Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On

 AKA – The Steve McCullough Needs To Get His Shit Together Project

Editor’s Note: The title of this blog post comes from a Jimmy Buffett song, I had never heard it in my life.  He wrote it for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

For the past 1.5-2 years, I’ve developed my morning routine around reading spiritual and self study books, walking with Laurel and a short exercise routine.  I started slowly with the exercise routine, and eventually worked up to doing 50 push-ups, my exercise wheel and 8-9 minutes of plank and boat poses to various inspirational music, such as Hillsong United or Krishna Das.  

In July, I decided that I needed to ramp this up a bit, and I decided to increase it by five push-ups each month to try to get to 80 by the end of the year, or maybe I could get up to 100?  I went up to 55, and that was no problem, so let’s take it to 60!  I found within a few days, instead of enjoying my morning routine, I was starting to dread it.  I could do the 60 push-ups, but it just wasn’t as much fun anymore.  

Several years ago, I would run 5-6 days a week, I’d do 2-3 miles each day in the morning, it would get my day started off right, I’d think, I’d get centered, it was a great way to start the day.  Then I decided I wanted to run a half marathon, and I worked my way up to that, and then I ran more half marathons.  I was running 6-10 miles in the morning before work, training for the half marathons, and after a while, I found that I really wasn’t enjoying my runs anymore.  It had become too much work instead of fun.

Yes, there is a pattern here….

Back in June, I completed my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training, and as I’ve highlighted in previous blog posts, it was one of the most incredible journeys I’ve ever been on.  I developed tremendously, and I was able to share this journey with some wonderful people.  It was a time in my life that I will cherish forever.  In the midst of it, I was reading a book, “Einstein and the Rabbi”, and I don’t know if any of you have experienced something like this before, but I would swear that the author, Rabbi Naomi Levy, wrote this book specifically for me.  It was eerie, there were certain passages that spoke directly to me, and I learned so much and grew from that reading.  The combination of the two experiences had me on an incredible high at that point.

As I headed into July, not surprisingly, I crashed down off of that high, it would have been impossible to sustain it.  I talked to some of my fellow trainees from the Chocolate Poet Society, and I found they were experiencing similar feelings, so in a weird sort of way, I felt a little bit better.  But, I just wasn’t recovering.  As the days and weeks passed, I wasn’t improving, I was still really unhappy, grumpy, irritable, any word that you can think of for a nasty person, it was me.

What was even worse was I was reverting back to an old pattern at work also.  I’ve shared in past blog posts that I used to believe that I had to live work, be work, everything depended on my super human abilities to outwork anyone.  I was falling back into that old mindset.  I was clinging onto everything, I was not trusting anyone could do it as well as me, I was controlling everything.  Worse for me, I wasn’t being present.  I learned long ago, that it’s critical to be present with your colleagues, if you are in a conversation with them, they need to be your only focus at the moment.  No e-mails, phone calls, texts, anything should distract you.  They need to be your only focus.  I wasn’t allowing outside distractions disrupt those moments, but I was allowing the bazillion thoughts running through my head to divert me, and I wasn’t truly present.

Now, in a minor bit of defense, there was a reason for this, and it relates back to “Einstein and the Rabbi”, but I’ll have to defer that discussion for now, otherwise you all will think I’m really crazy (I know, that ship has probably already sailed).

I got to the point as we rounded out of July and headed to August that I determined if I couldn’t get my shit together, I would have to seriously consider quitting my job.  Now, that would most likely be a knee jerk reaction, and I wouldn’t really do it, but life isn’t meant to be this miserable, and I was making it that way.  I couldn’t seem to bounce back, and I couldn’t seem to get out of my way.

And then, Sunday, July 31, a barrage of messages came crashing in from multiple sources.  It started innocently enough, I had seen a sign at a local shop with a Mr. Rogers quote on it on Saturday, and so I googled Mr. Rogers quotes first thing that morning, and I saw this one:

"We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that's what's important."

OK, message received.  I have been too focused on numbers lately, OK, all my life, and I’ve lost sight of the more important things.  I needed to hear that.

In my morning reading from “The Untethered Soul”, I read this line from Michael Singer:

“Learn to stop resisting reality, and what used to look like stressful problems will begin to look like the stepping-stones of your spiritual journey.”

Maybe easier said than done, but he brought up so many examples of what gets us all worked up into a frenzy, and I thought of all the “major” problems I’ve been having at work, and you start to see, there were major problems six months ago.  There were major problems six years ago.  Do you really remember them?  Maybe, but did they somehow get solved at least in some manner?  Most likely yes.  There will always be issues, problems, challenges, we just have to work our way through, do the best we can, and accept that’s all we can do.

And then we went to yoga, and Michelle’s theme was about being in the present.  I probably won’t get part of the words exact, but it was something like:

“The past doesn’t matter, the future doesn’t matter, all that matters is right here, right now”

She said that a few times during class, and each time, she paused and really emphasized the “right here, right now”.  While I know she was talking to everyone, I felt like she was talking directly to me.  OK, OK, I get it, get back to the present.

Finally, I decided to watch a sermon from Nadia Bolz-Weber from July 3 that I had saved in my Inbox, but hadn’t found the time to watch.  I started watching it, and she started off talking about how she used to do Crossfit, but had given it up a few years back and started doing yoga, and she talked about the breath.  She talked about many Biblical references where the breath is so important, and life-giving, and she suggested on a certain level, our breath is God:

“Maybe God gave us the breath of life so that we might experience this life with God.  When Moses asked God’s name he wasn’t given a name name, he was given Yahweh, which some say is not a name, but a sound – the sound of breath itself…Inhale 'Yah', Exhale 'Weh'.”

I’ve started to use this when I need to focus, to center myself, I inhale 'Yah', I exhale 'Weh'.  It’s amazing how simple it is to center yourself, focus and relax when you just breathe.

So I set August 1, 2022 as the beginning of The Steve McCullough Needs To Get His Shit Together Project.  I planned to relax, be present, let my people do their jobs, not stress out over the little stuff (and of course, it’s all little stuff), and most importantly, breathe.

Have I been perfect ever since?  Oh my God, no.  I think it was Thursday or so, there was an issue with inventory, and Marci came to me and said, “Can you please just let me handle this?  I got this, I’ll make sure I keep you informed, but I have this taken care of.”  Yep, she was right, I told her I’ll stay out of it.  I’m a work in progress.

Going back to the title of the blog post and the impetus, I can’t fathom living through a hurricane, and for many, it was a huge bonus to be able to breathe in, breathe out and move on. Whether we hit our sales numbers this year, whether we move into our new building timely, whether I get the Ratier contract, I think I’ll survive, and of course, I’m much better off than someone who has had to live through a hurricane.  

One last thing from Nadia Bolz-Weber, I wish I could share her entire sermon, but then it would be her blog post, but she said so many incredible things, and this part really resonated with me:

If it’s true that the only life that exists in a universe billions of light years across is on this tiny dust mite of a planet -  then yes, there is still much to fear, but let us not hold our breath and miss how unspeakably beautiful and magnificent it is that against all the odds in the universe, we get to breathe air and think thoughts and love people, and walk in parks, and hold babies, and eat pizza and be bad at yoga.

You know, I’m not always the quickest study, it takes a while for me to understand a lesson or a message.  Maybe that’s why I received four of them that Sunday.  Someone decided that I probably will just brush it off, look past it, decide it’s just a bit of irony if I only receive one message about getting my shit together.  Two?  Ah, coincidence.  Three?  Hmm, that’s kind of interesting.  Four?  OK, OK, I get it!  

Breathe in, breathe out, move on.  Be present.  Love people.  Be bad at yoga.  And get my shit together.

By the way, I have gone back to doing 50 push-ups in the morning.