How We Toggle from Calm to Crazy
I’m fascinated by how quickly we humans can toggle from calm to crazy — and back again. We’re calm one minute, and crazy the next. We can toggle back to calm as well, though it happens less often. Even though it can happen quickly, once we get our crazy on, we often struggle to allow ourselves to return to calm. Strangely, allowing is really all we have to do when we want to move from crazy back to calm.
The difference between calm and crazy is much less than you might believe. The simplest way to say it is this: when we’re calm, it’s because whatever mental activity we’re engaged in is not our primary focus. We’re living our lives, and our thinking is secondary. When we get our crazy on, we’re no longer in our lives; we’re in our heads. It’s absolutely true that we can either be in our lives, or in our heads, but it can only be one or the other.
The minute we start paying too much attention to whatever thinking we may be experiencing, we’re moving in the direction of crazy. It’s not thinking per se that makes us crazy. It’s only when we start to get obsessive about our thinking that we put ourselves on the express train to crazy. Without question, you’ve found yourself in this condition, because we all do it.
Whenever we find ourselves in a crazy state, we know it quickly — because it feels so bad. That bad feeling is proof positive that we’ve gone offtrack and are either in the land of crazy, on or the way to it. Unfortunately, few of us have been trained to recognize that bad feeling for what it is: a clear signal that our current thinking is working against us. All thinking generates a physical feeling, which serves as a signal to us. If it’s thinking that serves us, we get a good feeling from it. If the thinking is at odds with what’s best for us, the feeling is uncomfortable.
Believe it or not, that bad feeling is your friend. It’s there to warn you that you’re losing your equilibrium and heading in a direction that can only make you feel worse. And that feeling is the only thing you need to stay away from the land of crazy, or to avoid going there when you discover you’re on the “wrong train,” just like a good friend would do.
