Today, I found a Quarter featuring the state of Ohio on my outing. I have no personal connection to Ohio, but maybe I will later in some kind of serendipitous Touch TV show kind of way. If you haven't watched, Touch on Fox, you should. The writing is phenomenal, and the stories of how we humans are connected is remarkable.
I was thrilled to find a Quarter because I usually find pennies on the road. A Quarter is 25 pennies, so I was feeling rich! This exercise in being present is helping me have exciting moments about small things. It feels like being a kid again but in a good way, remembering the joys in simple things. As a kid, I used to go ape shit over the ice cream truck.
For an introvert, I sure do talk A LOT...in my head - way more than I thought I was aware of. Non-stop chatterbox, I am. I create more noise inside me than outside me. The last 3 days has been more like jogging meditation than walking, but I have been running in silence. No iTunes or buds in my ears breezing to Gaga or Train.
Without the music, I have noticed just how much my mind won't shut up when I run. I have noticed though on day 4 here that the nagging, whining voice of my Inner Resistant Monster is not as loud. He's chilled out the more I have stayed steady in being present. In the first two days, the monster kept complaining about how our back hurt, how we are too hot in the sun, how our left foot itches, how this, and how that. I wanted to slap the monster before I realized that the monster is actually a part of me.
A pain in my knee is talking to me
I jogged 3.5 miles and walked the last 1/3 mile. During mile one, my mind started racing about startup culture in Silicon Valley, the arrogance and pompous attitude that goes on here, and about this ridiculous brogrammer trend. I then moved onto the mental chatter of how the valley doesn't seem to have learned much from the last boom and bust.
I was now on a full blown internal rant when all of a sudden, "Ouch!" my right knee started to hurt. The pain wasn't bad enough to stop jogging, but it was sharp enough to get my attention and more importantly snap me out of the mental rant I was engaging in.
Channeling Louise Hay remembering that physical pains are manifestations of emotional issues, and that knee issues have to do with moving forward or not wanting to emotionally budge, I asked myself, "So, where in my life do I not want to move forward?"
With a moment of stillness and quiet in my mind, what first came to me was that I was clinging onto the past, and the viciousness I went through at the startup I was in during the last dotboom where I felt taken advantaged of and beaten (emotionally and spiritually.) A part of me is still attached to being a Silicon Valley victim. I still feel some level of injustice and disappointment that a place so exciting in technologial innovation is still so asleep when it comes to spiritual and emotional innovation.
Bringing myself back into the present, the now, I asked myself how this victim-hood would serve me in this moment, or serve the new startup I am wanting to build. It's not, at least, not in the way, I envision. I've already spent too many years complaining about stuff, and that got me nowhere. In the last 5 years, I've gotten much better about focusing on what will expand me (enlarge my life) versus contract me (shrink my life.) Lingering in bitterness and victim-hood is contracting, and apparently I have some healing work to do around my feelings about Silicon Valley and startup culture.
Since watching The Dhamma Brothers on Sunday, I have become engulfed with the idea of creating a mindful startup and bringing consciousness into building a high-growth company. If mindfulness can be brought to a maximum-security prison in Alabama, how can we bring mindfulness to Silicon Valley, another place filled with liars, cheaters, thieves, and murderers, not of people, but of kindness and thoughtfulness.
I was at a startup event where the speaker talked about how he had to, "put a bullet into his co-founder," meaning he had to fire his partner. I literally felt a physical pain in my heart when I heard the words, "bullet into my co-founder." I thought how violent even for a metaphor, but not surprising because that's how people often speak here. I don't think they even realize the impact of what they are saying. I'm not perfet either, It's more about being asleep versus being awake, but I have become more consicouss of my word choices. And again, the theme of mindfulness comes up for me.
When I came to the realization that I was holding onto past hurts, and started affirming about the present, and that all would unfold for my higher good so I can move forward in love and kindness, I noticed that the pain in my knee disappeared.
Overall feeling: Feeling more grounded
