We are told by some of the leading names in business to hustle our butts off if we have any hope of being successful.
First off, hustle is the key to everything we want, and I won't deny it. But for centuries we have known that one of the most destructive factors of the human body and mind is stress.
To put it simply, stress is the logical human mind confronted with the unknown on the path to survival. When we encounter things we don't understand ("variables") in our life and we feel we must overcome them to continue, an element of stress is introduced. Stress, then, can come either from lots of small variables, such as too many clients, designs, or new tasks, or it can come from a few very important variables, such as a problem with our only mode of transportation, or a becoming ill during a very busy phase in our career. Artists, being excessively mental, are not immune to these variables and the chaos they wreak in our lives.
What we may seem to be missing despite our creativity, though, is a beacon to guide us back to the shore when we become lost in the storm of stress. If we seem to constantly find ourselves back in a place where we asked for more than we can handle and gotten it, there must be a way out. There is, and it's simpler than you might have thought.
What is something that stress and chaos lack? Regularity. And the easiest, most simple way for us to harness a sense of regularity in our body and mind is through control of our breathing. What has been known intuitively for thousands of years is that keeping a regular relationship with our breath is key to staying consistent and self-aware in our day-to-day lives. Alternately, science tells us that the heart is the most powerful energy center in our bodies and has a huge impact on our thoughts and feelings, and the best way to relax and regulate the heartbeat is through regular breathing.
Going back through the past few hundred years, so many fine artists and writers have urged us to consider the power of routine. I personally have shunned routine all my life, but there is one routine that has never steered me wrong: 5 minutes of calm breathing and visualization every morning, or a practice called meditation.
Without meditation, without returning to a calm state each day, without learning how to regulate our breathing, we wander through the ocean on a boat ill-equipped to handle the storms and waves that are bound to pass. We're thrown around in the current of life, always grabbing for branches or a rock to hold on to. Our creative ideas lead us down fantastic paths and we lose sight of where we were as the ocean landscape changes.
The easy way out is returning to the shore.
Each morning, we return to the shore, even just for five minutes to find our regular breathing, and then return back to the ocean to explore. When the new day comes we once again return to the shore, and then we are free to head back out. What this does is create a routine for our lungs, our hearts, and our minds. It's a routine that consistently battles stress, promotes self-awareness, and keeps us ready for any storm that might come our way.
