Life changes when you start noticing what's happening outside
My optometrist cocked her head sideways and looked at me with the same confused look as my seven-year-old Havanese when he's trying to work out what trick I want him to do to earn a treat.
"What do you mean you're not at your desk all day? I thought you said you were a freelance writer and illustrator." She asked.
I explained that while I do spend a lot of time at my desk, that's where the least important part of my work happens.
Writing and drawing are really just types of thinking. Before I know what I think, I have to go out into the world and see what's happening. I need a lot of input before I can create any output.
"Well, because of your age and eyesight, you still need progressive lenses." She said as we completed the rest of the eye exam, giving up on understanding how a writer works without spending every second at a desk.
In a world of remote work, isolation, loneliness, cascading mental health crises, and screens everywhere from our phones to our refrigerators, it's never been more important for us to get outside.
One of the most toxic things about social media is that it tends to drive us further into our own minds instead of connecting us to other people. Every selfie we take, every thought we post, is first run through the social media filter in our brain.
What will people think about this? Will this get a lot of likes? Will the comments and likes make me cry?
Spending too much time only thinking your thoughts is not healthy. It leads to you overanalyzing everything. It keeps you from truly living your life.
There is loneliness everywhere. It has always been there
There's a broad scientific consensus that social media is making most of us lonelier.
There is a lot of talk about the loneliness crisis in different groups.
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| Haiku comic by Jason McBride |
The truth is, loneliness has always existed. Being lonely has always been a normal, if unpleasant, part of the human experience. But something is different now.
One difference is that more and more people have decided that since their loneliness is not their fault, their loneliness isn't their responsibility either. More and more people give up, believing their problems can only be solved by someone else.
This attitude, combined with a massive rise in being risk-averse to any form of rejection, leads to you getting trapped in a state of loneliness. You get used to your loneliness, it becomes your default state, a prison of your own construction.
When you feel trapped in loneliness, you stop noticing anything about the way other people feel and act, unless it directly impacts you. You eventually stop noticing much of anything that happens outside of your own head.
However, just like I have to get input from the outside world to create my work, you need input from the outside world to create a better life.
You have to get out of your head and head out into the world. Once you train yourself to notice what is happening on your street, or at your local park, or even just outside your window, you start to loosen the bars in your prison of loneliness and despair.
The most important work you will ever do on yourself will not come from a self-help book or even therapy. It will come when you choose to start noticing and caring about things outside of yourself.
Therapy and self-help literature can only take you so far. Therapy only works if you use the tools your therapist is trying to share with you.
Nothing will change about your life until you change something about your life
Life would be easier if you came home to a winning lottery ticket, or if a man in a trenchcoat showed up at your door with a briefcase full of cash, announcing you'd been discovered as the next star, whisking you away to your new life as a celebrity.
But nobody is coming to rescue you. You may feel like a damsel in distress, but you're going to need to be your own hero.
Nothing in your life will ever change until you change something in your life. Every scientist knows that if you keep running the same tests, without ever changing any of the variables, you will keep getting the same results.
But if you make even a small change, over time, you can drastically improve the results you're seeing.
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| Haiku comic by Jason McBride |
You have to get out of your head. You need to interrupt the negative stories you keep telling yourself.
One of the easiest ways to interrupt your negative self-talk is to go outside and notice what you notice.
Chances are, if you walk around outside long enough, you will start to forget to listen to the mean voices in your mind. You might notice someone smiles at you. You might see a beautiful flower or leaf.
In the moment when you notice something out in the real world, you begin to work a change deep inside of yourself. You start to melt the thick ice of isolation that has kept you imprisoned inside your mind.
Taking a walk outside is only part of the remedy. You also have to pay attention to what you're seeing. You are only able to pay attention to so much at a time. When you shift your focus from your troubles and onto the world outside, you signal to your brain that it's time to focus on something else.
For a little while, your brain exists troubleshooting mode and enters the more mindful state of noticing.
You shift your finite mental resources away from anxiety about the future or past and into a present state of paying attention.
If you nourish a habit of going outside where you live and seeing what there is to see, hearing what there is to hear, and smelling what there is to smell, you will start to become mindful, without really trying.
You don't need to become a Zen master or a meditation savant to achieve a sense of peace and mindfulness. All you need is to get outside of your head and head out into the world to notice what you notice.
It's always the right time to do something a little weird
If you are unhappy with the way things are going in your life, why should you keep doing things that other people want you to do?
You will never get somewhere new until you leave the place where you're currently at.
If you want to change your life, you need to be brave enough to get a little weird.
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| Haiku comic by Jason McBride |
Most of the time, most of us are unaware of anything happening outside of our mental bubble. We go about our days doing our work, running our errands, and complaining about how nobody cares about doing a good job anymore.
We completely miss the beautiful smell of new spring grass, the beauty of a birdsong, or the stunning way the sunset looks when reflected in the windows of downtown buildings.
It takes you risking being weird to break out of your default obsession with your own life and problems.
It's strange for a full-grown adult to stop in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture of a sprout pushing through the concrete.
It's weird for someone to choose to stop thinking about themselves and start noticing how everyone else is moving around town.
But it's always the right time to be a little weird. Nothing wonderful has ever happened without someone first choosing to do something different, something a little weird.
Seeing the world around you, noticing all the things that you are noticing, is weird. It's wonderful. It pulls you out of your problems, helps you relax, and strangely enough, gives you more ideas for how to solve your problems.
Make a record of what you've discovered
Have you ever solved a work problem in your dreams or had a brilliant idea in the shower?
All of us have had some kind of experience of having an insight when we stopped "thinking" about a problem.
Our brains are always working. Human problem-solving, in all of its forms, is a creative act. That means it's a little random, a little mysterious, and one-hundred-percent dependent on gathering enough information from outside of our current collection of facts.
Going outside and noticing stuff gives your brain the raw materials to solve your problems, while also giving you enough space to put all the facts and information you already have together in a new way to generate creative solutions.
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| Haiku comic by Jason McBride |
Going outside with the intention to notice things also allows you to connect more deeply with the plants, animals, people, and environment surrounding you.
One challenge is that we are all easily distracted. How do you keep your focus on observing what's happening outside when part of your brain wants to drag you back to stressing about the things you cannot yet solve?
You need to find a way to record your observations. I do this by writing haiku after, or while, taking a walk. I also later draw some of the things I've seen. Sometimes, I take quick pictures with my phone that I can later look through to remember what I saw.
Lately, I've also experimented with keeping a weather journal. I write the time of day, the temperature (from the Weather app), and a comment or two about the weather. I also try and draw a quick sketch of the sun or clouds.
The whole process of the weather journal takes me less than five minutes. But it ensures I get outside, and it keeps me connected to the subtle changes in the seasons.
You need to find a way to record your observations as you brave heading out into the world. It doesn't need to be art. But recording your observations is a kind of creative practice. It's a way to meditate without meditating.
You are at your most mindful when noticing, and recording your observations forces you to keep your focus outside of yourself for longer, building your mindfulness muscles.
Ryan Holiday is fond of saying:
I'm not saying going for a walk will solve all your problems, I'm just saying there's no problem that's going to be made worse by going for a walk.
I take things a step further. I'm not saying taking a walk will solve all of your problems, but taking regular walks and noticing what you notice will solve some of your problems.
Your life changes when you start noticing what is happening outside your window, and you spend less time focused on what's happening in your head.
Article by Jason McBride
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