Open windows
“Open windows” is how I refer to a thought or idea I haven’t actioned. Like a window that is open in the background on a phone, slowing it down, it seems to me that the human mind has limited bandwidth and that we can find ourselves with too many open windows, which slows down our capacity.
When I first realized this, I started to explore the concept of what ideas, plans, thoughts, and dreams I had lurking at the back of my mind. They ranged from things as simple as dusting a surface to a parachute jump. They came, I noticed, with a whole array of "I can’t because." So I started to challenge these "I can’ts" because I began to wonder what new opportunities and ideas I could be missing by not actioning these ones. At the same time, I paid attention to the new thoughts to avoid letting them pass and missing an opportunity.
As I started actioning things, some became obviously past their due date, which was great because I could just drop them. Others led to another action, but at least there was movement. There were actions I hated doing but was grateful they were done, and some were just the best fun.
The majority of actions were small to-dos, but there were also conversations I had been avoiding and boundaries I needed to hold. After I did my parachute jump, I felt invincible for days, and I finally did my black belt grading after years of procrastination. There were also things I thought I shouldn’t spend money on but that nagged at me anyway, so I started to prioritize them, and I was curious to see what happened as a result.
I started to think of a lot of these outdated thoughts as a backlog. The idea of clearing that backlog gave me motivation to overcome the inner voice that made a good argument for not moving toward action. I started to see the difference in the feeling internally when I started to make excuses or put things off, waiting for old age even. Especially those things that I considered indulgent or unnecessary.
As I explored the thoughts in my head, I realized the ideas about action never came with justification or a counterargument. They were easy to subdue or talk over in that moment. They would, however, pop back up like a reminder from my calendar, or I would notice something in my environment that reminded me. I set an intention to notice these thoughts, to hear the first thought, not the dialogue that followed. It started to reveal that there were suggestions happening much more frequently than I realized.
As I took more action and life started to flow better, I became bolder in the choices I made. I have actioned steps now that were whispers from my childhood, and I have been places and done things that the Julie of five years ago would have deemed impossible.