Life Reset

... and if my Son samples this I'm charging a royalty. Find your own inspiration. Millennials- ugh! ;)

I decided that I needed a life reset.  If you are old enough to remember when you needed to "reboot" your computer because it was crashing you'll remember that you needed to press 3 keys simultaneously and hold.  After a while your computer would unfreeze, shut down, then either re-start or you had to press the power button to turn it back on.  It was a manual override to an overload of information that had caused the computer to stop working.

I had a rather trying month.  Won't bore you with the details but I decided that like a frozen computer I needed to step back and - well at the time I couldn't think beyond breathing. It's funny how life can snowball on you with no encouragement on your part.  When you preform a computer reset you hit 3 keys.  A life reset dictates that you also hit those same 3 keys.

Control- When life starts to spiral it is a result of the fact that somewhere along the way you have lost your locus of control. And maybe you don't even realize it. The job you took starts demanding more and more of your soul. The relationship you are in decides they want a deeper investment. The toys that you bought can't play with themselves.  The friends that you have can't function without your input. These things start to crowd each other and eventually overlap. Their sides bumping and pushing and layering over each other until the part of you that is uniquely you loses her voice. Loses her space. She is no longer the driver but a passenger being billowed about by the whims of the demands that are asked of her. A life reset demands that you take back control of your time, your choices, your financial/physical/emotional investments and take stock.  You have to coax your voice back out from the layers and then wait patiently while she remembers how to speak.

Alt(ernative)- As you are taking back control you have to start looking at alternatives. There is a reason that your life spiraled as it did.  In order to avoid a repetitious cycle you need to be open to different paths.  A true life reset is not a life break or a vacation.  You don't walk away just to pick it all back up.  You make changes which take unconventional thinking and the ability to embrace alternatives. I think in life we may convince ourselves that our path is set in stone and it must look one way.  This is a fallacy. We have as much or as little choice as we determine.  Gifted with free will, especially in this country, the choice is ours for the choosing.  Catch is  you have to be willing to ante up and pay the cost. There is no magic bean. No life algorithm that equals success.  There are cliques that people like but only because it makes them feel safe. Cliques like "Beggars can't be choosers" or "Time heals all wounds" or "Everything happens for a reason." These things are simply not true.  In life no one story has to be your story. You get to ditch the script and take up pottery whenever you want.  You just have to be brave enough to leap into the abyss of alternatives.

Delete- I mean, right? How often in life do we purge our homes, our cars, our closets?  Why don't we purge our lives?  Maybe it's because we feel guilt for acknowledging that we have outgrown a relationship or career or hobby or status. We think that since our past has shaped us we owe it a shrine, even when it's draining us. Why? A life reset necessitates a deletion of things that no longer serve a purpose.  Ouch right?  But don't be hasty. That teddy bear that you have from 1992 does serve a purpose.  It reminds you of a lighter more innocent time.  You can't help but remember all of the tears that it's soaked up and you know in the back of your mind that if push comes to shove you'll pull it out to cry in again. Some things in our lives serve a covert purpose, one known only to ourselves, and that's ok.  I'm talking about the things that serve absolutely no purpose- or that require more time, energy, and effort than they are valued at.  The things that drain. They need to be deleted.  Why? Because they're using data and are bogging up the whole system. No one needs that. Hitting delete takes courage though. Deleted things do not go quietly into the night.  They beg and whine- try to induce guilt.  You have to carefully weigh what you want to delete and then keep that button pressed.

As with a computer reset a life reset only works if you hit all three buttons and hold on for a bit. Yet it does seem to work. I am a few weeks into my life reset and the clarity that I have stumbled across is astounding. The sleep alone has been worth it.  Do any of us realize how tired we all are? How intently under pressure? How much what we feel like we should do causes us to do what we don't want to do? Gotta step back man. Gotta fight back.

I can't say that I've found any answers, actually that's not true.  I have. A lot. I think that what I didn't realize was that in some cases the right answers don't match the questions.

So you have to throw the questions out.

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