing up will help with this. I could walk over to the window, which has a decent view. That would be a good incentive.

• Take three breaths. Roy says these should be through the mouth, not the nose, because opening your mouth relaxes the jaw (and by extension, the neck). So it’s more like a sigh. OK, sighing I can get behind! I used to sigh a lot, just naturally, until an irritable boyfriend complained about it. This was, um, decades ago. I miss sighing! Incentive! Wait, but ex-BF memory is disincentive. Don’t want that baggage mucking up my nice break. Seriously, it’s decades old, can we let it go? Time to reclaim sighing! Will experiment. If sighing feels great, I’ll sigh. If not, just call it an exhale.

• Close eyes or gaze into the distance: Gazing (non-engagedly) at the view is definitely an incentive.

Funny how much prep I need for something as basic as taking breaks. That’s habits for you.

The resting over a bolster part could be a way to mark the transition between work time and done-with-work time. I work late, so that’s going to be tougher. I’ll start with the breaks.

To review The Plan for Happy Breaks:

Set online chime to go off every 30 to 40 minutes. When it chimes:

1.  Stand up.
2.  Walk over to window.
3.  Sigh three times.

P.S. Got any non-annoying timers to recommend? Let me know in the comments!

T. works in a corporate environment in which urgency, self-involvement and tunnel vision are part of some co-workers’ standard m.o.  He told me that his blood pressure, which has been rising as he gets older, has been a wake-up call and that he’s been rethinking his reactions in order to minimize stress. He said that when a situation pulls at him, “I’ve learned to ask myself, ‘If this person didn’t think it was a problem, would it be a problem?’”  He offered the question as one I might want to try.

I like this question. It’s helping. I’ve been using it not only as T. asks it, but also with my own twist: “If I didn’t think this was a problem, would it be a problem?”

And now I offer the question—T’s version and my take on it—to you.

Pause.

Trust.

Those were the watchwords that saw me, and my voice, through an intensive week of leading corporate workshops while fighting a cold.

“Exhale” came from my bodyworker, Roy, who observed at our last appointment that my breathing seemed tight. “Focus on exhaling,” he said. “The inhaling will take care of itself.” (He’s good with the aphorisms.)

“Pause” and “Trust” were what I added for jangled nerves—not only my concern over how my scratchy throat would manage all that talking, but also the opening-night jitters that went along with one of the classes being a first-time delivery. I wanted an easy way to remember that it’s OK to wait before answering a question…that I can rely on my preparation and my solid training skills…that it’s OK not to over-prepare.

Exhale…pause…trust…turned out to be a revolutionary combination. Not only did it keep my voice relaxed, it slowed down my usually rapid-fire speech. (An acquaintance once said he had to replay my minute-waltz-style voicemail five times before he understood it. And as my spouse will confirm, I’m wont to interrupt, with all good intentions and enthusiasm.)  As I stood in front of the training room, the watchwords helped me stay calm, present and receptive to students’ needs while also keeping the class’s energy up. Surprise! There are other ways to keep people engaged besides talking fast.

I had more fun, too.

Exhale.

Pause.

Trust.

Now, can I remember to use these watchwords when I’m not training? Like, when I’m writing? Checking email? Talking on the phone?

I like being right. I hate being wrong. Creating means spending a lot of time hanging out in the not-right zone. Bleah!

It’s one of the main reasons I get immobilized. You can say all you want, “Go ahead, just write a terrible first draft” (and believe me, I always write lousy first drafts, and second and third ones too), but I find this aspect of creativity nearly intolerable. I hate committing to a choice—a word, a sentence, an organizing principle—knowing I will just have to change it later.

Yet this is how ideas get refined. I revisit them, rework them, see how they relate to each other, begin to see what’s more or less important, find new relationships, decide what’s a tangent and what’s core, eliminate the excess. Did I mention that I hate that this is how the process works? It’s excruciating to me.

After coming across the work of psychologist Carol Dweck, I’m beginning to understand my reaction a little better. Dweck has done research into the difference between performance goals (“I did great! I’m smart and talented! Reward me!”) and learning goals (“I persisted and eventually got there! Yay!”)  As the proverbial A-student, I grew up (happily) performance-focused, rewarded for consistently Getting It Right. This works fine until you hit a setback. Performance-focused A-student types never learn to manage the frustration of Getting It Wrong. Their (my) approach is: “There is a Right Way, and the goal is to get to the Right Way sooner. Wrongness is unacceptable and a big waste of time!” The kid who’s rewarded for persistence rather than performance thinks, “Oh, I love a problem! If I keep working at it, I’ll figure it out.”

“I love a problem”? This attitude is completely alien to me. In my mind, “I don’t know how” leads automatically to “Therefore, I cannot.” My progress is continually throttled by the emotional conviction that “No answer YET” equals “There IS no answer.”

And really, almost all of life is about Not Yet. The moments of “Got it!” are brief and fleeting. So it would be useful to learn tolerance and appreciation for Not Yet.

A scientist I’m acquainted with heard my description of creativity-as-successive-iterations-of-not-rightness and told me, “That’s how science works: Asking successively better questions. It’s a cumulative process.” I like the word “cumulative.” It suggests not that things are wrong-wrong-wrong-until-Bing! they’re OK, but rather that I’m building on my work so that it keeps getting better.

Tolerating not-rightness is a learned behavior, and I don’t know (yet) how to learn it. I have some ideas, though. And I’m persisting.

Even though I’m not going to bed so early these days, a few things are different, in a good way.

• I have gone to bed early a few times in the past few weeks, and slept nicely.

• I haven’t beaten myself up for working late when I needed to.

• I think of myself as someone who will resume going to bed earlier. Maybe my identity is shifting a little.

Some other things I’ve noticed:

• Although shutting the computer off by 9:00 doesn’t guarantee I’ll meet the early bedtime goal, not shutting the computer off by 9:00 does guarantee that I won’t fall asleep until much later than I want to. To put it more simply, it’s really, really, important to turn the computer off early! Even if I don’t feel finished that day!

• And I have to be careful about TV. Okay to watch some, earlyish. Watching a lot, late-ish, gets me worked up and makes it harder to fall asleep. I need to find other ways to reward myself for turning off the computer, aside from TV.

• I had planned not to be distressed when I take a long time to fall asleep on a given night, or wake up in the middle of the night. Nice theory, but when the tossing and turning and mind-racing go on for hours, mm, not so easy to let it go. I need techniques to call on when that happens. Indeed, you yourself may have been wondering, “But Janet, what are you supposed to do when you go to bed early and then lie awake? Because I [meaning of course you] do not find that kind of thing at all motivating!”

So here’s what I’ve been trying, on nights when sleep is difficult:

Mindful breathing. Middle-of-the-night Mindfulness 101: Notice what’s going through your mind, without getting involved in it . . . notice what’s happening in your body, without feeling compelled to fix it. Then bring attention to your breath, observing when your mind wanders away from the breath and gently bringing it back. I admit that switching from thinking (with mind racing) to observing (without attachment) does not come so very naturally! I’m practicing . . . Anyway, here are some ideas for doing this at bedtime. (The breathing exercises are all good. Pick the simplest one, or the first one, or close your eyes and point. Don’t get all agitated over which one to use.)

Acupressure. One night this worked! Not every night. There are lots of acupressure points that are supposed to help with insomnia. This video explains two of them very clearly. (Sorry about the brief ad. But note the video is from the lovely people at the late lamented Elephant Pharmacy!) An internet search will turn up lots more.

It’s 9:30pm (oops!) as I draft this. Turning off the computer now—will edit and post during daylight hours. See? Stopping before I’m finished. I can do it.

Nothing wrong with that. Being free to stay up and sleep in is one of the main reasons I became self-employed all those years ago. (It is true! Maybe the main reason.)  But this style works less well for me than it used to. I feel tired and behind the curve a lot of the time—kind of in a state of perpetual jet lag. I do seem to have more potentially productive energy in the morning, on the occasions when I’m awake—I’d like to take advantage of that. And the late-night schedule presents problems when I have to get up early to lead a workshop.

I experimented with shaking up the late-night habit on my mini-vacation last month. I got a spa treatment in the afternoon, which left me super-relaxed. I fixed a simple dinner at the place I was staying, watched a low-key movie on DVD, and went to bed at 11pm. 11pm is early for me! Ah, the benefits of being out of my usual environment, without the usual stimuli, and with lots of pampering.

I was able to build on the post-vacation-early-to-bed momentum for a few days. But as with previous campaigns, I quickly slipped back into my old ways. Nevertheless, I continue to examine this habit with an eye to changing it! One idea seems key:

Turn off the computer by 8:30 or 9:00pm. This also includes stopping other work, such as bill-paying. So that I have the time I need to wind down before bed.

Habits—not so simple

This intention has a lot of sub-issues attached to it, making it not so easy to stick with. For example:

I need to get used to stopping before I feel finished. (This principle alone could be a whole series of blog posts.) Also, I need to practice accepting that a lost day doesn’t have to be paid for with a late night—or another way of putting it, accepting that for an earlier night to happen, there may be Less Accomplished and that’s OK. It doesn’t feel OK! Need to work with that.

And there’s a big piece in all of this about not wanting to miss anything. I’m like the little kid—I was that little kid—who wails, “Do I have to go to bed? Can’t I pleeeeeeze stay up longer? When I grow up, I’m going to stay up as late as I want!”

I need compassion for the part of me that doesn’t want to Miss All the Fun.

Another piece: Often what throws me off the Earlier Bedtime Project is an imminent deadline. Staying up half the night seems to be a major way I cope with the anxiety of turning nothing into something. Whether it’s the lack of distractions, or sheer exhaustion that eventually wears away my resistance, it’s hard to give up a successful, if dysfunctional, coping mechanism.

So, when I inevitably slip back, for whatever reason, I’d like to not be surprised or overly discouraged by it. To notice the pull of the old habit and let that be OK…and then get back on the horse.

Inviting, not just avoiding

Some positive incentives might help too. For instance, really noticing what my energy is like in the morning. Do I create/think better then? If so, acknowledging and running with it might be self-reinforcing. Also self-reinforcing: Luxuriating in the post-computer time. I worry about being bored. What if I looked forward to watching a TV show I love, fixing a nice snack. Thinking of it as really treating myself to lovely, restful evenings. Enjoying my evening Sabbath. So that I’m going toward something I value, not just giving something up.

One other thing: Not freaking out if I take a long time to fall asleep on a given night. Tossing and turning for a while doesn’t mean the plan is flawed or that I should give up. I need to remind myself that one night, a couple of nights of restlessness are not a big deal.

These are all great-sounding ideas, but a lot to keep in mind—more than I can keep in mind when feeling the tug of the usual way. My focus:

Computer off at 8:30 or 9:00. Treat myself to some lovely rest. Kindly thoughts for the worker bee whose work never feels done, and for the kid who doesn’t want anyone to tell her she has to go to bed, ever.