Lessons learned from a Timber Rattlesnake

The above photo was taken on the Wings and Water property by me as I was out working on the fruit trees. I believe it is a Timber verses a Eastern Rattlesnake. It is live and it was left unharmed. Matter of fact I have a population of Rattlesnakes residing on the property and despite some push back from some of the people that manage my property those particular snakes along with most of the other species on the property are not to be harmed.

What I have learned is we tend to build assumptions into our lives that things( mainly people) that do not fit into our particular box or stereotype are not to be tolerated. They don’t dress like us, they do not act like us, they do not have the same social standing as us, etc. etc. so we push them out of our lives. Maybe it is a result our innate desire to be tribal and someone not in our tribe could potentially harm us or it may be we all have basic thought patterns and when people do not display our way of thinking we don’t tend to cluster with that type. “hey that person can’t sit at lunch with us because she is part of the Artsy crowd.” It seems to me we have a political system that has become pretty divided and while I understand our system of Democracy is messy it does not need to become a state of Radicalism and well that thought brings me back around to the Rattlesnake.

Nature demands peaceful co-existence. All livings things are governed by this law and only we believe our species is above this law. I am not implying  “peaceful” in the sense of the snake forming friendships with the field mouse and they live happily ever after… Nature has placed The Mouse in its role in relation to other living things and the snake is placed in its role as well. The Mouse scavenges and the snake eats the mouse…. My point is differences are understood by nature. Those differences are in fact essential to the balance of all living life. We as humans with our critical thinking skills should  understand this better than any other species that exists on the planet especially as it comes to our own kind: Homo Sapiens.

Everlast in the Lyrics of its Song: What It’s Like,  applies lyrics to how we as humans apply our understanding from mainly a one sided point of view.  The lyrics are raw and maybe extreme on our treatment of one another but your will recognize some truths in it.  I do recommend listening to the song as a compliment to this article. Warning please get the non-explicit version as the language in the original song is harsh and not suitable for most, if any, ears……

Lessons learned from the least Busiest People

Lessons learned from the least busiest people I have been around in business. I certainly do not mean to imply that busy people aren’t effective but my observations are that they are not as effective. Blasphemy you say!!! How dare I even imply that I(meaning you) running from meeting to meeting and multi tasking isn’t directly proportional to my(meaning you) contribution and importance to the organization… Well miss “Hamster(you) on a wheel” let me put it another way…. Let us say for the sake of argument that you are on the operating table having surgery and the Surgeon rushes into the operating room twenty minutes late screaming she had another meeting that ran over twenty minutes, her next meeting is in another thirty minutes, and all the while that you are under the knife she is breaking away every few seconds to respond to her emails and social media accounts. Long run on sentence but you feel confident in her work? Is your work any less important? So why do it?

I was told by an associate that is a master in focusing: “that being busy is another form of laziness. It is an excuse not to do the important stuff that matters to you because it is a mechanism that allows us to not confront the real work that will take us out of our comfort zone.”

My ultimate question is why are you racing to your death? Is it easy to stop and free yourself to create? Heck NO!!! Our demands are real for sure but learning to reduce those demands is where the magic happens… How many advertising emails do you get a day that could be easily be unsubscribed too verses just deleting them? A one time fix….

I recently did two sessions at an hour and a half each in a Sensory Deprivation Pod (Google it for more information). You really want to know how overloaded your mind is from all of this busyness? Well get in the “tank” and I promise the first time you will think you are going insane when you are left with nothing but just the thoughts in your mind. I bet you will be engulfed in the same kind of feelings a tire changer feels when he drops the lug nut at a NASCAR event…. Pure animal in a cage panic until enough time passes to where the mind begins to calm down to where you actually truly relax it.

My point is when your TO DO lists have TO DO lists then re-focus your life with your highest priorities. Give control back to yourself, and slow the heck down. Two of the greatest tools invented for personal management is the Pilot G2 Retractable Premium Gel Ink Roller Ball Pens, Fine Point, Black Ink, Dozen Box (31020)and the Moleskine Classic Notebook, Large, Ruled, Black, Hard Cover (5 x 8.25) (Classic Notebooks).

Carry both of these two items with you and jot down your thoughts and your actions. No matter how insignificant the thought or the event write them down. Start small as far as days you are compiling, say two days out of the week and move into a total of a week down the road but start small. Furthermore, with some minor daily reflection using the notebook as a review tool a pattern will emerge. That pattern will reveal just how crazy your life is with all the “important allegedly needy things” and you will soon be seeing how you are missing the truly “important yet not needy” items that are being neglected. When I get people utilizing these set of tools the overwhelmingly first pattern that appears is how many hoops the individual is jumping through at the request of other people. The individual determines how their lives are being managed by other people using the ASAP dialogue. These simple tools will allow you to take back the control of your life. It creates self awareness..

Finally if nothing else overhaul yourself with a crayon box because a crayon is a magical thing and going back to being a child does not suck either.