Pressing Reset

Sometimes life, like your computer, can just lock-up and stop almost dead in its tracks. I’ve asked some computer guys why this happens and while they didn’t say for sure they said it’s usually because some process gets stuck in a loop and all of the resources are being feed into it. I think that’s kind of what happens with life sometimes; you get caught in a thought process and over time it begins to sap away the energy needed to do anything else. The brain is a computer so of course this will happen.

With a computer it’s easy to fix, you just reach forward and push the reset button. The computer reboots. There’s a good chance things will be fine when the computer starts-up again, but you know you’ve lost any unsaved recent data. Pressing reset is rarely the end of your computer or its operating system.

Pressing reset on life is a lot like that. You are going to lose a lot of recent information and what remains after the reboot is often just a little bit more than was there after the last reboot. The body and the brain are fine, running more smoothly for having stopped and restarted. Some recent stuff is sticky and will be there when you walk back after pressing reset on life. A lot of things won’t be and these are likely the things that didn’t need to be there in the first place. Life is simpler and you may be slightly wiser if you don’t ever think about it again.

But the wisdom lies in realizing that the things that were not working for you were just symptom of a problem that likely still resides within you. You need to be fair with yourself here and admit that the brain does a ton of stuff that we know nothing about; if we did know something about it we might actually be able to change our behavior when we need to.

The reason for the life lock-up is the result of something inside of you that manifested itself as unworkable situations, behaviors, relationships or people in your life. None of those is good or bad, they simply are things. The issue is in the interaction between them and you; given that these things do not causes problems with everyone. What are YOU doing with those things that is creating or recreating the loop that drains your energy and causes the lock-up?

“Have you pressed “F8″ after you reboot?” was one of the questions the computer guy asked me. My “no, why?” was greeted with “it’s a little safer. You don’t get all of the functionality but it’s a lot easier to figure-out what went wrong.”