Searching for mushrooms
It was an August afternoon in the Swiss Alps when I set out on my hike to hunt for mushrooms. The air was warm and damp. Instead of walking the trail, I chose to bush wag up the tree line along the stream behind my house.
As I ascended, the incline steepened and the ground beneath my hiking boots softened. The stream gurgled. The bees hummed. My muscles engaged and I could feel the pulse increasing in my chest. I focused on breath and established a steady rhythm.
As I neared the special mushroom spot—a damp meadow with a group of conifers—my hiking boots pressed into the mossy grass a little faster than before. I had learned of this spot thanks to an ex-boyfriend. He was an experienced forager and in addition to teaching me how to identify two types of edible mushrooms—Chanterelles and Boletus aka porcini—he had made me promise to never to divulge his mushroom spots to anyone.
No matter how I hard I looked this time, no fungi could be found.
I gave up and kept climbing the mountain.
After 30 minutes, the trees and shrubs that had initially surrounded me started to thin out. The world around me began to widen, and I could see sweeping views of the valleys below.
The smell of earth and pine warmed by the sun mixed. A common buzzard emitting a series of high-pitched whistles soared above my head. Problems and worries started to dissipate. I found myself in a rhythm, like a dance between my breath, my legs, and the earth.
About an hour after I had left my home, I summited and found the surrounding beauty and views dizzying. Clouds cast shadows on the landscape. My skin cooled thanks to a breeze. I was happy to be alive. My mind was clear and worries were gone.
While descending, I retraced my steps.
As I reached that special mushroom spot—where the damp meadow and the group of conifers were—I suddenly spotted bright golden shapes in the moss. As I got nearer, I saw the telltale wavy edges and gills. Chanterelles! How had I missed them during my ascent? Had they grown while I had summited? Why was I now able to see them and not before?
Perhaps, the character Katherine in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun was on to something when she said: “When I was a little girl, I used to run around in the fields all day, trying unsuccessfully to catch ladybugs. Finally, I would get tired and lay down for a nap. When I awoke, I’d find ladybugs walking all over me.”
When we least expect it and slow down, things come to us.
It’s a bit like searching for a partner. We go on dating apps and come up disappointed. When we least expected it, we meet someone who fits. That search for happiness can be elusive but when we stop trying so hard and just be, our eyes see things we normally wouldn’t see.
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Consistency
Often people go to extremes to improve their wellbeing. They sign up for marathons, eat restrictive diets, and sit for hour-long meditations. They start, stop, and lose hope.
I've been there. I've gone to unsustainable and unhealthy extremes, focused on outward appearances rather than on energy, balance, core, flexibility, relaxation, focus, tranquility, and physical ability.
To lose weight, I'd run hard for miles one day followed by weeks of inactivity. I didn’t stretch. I didn’t pause to breathe.
Things came to a head when I found myself alone in the Swiss Alps, raising two small children, and going through a divorce. Evenings, I had no adult social interaction. I sat at my desk writing articles for the local magazine and did my bookkeeping.
Fearing I might injure my back carrying my then-two-year-old, I committed to weekly strength training with a trainer, who happened to also be my kids’ karate instructor.
One day, after listening to me talk about my fears about the divorce, my trainer said: “Why don’t you come to karate class tomorrow night? You can try it three times for free.”
I booked a babysitter and let me tell you: that first karate class changed my life.
It was social. I met other adults who were kind, positive, fit, and helpful.
It was mindful: I couldn’t think of anything else during training and the "kiais' or short shouts while punching focused me on breath.
It was physical: it was cardio and strength training combined and it got my heart rate up without killing me.
It was healthy: we stretched before and after class.
It was consistent: I committed to two classes a week. I rarely missed a class. There were times early on when I didn’t feel like going, but not wanting to waste the money I had spent on the babysitter forced me out the door.
It was spiritual: I became more tranquil than before. Karate has helped me let go of things I couldn't change.
Now, 17 years later, I find myself a black belt, training three to six times per week. Tonight, I’m in Scotland for a summer camp that has drawn over 100 karateka from all over the world, including the trainer who introduced me to the martial art. Karate has helped me with stability, strength, and stamina in other sports, including horseback riding, skiing, hiking, cycling, and running.
I have come a long way in my thinking about movement and wellbeing. I no longer want to destroy my body with extreme runs or sedentary living. I don’t like allowing more than a couple days go by without movement.
What do you do consistently every week, no matter how small? Send us an email with your questions here.
Willingness
A small group of us walked along a Swiss alpine riverbank. Our new friend, Matthieu*, spoke about run-ins with California state troopers, his alcohol and drug abuse, his personal bankruptcy, divorce, deportation from the United States separating him from his children, and his stay in a Swiss treatment center from which he had just checked out.
Why hadn't he sought help earlier on his path of destruction?
“I guess I needed to feel more pain,” he said with a smile.
Ah the gift of desperation!
I told them my story.
One year earlier on that same riverbank, when I had been living in the Swiss Alps for nearly 10 years and been sober for six, I had had a panic attack while running.
This panic attack had come about after the end of a long relationship that felt like a divorce. I had been using blame, busyness, denial, not eating, and running to avoid feelings.
That February morning, it was about 10 degrees below zero Celsius. Now looking back, it was suicidal to run alone, in that cold, and in that deserted area. About a mile down the snowy path, my body started to shake and sweat, my heart raced, my breath felt smothered, and my chest hurt.
"Am I going crazy or is my heart breaking?" I thought.
A few minutes went by and the dizziness went away. Breathing resumed enabling me to run back to my car. Exhausted yet grateful I hadn’t passed out, I called a friend.
“Don’t panic,” she told me. “Emotional pain will not kill you. Just lean into it.”
I expressed my willingness to go to any lengths to get rid of my obsessive suffering and fear of abandonment.
“A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one,” comes to mind. While the quote's attribution remains uncertain, it is a reminder about pain and its way of narrowing our focus and priorities.
That’s when I started the work.
That “gift of desperation" is something I thank daily.
(*name changed to protect anonymity)
9 easy steps to actually focus on writing
You’ve this report to write and you just can’t get yourself to sit down and actually do it. Displacement activities—such as sorting your spice rack into sweet and savory or color coding your sock drawer—take over your focus.
What's to be done? Here are the steps you need to take.
Get a cup of coffee or green tea
Quit email
Quit skype
Put your phone on "do not disturb" (the moon symbol) and place it upside down or out of sight
Set an old fashioned kitchen timer to 25 minutes
Write (don't worry about quality; just write in whichever shape or form it comes out)
When the buzzer goes off, stop, put a checkmark on a piece of paper and take a five minute break (make sure you take the break)
Go back to step 5
Keep doing this until you have four checkmarks; now you can take a 15-30 minute break
This time management tool, the Pomodoro Method, was invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. Each checkmark is a Pomodoro, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer. Proponents of this method say to use a low tech timer, because they like the old fashioned feel of winding the timer and the ticking reminds them of the desire to complete the task.
I use the Control Center on my iPhone to access the timer and place the phone upside down again. To achieve that state, I use OmmWriter, a simple word processing program that has a full screen mode (preventing me from peaking at any other screen), hypnotic sounds including crashing waves and cool keyboard sounds including one that sounds like rain on a tin roof.
In Tim Ferris' book The Tools of Titans, high achievers put a single song on repeat for focus, which probably has the same effect as the tick of a timer or OmmWriter sounds. Writers I know swear by Bach and Mozart.
Experiment with 30 or 45-minute timer settings. After a burnout, I started with 10-minute blocks. After a few days, I found myself in such a state of flow, I kept writing. Funny enough, I felt I did my best writing when limited to 10 minutes.