States and Stages

If there's one thing that I've learned over the past week, it's that I go through some very interesting states throughout a normal day. Let me give you examples throughout the week.

Monday - I was still coming off of a high from the PSSA week of sleeping and enjoying myself. Life seemed to be easy, and I found myself doing both enjoyable and useful things.

Tuesday - Concert Band is a major killer. It killed me all over. Add to that my attachment to the idea of getting the labtop I wanted (which I now have chosen to put off [yeah, you'll get a whole article on this one tomorrow]), and suddenly the easy flow of my life got all sorts of stopped up.

Wednesday - This was the low of the week. Lots of mindless activity ([truly] random web surfing, watching television, watching movies, other OCD activities) made me dip down to the lowest I've felt in a while. Oh, and I felt a little bad about missing Jazz Band practice. Just a little. I was in a major slump state, at the bottom of the sine curve as Dave would put it.

Thursday - I decided to take some control over my life and utilize some self-discipline. I mean, that's my number one strength, might as well put it to good use. As soon as I did, my mood turned around almost spontaneously. The shift in how I felt was dramatic: suddenly I felt like being productive while having fun. Crazy.

Friday (aka Today) - I'm at the high for this week. Lot's of serendipitous things kept popping up, making life seem ever so interesting. My decision to take more responsibility for my life increased the joy in my life.

Now that I've made you sit through that recap of my week, I realize I didn't really have a point. Well, I had a point, it just had nothing to do with that little recap. But who doesn't want to know all the minute details about my life? Honestly?

[After even further consideration, I see that it did have a point. You can trace the cycling of my states in this little diagram. As you can see, it cycles from high to low back up to high again. The goal, as stated later, is to extend the high while eliminating the low.]

The point I was getting at can be summed up in one experience. Have you ever watched a movie and left the couch/movie theatre thinking, 'Damn, this is going to change my life. I'm f#$%#*^ inspired!' That feeling stays with you for maybe a few hours, maybe for the rest of the day. Then you get up the next morning, and the memory of the feeling is still there, but the feeling itself is gone. Let's call that feeling of inspiration a "state" and the desired 'that's going to change my life' changes a "stage."

I've been having this sort of experience a lot lately. I'll read an article by Mr. Pavlina, or Brian Johnson, or maybe just a passage from some book, and suddenly the world seems to shift. Life makes sense, conquering my greatest fears seems so simple, and I feel like I could just float through the rest of my life.

Then, the next day, the feeling is completely gone. Nothing left of it at all. I decide to "sweat the small stuff," and suddenly the big picture is lost. The state doesn't change into a stage. I quickly shift down to the state of "quiet desperation." Let me tell you, compared the the state of flow, quiet desperation doesn't even hold a candle. Not a candle.

How do I get the state to stay around long enough to remain a stage? My theory: it's like heart cells. If you take heart cells away from the heart, they start to beat erratically, but if you put at least two together and they beat in unison. Take them apart again, and they'll beat erratically. In this analogy, let's assume that putting them together and taking them apart enough times eventually causes them to permanently beat in synch. I figure states and stages are like that too. If I get myself into the flow state enough, I can eventually consistently stay in that state until it becomes a stage.

Hells yeah. Of course, "things," the "small stuff," can easily get in the way. If I let them. I guess that's why the Buddhists preach that you must first train and calm your mind before you even try any other practice. Well, after you've figured out ethics, that is.

As Mr. Pavlina loves to state, "The years will pass whether or not you do something, so why not spend the time doing something you enjoy that challenges you?"

This is my challenge: to get myself so high that the high becomes the norm.

:)

Wish me luck.

Namaste.