This week’s article is about embracing surprise. Fortunately for me, I enjoy surprises. It started when I was in grade school, it might have been my sixth birthday. My parents woke me up out of a sound sleep and said, “It’s your birthday. Go find your birthday present.” And in my sleepy stupor stage, I walked around and around the house, walked past the pile of gifts four or five times before they finally gave up and said, “Here they are.” — I had a good time.
Well, I’ve just come in from walking down to the county road about a quarter-mile away to take the trash out. Normally, we don’t have to take it anywhere because the trash company comes up. It is still snowing after several days. The snow is piling up, and even though we were plowed several days ago, it’s still six to eight inches deep. And the trash company, and UPS, and FedEx — all kinds of delivery and service vehicles — aren’t coming up our way, so we took it down. We wanted the walk anyway and got a little extra calorie burn by carrying the heavy trash.
Those are silly but reasonable examples of embracing surprise. Oh, sure, we could have had a tantrum and insisted the truck figure out a way to come get our trash. We could have waited till next week. Neither solution worked for us, so out we went.
But more interestingly, I’ve been thinking about the nuances of the concept embrace surprise. If you do a sport or sports that involve bumps and balance, you’ll appreciate this concept. Whether you ride motorcycles, do mountain biking, regular biking — these are some examples. Even boating, kayaking, or whatever. You’ve got to maintain your balance with the bumps, the waves, the things that come at you to throw you off balance.
I mentioned in the article heart rate variability. Well, those bumps and waves are kind of like heart rate variability in that, the better you can handle the variations, the more healthy you are, and the more stable your sport activity will be. When you keep your knees bent in skiing for example, or in motorcycling when you get up off the seat, knees bent, your knees and legs act like a shock absorber to help you manage the bumps. When you embrace surprise, that’s like your legs being shock absorbers. It helps you manage the challenges.
So, think about where in your life you need that balance and flexibility emotionally, physically, spiritually — in all ways. So that as life throws bumps at you, brings waves your way, brings variability to your heart rate, you can manage. You can stay upright; you can float through it. And if you’re lucky, you’ll keep a great sense of humor about it and be laughing and enjoying the situation. When I skied, I enjoyed that downhill, surviving the bumps. In the few times I did motorcycle riding, I enjoyed surviving the bumps. (I don’t want that bike falling on me, that’s for sure!)
So, what about you? What are you versatile with and keep your balance with — your sense of humor, your sense of adventure, and curiosity? You know, there’s a great use of curiosity in how to embrace surprise.
Here’s the original article, <a href=”https://liveinfocusedenergy.com/embrace-surprise/”>Embrace Surprise</a>.