Are you carrying around excess baggage? How do you know what’s “just enough”?
Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.
— Charles Dudley Warner
Carry Only What You Need
As I contemplate these last few days of 2009, I’ve been thinking about this last year, and in anticipation of next year’s adventure, I’ve started wondering about all the baggage I’m carrying with me.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago we took our young family backpacking into the rugged California High Sierras where we enjoyed relative solitude, clear mountain lakes, running springs and every once in a while, the treat of a hot springs dip. It was amazing! We didn’t do this just once, we did it several times. (Yeah, we were a bit daft. But we sure had fun!)
Experts advise – carry only what you need. Oh boy, are they right about that! We quickly learned, as we organized the family troop for our high sierra treks, ounces add up. Figuring out how to carry “just enough” is a real challenge because even a little-bit-extra gets mighty HEAVY as you trudge over rocks and rivers!
There are the necessities – water or water carriers, water purifiers, warm bedding, fire-making supplies, food, topographic-maps, compasses, first aid supplies, whistles… And then there are the luxuries – cocoa mix, freeze-dried ice cream (truly!) a couple of good paperbacks… And if I were to flash forward to today’s technological gadgets, I’d probably want to throw in a GPS for each trekker, cell phones, iPods – all of which I’d now argue are necessities not luxuries…
Although I doubt I’ll be embarking on another backpacking trek anytime soon, (Ya never know though…) with the airlines charging extra for each bag, with gasoline prices being what they are, it still makes good sense to “carry only what you need.” Which brings me to the topic of the day: how do we determine what’s excess baggage and what’s just enough? Because, as difficult as it may be, eliminating excess baggage is a survival strategy we all need to practice both in the wilderness and in life.
Baggage Overhaul Time
It’s time – my recent posts, Clutter Mutterings and Gift of a Clear Mind, have convinced me: I need a baggage overhaul NOW.
In my post Good and Plenty We Be I referred to myself as the Backpack Pack Rat:
We used to go backpacking with our girls when they were little and I always worried about rattlesnakes even though the only rattlesnakes we ever saw were road kill! I used to laugh that, to be safe, I’d look under every rock and then, just in case, I’d put the rocks in my backpack and carry them around – symbols of all the worries that buzzed my brain.
And then, instead of discarding them along the way, I joked that every once in a while I’d take one of those rocks out and bash myself – can’t you do anything right? Bam, bam, bam. …Now, thanks to PattiAnn’s good counsel, before I even pick up the damned rock I’ll remember to ask: What could I do differently? Is this the way I want to live, lugging along a lot of old rocks???
PattiAnn found an elegantly simple tool that I think will be useful to me now in figuring out what I can do differently — Wouldn’t It Be Nice If:
…the authors of Ask and It Is Given
documented how our emotions might fit on a scale of negative to positive. Using this scale as a guide, the reader can choose to change where they are emotionally by using an exercise that helps to move them toward the more positive end of the scale (always assuming that you’d prefer to feel better).
One of the exercises that caught my attention, is “Wouldn’t it be nice if?” The beauty of this exercise is that from where ever I am right now, I can “day dream” about how nice it would be if things were different AND while I’m day dreaming, I make it what seems realistic and comfortable to me right now.
For example, I’m would really like to be more fit and slim. If I focus on my weight, I can work myself into quite a funk. Using positive thinking to tell myself that I’m going to lose 5, 10 or 15 pounds in the next month doesn’t even feel possible to me. Instead I can focus on “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”
- I could find a weight loss method that would inspire me?
- My metabolism and my appetite were more evenly matched?
- With the nice cool weather, I walked more?
“Wouldn’t it be nice if…” gives us a way to move to the more positive side of the emotional scale. Instead of trying to leap out of the pit, we climb out one step at a time and with each step we take, we feel better and more able to do what is needed.
So here I am, asking “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”
- I knew which rocks have outlived their usefulness?
- I knew which ones to carry onward as building blocks?
- I KNEW that resources would appear when I need them?
Aha! Just asking those questions has helped. Because, this I know for sure: A teacher will appear when I’m ready to learn.
Dump the Rocks
Where do I begin, which rocks need to be left behind? Les Brown, a motivational speaker, suggests we look to our insecurities. Yuk. Those rocks are buried deepest in my pack for a reason – I don’t want to think about them. Of course that means I really need to take them out and examine them, doesn’t it. Otherwise I’ll continue carrying them around, and that means I’m choosing to allow those insecurities to weigh me down, to sap my energy, and to keep me from going the distance…Not the best choice methinks. So I guess I’ll bring my insecurities out into the light of day and decide: keep or dump.
Ok, teach’ – now would be a good time to show yourself! And, voilà! Right there in my very own stack of books is the teacher I’m seeking: Excess Baggage – Getting Out of Your Own Way
- Control: You need to be right.
- Self-Esteem: You feel superior.
- Security: You dread rejection.
- Attachment: You create drama.
- Justice: You cherish rage.
Ah, yessssss, I remember this book – it scared me when I bought it and still does – guess that means it’s exactly what I need to help lighten my load. The good news is that Sills doesn’t just identify excess baggage, she offers instruction:
Here’s how [to change]: To lighten your load of baggage – little by little, bit by bit, you must learn to resist your ruling passions…a small shift in your perspective, a slight increase in your range of possible reactions to a situation, these modest differences are all that is required. Ease into this change in a three-step process:
- Change what you see.
- Change what you think.
- Change what you do.
I gotta say, Sills’ Numbers 1 & 2 look a lot like “reframing” to me and “changing what you do” is a natural outcome of using the reframing technique. So, OK, I know how to do this, I’m just applying a familiar technique to a new situation. All I have to do is figure out which “passion” to work on first! If you’d like to know more about reframing right now, see my post, Spin Into Control.
By the way, in every chapter of the book Sills offers exercises to help get you from here to there. I plan to study her Excess Baggage at a Glance Chart which asks questions like: What’s your favorite daydream? What’s the hardest thing for you to do? What’s your secret brag? Hmmmm… I’ll just ease into this process of self-examination. Needless to say, I’m gonna be at this awhile.
In the meantime, maybe you want to ask yourself as you anticipate your adventure into the new year…
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