Last night, in a rare moment of tv viewing, I caught part of a special on optimism hosted by Michael J. Fox. During one segment, he was playing golf with Bill Murray.
Golf is mentally challenging, so I hear, and causes many a calm and otherwise rational person to throw crazified tantrums on the green. Imagine learning to play with Parkinson’s Disease.
Midway through the round, they stopped for lunch and chatted about optimism, and Michael J. Fox threw off a comment about just doing the next right thing. Later, as they finished up the round, Bill Murray brought up the idea again. The next right thing.
And then Bill Murray said “yeah, as opposed to the next thing right.”
Wow. Paradigm shift inside my brain. What a difference transposing those words makes. I have spent so much of my life obsessively focused on doing the next thing right. All this time, I only wanted to learn how to do the next right thing.
I think it’s almost impossible to do both. If I am utterly consumed with doing the next thing right, I honestly don’t care at all whether whatever I’m doing actually matters.
And…if we worry about doing the next thing right, but the thing is not the right thing, we may get so good at that thing that our expertise will accumulate and we’ll find ourselves successful at some thing (career?) that we never wanted in the first place.
(And by “we” I mean me and by “thing” I mean tax accountant. Ugh. So watch out. I’m just sayin’.)
Another key word in this statement: next. How many times have I fretted over some action to take at a distant future moment? Sometimes (pretty much all of the time) I can only know the next right thing.
Obviously (I hope) “right” here does not mean morally or ideologically. This is about inspired action, taking the next step from a soulful sense of inner purpose, that Tao Te Ching sense of “doing without doing.”
An idea for bringing some presence to this perspective: starting up Dance of Shiva, or any practice where you can never really do it right because you’re only doing it right if you’re doing it very, very wrong.
After spending so much of my life obsessively focused on doing the next thing right, I have consciously committed to sucking at something, and it feels strange and kind of blurry.
But it is healing my brain in wacky ways.
Beginning something you’ve always wanted to try can have the same effect, especially if you’re scared to try because you know you’ll be terrible at it, and you allow yourself to begin anyway.
This concept is so simple and profound ~ I can just ask myself at any moment: am I focusing on the next right thing, or am I all bijiggified trying to do the next thing right?
{ 4 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Yes, I think we are all bijiggified trying to do the next thing right. Well, at least I am. I am especially bijiggified trying to get my mind around the paradigm shift. Loved the blog. I’m still thinking . . .
And back to another one of the blogs about being shiny – I think the way we can be shiny without losing our friends is by being just how Briana is when she writes the blog. I mean self-depricating. Allowing that we aren’t perfect, admitting our inadequacies. It’s easier for people to accept our shininess when it comes wrapped in humlity.
Being shiny is also easier for people to take when we attribute our success to others, ur mothers, the group, for instance, not just our own “greatness.”
I think the hardest people for women to be shiny around is other women because we have an inherent jealousy built in that is hard to shake off, even when we want to.
Thought provoking, wonderful blog.