I love to stand on my head. I know that’s a weird thing for a woman in her 50s to say, but I do. I love how standing on my head engages my entire body to maintain my balance and I love feeling strong and straight and balanced. I stand on my head at the beach, in parks, at the gym, pretty much anywhere I can put something soft beneath my head.
But what I love most is the way standing on my head delivers a different perspective of familiar things.
We all have our patterns, our habits and our ruts. We fix our coffee the same way each day, take the same route to work, and often repeat the same conversations with our kids, partners and friends. We love our habits and our patterns.
But there is a downside to these comfortable routines: they reduce our ability to think creatively, experience new things, and have some fun. It is such a paradox: we crave comfort, stability and predictability and yet we get the most joy, have the most fun and form the deepest memories from experiences outside of our usual routine.
In order to create the richest life experience you can, you have to find ways to get different perspectives and see things with fresh eyes.
Find moments to stand on our heads.
Shoshin is a word in Zen Buddhism that encourages people to approach life with a “beginner’s mind.” And while the meaning is layered and complex, it is also simple. Shoshin suggests that we strive to approach things — even things that are familiar — with a beginner's mind, as if we are seeing it, learning it or experiencing it for the first time. Shoshin reminds us to let go of our preconceptions and to cultivate an open mind and fresh curiosity to our lives.
Like most things in Zen Buddhism, this is much harder than it sounds.
We tend to look at things the same way and do things the same way, often without stopping to ask ourselves why. And then, we stop seeing them. We go through the motions, we replicate our old ways of doing things over and over and over again.
When I stand on my head, it immediately flips the switch, changes my perspective and forces me to look at things with fresh eyes.
So next time you are facing a challenge, working on a problem or realizing that you have been walking through your days on auto-pilot, find a way to stop and stand on your head. Fix your coffee in a different way. Take a different route to work. Climb up on to a bench to look out over your backyard. Eat breakfast for dinner. Spend a full day without your phone.
If you are like most of us, you often walk the same trails, paths or neighborhoods. On today’s walk, strive to see that walk with a beginner’s mind, as if you’ve never been there before.