For a few years now, I’ve been curious about the hounds of more, more, more! The hounds of more bay:
Try this! Learn this! Write this! Take this retreat! Go here! More, more, more!”
They’re the voices that yip at me, and my clients and readers, until we want to get a lobotomy: anything for some inner silence.
They also love to mess with our routines, yammering things like
Meditate first thing in the morning! No, I meant start with yoga. No, it should be inquiry. But it’s spring, now, it should be a walk in nature. No, I meant writing.”
Notice how the hounds use a lot of ! points? They are always on the search for perfect. They are never interested in enough. Their baying is exhausting and distracting, and quite frankly, boring because it keeps us from diving deeply into anything, from tending to the quieter voices of the heart, spirit, and soul.
From living a hand-crafted life. From resting in the “unstainable good,” our true nature, which is available to us in every moment.
I’m fascinated by the hounds. I’m fascinated by how, the more creative you are, the more they can vex you. The more you want to express your heart, the more you want to make a difference in the world, the more they may carry on. I’m actively investigating ways to throw the hounds a bone (and if you want to
For now, here are six ways to throw a bone to the Hounds of More, More, More.
Finally! A Perfect Day
Create a picture of your perfect day, a day in which the hounds are finally satisfied. A day in which you eat the way they want you to, exercise, create, connect, declutter, spring spruce, garden, make love, etc. You may find you’re exhausted before you’ve gotten through breakfast. That’s the point: get it down in black-and-white how outrageous the hound’s demands are. See that there will never be enough to satisfy them.
Use Their Energy
Each time the Hounds bay out another tantalizing idea or point out a fascinating training you must take or berate you for being behind in your homework for the class(es) you already taking, write down their suggestion (important because it gets it out of your head) and then say, “Thank you for sharing. I know you are afraid I’m going to miss out on life by not doing enough and I will miss my life if I keep listening to you. Life is happening right here right now and you need to be quiet so I can live it.”
A Barbara Sher Idea
In her wonderful book, Refuse to Choose , Barbara offers ideas for those of us who have more ideas in a week than we can explore in a lifetime. One of my favorites is to create a special “day book” where each of your desires gets as much room to play as it wants. Say you want to learn Sanskrit. You open to a fresh page, write Learn Sanskrit, and then go wild dreaming. “Study for a year in India, make a film about the history of the language, become a scholar in the schools, do a photo exhibit of images and poetry…” The Hounds love this kind of wild romp –you get some peace from them without having to actually do anything; plus you learn that you don’t have to follow up on each of your desires! This has been huge for me.
Cut the Input
Seth Godin wrote a great post about how easy it is to lose your day – and your mood – to incoming emails and blog posts. There is something sneaky about how email and social media can inflame the Hounds. We grew up with commercials; we know how to tune them out. Other messages, not so much. Take in social media and email the same way you would a TV commercial – knowing someone is trying to sell you something, even if just their ideas, which can inflame more ideas in the Hounds, so be careful!
Love the Abundance But Be Firm
The Hounds can be nipping at your heels or they can be pointing out the bounty and abundance of life. When the pile of books by my bed threatens to crush me, when I can’t read the Kripalu catalog (I’ll be there July 4th weekend!) because I want to take everyone’s class, I know it’s time to put a choke collar on the hounds and say, “Thank you for reminding me how vast and wonderful life is. And I’m only human so back off now.”
Calm Your Nervous System
The Hounds can get you into overdrive and then, especially if you add too much sugar and caffeine to the equation, you can feel it’s impossible to ever be enough. Anxiety can’t exist in a relaxed body, members recently said at the Comfort Café.
Breathe in for the count of four, hold for the count of four, breathe out to the count of six, hold empty of breath for the count of two. Repeat a few times. Then breathe in and out through your belly, like there were a mouth and lungs at your belly button. Let your belly be soft, and your eyes. And your jaw.
Life is so marvelous, may we live it with verve rather than by hounding.
What do you do to calm the Hounds? Do share!
P.S. This was first published in my extra loving e-zine. You can subscribe here and you get lots of very yummy goodies and I do not send you crappy sales emails. But if I did, I would be sending you one soon, because I’m releasing a very cool thing. And the way to know about that thing is to sign up for my newsletter.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Lynn May 7, 2010
Jennifer, you have been inside my brain yet again!
I do utilize the methods you mentioned, especially remembering to breathe (amazing how that works!) and thanking my “hounds” for sharing but then telling them to chill out. However, the big gun that works for me when desperate measures are called for is to have a great big internal tantrum.
I’m generally a very positive person, and one of my gifts is being able to find the value in ANY situation. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, and for my greater good. I have learned a zillion tools and methods of inquiry, and I use them.
BUT — when I’m seriously at the point of scheduling the lobotomy, I give myself a set period of time (usually a day, maybe two at most) to let my pissed-off bratty teenager have at it. Not to anyone else — I don’t think too many relationships could survive her, frankly. But I write furious journal entries about how mad I am and how much I resent just about everyone and everything, and even (well, mostly) myself. As I’m writing (or thinking) these cynical, angry, victim-y thoughts, I am well aware that they’re not productive and aren’t going to get me what I want, and my brain can’t help but do “turnarounds” of all of them as I’m thinking them. But my inner rebel takes perverse pleasure in knowing that these are the “wrong” things to do, and doing them anyway, figuratively giving the finger to every guru, spiritual teacher, coach, and positive person on the planet.
I don’t know if this is healthy or not, and I don’t really care. It works for me — it reconnects me to my feeling of personal power and releases enough pressure that I can then go back to moving forward and finding the bright side of everything.
I am so very happy that I found your blog; it has only been a few months, but every single thing you have written feels like “home” to me. Thank you!
2 Thekla Richter May 7, 2010
My favorite technique for “calming the hounds” is to remind myself of all the passionate, amazing reasons I’m choosing to prioritize the way I have. I also encourage people to track wishes, dreams and “for later” ideas as this can sometimes assure the hounds that the ideas are being taken seriously and might be put into practice later, as time and resources permit.
Mostly, though, I like to remind myself of the value of my choices, and the ways in which I’d be selling those choices short if I tried to magically squeeze in absolutely everything.
Wanting to do more than you have time and energy for is just a sign of a healthy, wonderful imagination
What a sadder problem it would be to run out of ideas and die someday having done everything we could possibly wish!
3 Kelly Salasin May 7, 2010
Years ago I learned that seeing myself in the mirror of other people’s insanity was a revelation for the necessity of letting go.
Right away you make me laugh. And you’re right. I have had those “perfect” days and still attempt to find some way that I wasn’t “enough.”
eg. You didn’t exercise. (Yes, I did.) But you didn’t get outside on this nice day, did you? (Yes, I took that walk this morning.) Did you get enough work done? (I planned that class and sent that story.) But what about the kids, did you bond with them. (Hmmmm. Wait, yes, I had that nice breakfast with Aidan and that talk with Lloyd.)…
And the inquiry of imperfection goes on and on, until I realize that it’s endemic to me–not to what I do or don’t do.
I’d like to say that I’ve figured it out, but I’m still “figuring it in.”
Thanks for the extra light,
Kelly
4 cathy May 7, 2010
This “this”… this saying no to even some of the really good stuff is my work right now, and I’m getting really good at saying no, prioritizing, and keeping close to my soul’s particular needs.
The question I ask myself is, “What’s the next right thing to do?”
The answers are always clear to me: “Spend more time on this.” “Take a break for a day.” “Explore something really different for a few days to give your mind some new fodder.” “Do hard physical work for a couple of days.”
I used to be a slave to the self-help gurus and well-meaning coaches. I always wanted to be better, do better, be different from how I am.
Now I’m not very focused on “how I am.” I am focused on what I am doing right now and what I might do next. In between there are plenty of different moods, but there isn’t very much worry about the importance of what I’m doing and the importance of what I do next.
And in concrete terms, this means that I’m learning to be okay about not beginning my first batch of miso until later this year. Right now I need to work in the garden.
5 Gina Hiatt May 8, 2010
You’ve really captured what happens to intelligent creative people — they have so many thoughts and ideas that they don’t know where to put them or what to do about them. This is great advice for the academics I work with — I already twittered it! (I’m at @academicladder). I often advise my clients who are constantly coming up with new areas of research to pursue to keep an “idea file,” so they can tuck it away, safe in the knowledge that it will be there if and when they need it.
6 Michelle May 9, 2010
I hear you. I call it “over-saturating” myself. Then I just want to escape from the overwhelm and overstimulation in my brain! Just want to go be mindless and just lay around and “Be” for a very long time!
7 Kate Bacon May 10, 2010
Great post Jennifer. I’m beginning to understand my “to do” list will never be finished…simply accepting this, calms me down.
Also try to be selective on what you read in email…and unsubscribe from lists that you are not interested in. Cutting the amount of stuff in your inbox can be a helpful way of getting the hounds off your back!
Last but not least, dwell in “be” not “do” more often…it’s an inspirational spot to hang out.
Kate x
8 Faye May 12, 2010
I could post many, many words, but I will keep it short. It’s great to know that I am not alone and I am not the only one being chased by the hounds. A couple of them almost bit me today. Key word, almost!
9 Self-Kindness+Satisfaction=Yummy Flow | Comfort Queen May 13, 2010
[...] and energy. Try is magical thinking. “I’ll try” is a very good way to summon the Hounds of More. It works better than [...]
10 Elle B. May 14, 2010
This so made me chuckle. Your “morning routine” hounds and mine must have been raised in the same kennel.
I’m learning to schedule “white space” into my days. Stretches of time that include nothingness. I choose, in the moment, how to fill them. If it’s read House Beautiful with a cup of tea and the cat on my lap, that’s okay, because it’s on the schedule. (Purring cats are great for keeping hounds at bay, at least temporarily.)
Thanks, Jennifer, for reminding us know we’re not alone.