Find Your Reset Button

Earlier this month, while sitting across the table from a beautiful 16 year old, I recognized the familiar look of overwhelmed-ness on her face and in her tone that I have felt myself for most of the last 18 months.

She told me about changing schools so now she’s in a vocational program in addition to her normal school load, she is in the Army Junior ROTC program, and on top of all that is interviewing for other jobs.

We talked about other things, but in between each conversation topic I would see her sigh heavily – something I catch myself doing a lot – and could watch her mind reeling with all the things she had left to do before hitting her bed that night.

My advice to her that day was something I am just learning for myself:

You have to find a reset button.

A place you can take yourself and/or an activity you can do that allows you to take a deep breath, relax, drop your tensed shoulders, and reset mentally.

You HAVE to.

For me, I found that place early this Summer on the Loveland Bike Trail with my husband.

I literally have a hundred dollar “Malibu Cruiser” bike from Walmart, and Barry uses one borrowed from a friend that he breaks the pedal every other ride.  A far cry from the equipment the true trail enthusiasts race past us on, but it doesn’t matter.  Out there, we talk, we connect.  We can’t be hunkered over our laptops while riding the trail, and our phones stay packed away unattended.  It’s just us and the woods and the river and the wildlife.

It’s like a reset button for my brain.  You know when you’re computer starts acting sluggish and erratic from too much active information and the only solution is a restart?  It’s like that.

I remember the first time I had this experience, it actually happened off the bike trail, but in a similar setting and a little earlier in the year.  Since moving into our new house last Fall, Barry has been begging me to “go into the woods” with him.  Our new property sits on 5 acres, including 4 acres of woods with a winding creek.  He has showed me pictures of all the wildlife on his trail camera, deer, turkeys, owls, hawks and even a fox we named Felix.  But I always had an excuse, I’m too busy, it’s too cold, there are too many bugs, I don’t want to get muddy…. Finally, I broke down and agreed just to appease him so he would stop asking.

We crossed the creek and climbed up the ridge on the other side, there’s a densely wooded plain and then it opens to a serene clearing in the back.  Since the trees were still so bare from the Winter months, I could see far enough to admire the sun starting to set over the rooftops of our neighborhood below.  I sat on a giant downed tree and it was the first time I felt like I could breathe in months.  I started to cry.

I told Barry this place reminded me of my farm in Kentucky, and it had been so long since I had been there.  I think that used to be my former place of reset.   And since my parents moved away 4 years earlier, our trips back there had become fewer and fewer until they stopped altogether.

Having just come off battling the fiercest medical condition I had in my life, on top of buying a new house, editing my book and everything else that had been going on over the last year, I didn’t even realize how much pressure had mounted on my chest until I was literally up and above it all, looking back down.

The first time we went out on the bike trail, that same sense of peace and calm overtook me.  And every time since.

As soon as we cross the busy highway and enter the wooded clearing I can breathe.  My brain stops racing on a loop through my to-do list. There’s no stress of the things left undone around the house or anything for us to bicker over.  With every rotation, it’s like my foot is pressing that circular “refresh” button at the top of my internet browser.  And the screen of my mind is reloaded.

I am able to talk through things my normal-mode brain doesn’t have the capacity to stop and process.  And I always come out thinking clearer, completely refreshed, and ready to dive back in to my life.

We ride the four miles from Maineville into downtown Loveland and treat ourselves to Hawaiian shaved ice or a light dinner at one of the trailside shacks.  Then we peddle four miles back.

A few times we got to the trail late, which caused us to peddle back in the dark.  But it didn’t matter.  I treasured every single moment we spent on that trail this Summer.

Out there it’s just the two of us, side-by-side, peddling in rhythm with one another.  Sometimes we talk, sometimes we just ride. Most of the time we end up laughing. And it’s perfect.

That became my place.  My reset button.  And I made sure we went there often.  As often as two or three times a week some weeks. And especially on the days I felt like I didn’t “have time” for it.

That’s what you have to find.

What’s your place?  Do you have one?

Trust me, you need one.

You’ve got to find a way to reset yourself, to refresh your brain and restart your psyche. As much as this Type-A, task-driven, choleric personality hates to admit it, our bodies and our minds need it. They demand it.  We are not designed to never take a break, to never rest.  I nearly broke my gallbladder last year grinding away with the “I can do it all myself” and “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” mentality.

Learn from my mistakes.

Find your reset button. And push it. Often.