This one doesn’t have much to do with stuttering, or maybe it has everything to do with stuttering. Depends on how much we let things affect us, right?

Lately, I have had so much on my plate it seems almost impossible to relax and quiet the mind. I like that phrase – “quiet the mind”. We all need to do that from time to time. I need to do it, so my mind, body and soul can just relax sometimes. It’s hard, because we are a multi-tasking world.

Sometimes, at school, I have 3 or 4 students ask me at the same time if I have done that yet for them. They see me in the hall and say, “Miss, have you done that yet?’ Sometimes I just look at them and smile, because they actually expect me to remember what it was I was supposed to do. Sorry, if it’s not written down, I likely will not remember it. That seems to be a by-product of being over-scheduled, with way too much going on. Needing to have everything written down and blocked out.

I am becoming more aware that I often do this with intent. I stay busy, or say yes to things I maybe shouldn’t, because it keeps me busy and blots out feelings that maybe I don’t want to, or am NOT READY, to deal with. It’s part of the human condition – this avoidance of tough stuff. Ah, yes, here’s the connection to stuttering.  I knew there was one. People who stutter often deliberately avoid difficult speaking situations so that we will not expose our stuttering.

Just like people with fears will avoid the feared. And we enter into a vicious cycle of never overcoming what we fear by constantly avoiding it. My wise friend and mentor, J, reminds me all the time that I, we, are the masters of our fate.

The only way I am going to quiet my mind is to do just that. I need to take time for me every once in a while and just do nothing. Even when I feel guilty for doing nothing. Even when I am thinking of the million productive things I could be doing when doing nothing.

But there is my mistake. Taking time for self and doing nothing IS productive. It quiets the mind. It allows me to breathe. It allows me to feel. It allows me to sleep. We need to breathe and feel and be and sleep in order to take care of the others in our lives. Because we need to take care of ourselves first. If we cannot do it for ourselves, then we cannot effectively take care of everyone and everything else.

I am going to make a more deliberate effort to quiet my mind and allow myself some time each day to just be at peace with myself and my thoughts.

What about you? Will you join me?