Heya, and welcome to your weekend....
Today, I want to share a tool that has had an outsize impact for me (Coach Will): the Start Over Button.
Very simply, this is the mental switch that allows us to "begin again", to leave the paralysis, anxiety, turmoil, etc. we might feel behind for the moment, and invite a new experience, unencumbered by all that weight and pressure.
Before I really understood this mental reset, I figured it was just a little trick that didn't really change my reality. But it is in fact an age-old tool--familiar to meditators the world over--to circumvent suffering, and the power of this tool compounds with practice.
Before I dive in, though, I need to acknowledge that this 'Start Over' mindset switch is not always possible, and it would be callous and ignorant for me to pretend that it is. In fact, it is a significant privilege of mine that I have had the freedom to practice this ability to press reset.
This is a privilege born of my inherited status, my whiteness, my relative wealth, my male-ness, my youth, my thinness and my non-disability.
When I take a steady look at myself, I see someone who enjoys many of the things that make life easier in this society, many of the parts that obscure what society actually is for many, many people. In fact, it obscures what it feels like and what it offers for most people.
I'm not ignorant to these privileges persay, because I can learn about them, name them, and look for their impact. But my inability to see reality clearly is shaped by the fact that I simply don't need to confront the obstacles that so many other people do.
Which brings me back to this special tool that I have been able to hone through my years of spacious privilege: the Start Over Button. By allowing a momentary respite from the noise in my head, this reset switch has offered me clarity--something particularly valuable during this historically fucked-up time. And this clarity has helped me see my privilege, my gaps in experience, and what I might be able to do about all of it.
I first heard about the Start Over Button from my trumpet professor in college. We used to meet once a week in the tiny practice rooms high up in the decrepit old Boston office buildings that housed my conservatory (I was a music performance major in college).
Sitting there, our knees almost touching, I'd pour my soul out each week. Between playing a few short bars--which had been the focus of hours of practice the previous week--and talking about self-worth, ambition, anxiety, etc, I bared my soul to that guy more than just about anyone I've ever known.
He would hold space for all of it, and worked every week to give me new ways of seeing problems. He was continuously trying to help me understand myself in a way that I could use to change my trajectory. Looking back, I realize that he taught me most about accessing my inner power; the music was a far second.
And the Start Over button was one of his favorite tools.
Between snippets of my playing, when he'd notice me beginning to struggle, he'd lean in and say, "Ok, now blue sky it...press that reset button," and he'd press an imaginary button right above my knee cap.
With that, he'd demonstrate what he wanted: he'd shake out his shoulders and neck, take a big, easy breath, blink his eyes wide, and settle back into his chair with a pleasant smile. He'd reset.
His reset was so powerful, so purely cleansing for him that I, an eager-to-please, ball-of-nerves undergrad, felt the impact by osmosis. I'd lose a bit of my tension, stop gripping my experience quite so hard, and settle into the present moment.
Those fleeting windows of clarity didn't do much for my playing in college--I never could really bring that kind of ease to my music-making back then; I cared about it all a little too much.
But the Start Over button stuck. I found myself using it more and more after college, to stay calm in a domestic spat, while I was waiting in a too-long line, or during a tough work meeting.
And the more that I practiced using it, the simpler it got. Even just thinking about a blue sky will get me to take a short moment to breathe slowly in, and then let the air fall easily out. To sit back, and notice my experience.
These moments of interrupt have played an especially big role in my self-care these last couple weeks as our country reels. As the news of yet another tragic chapter of black people losing their lives at the hands of a systematically oppressive society, while a global epidemic continues to grip us all, I've found myself struggling to know what to think and what to do.
But in these unchartered waters, when I'm not sure of much at all, I'm sure that my Start Over moments are saving me. For a minute or so at a time, I can separate the smothering weight of "before" from the present moment. And then I can move forward, and take actions that feel true.
However you find that you are able to open up these moments for yourself, I'd encourage you to try. It may not last for long, or even be possible in that moment, but you deserve access to the calm and decisiveness of your inner power--we all do.
Whatever you're doing these days to take care of yourself and your loved ones, I see your efforts, and applaud you for them.
Sending love to you, Coach Will