The Power of a Reset

I’m a Georgia girl at heart, born and bred.  I’m from a very small town called Adel.  It’s about forty miles north of the Florida-Georgia line.  It’s as country as country gets.  I’m talking about people driving around town in tractors and lawn-mowers country.  I haven’t lived there in over 10 years.  I left in search of a more cosmopolitan life, somewhere that leant itself to my career aspirations in the entertainment industry.  I found that in Nashville, but I try to go home for an extended period of time at least twice a year.  I do this because it’s a good mental, physical, and spiritual reset for me.

I just returned from one such visit, and I can’t begin to explain how beneficial it was.  Life moves slower there. Traffic is non-existent.  The air is clean, and it’s quiet.  I don’t think I heard a siren the whole time I was there.  Why am I mentioning this? This just sounds like a vacation, right?  Well, maybe, but for some people, vacation is just as stressful or more stressful than their regular routine.  I’m talking about something different here.

Sometimes we need to be able to leave one environment and spend time in another in order to recalibrate our minds.  We can get so caught up in our regular, everyday routine that we start experiencing anxiety, burn-out, and maybe even a little depression.  I was at that point and didn’t even realize it until I got home, until I had nothing better to do than sit with myself and face the discomfort in my mind and body.

Some of the most sobering lessons I learned while I was home happened on a fishing trip with my dad. The time on the water taught me a few things.

1. Silence is truly golden: I’m terrible at fishing. I didn’t catch a thing, but the time spent with my dad was invaluable.  We didn’t do a lot of talking because that scares the fish away (lol), but I learned a long time ago that just being in a loved one’s presence is precious.  Also, sometimes we just need to be still and quiet. Full stop.  Just be quiet.
2. You can’t catch anything if you’re always moving:  My dad loves driving his boat. I don’t know how he ever catches anything when he’s the driver.  At one point, I got frustrated and said, “Dad, how are we supposed to catch anything if we keep moving?”  That’s a metaphor for life.  Yes, it pays to keep trying things, but at some point, you have to put down roots long enough to experience success.  When Dad finally did decide to stop somewhere, he started catching fish. Notice I said “he” started catching fish, not me.  My next lesson explains why.
3. Don’t get too excited when you get a bite: As previously mentioned, I didn’t catch anything that day.  I got a few bites, but as soon as I got the bites, I snatched my pole out of the water. I didn’t give the fish an opportunity to get hooked.  There’s a life lesson in that too, especially in this current digital age.  We can’t get so excited when we get some attention or notoriety that we drop everything and try to capitalize off that attention immediately.  Give the proverbial fish time to get hooked before trying to reel them in.  That takes time and patience.

There were many more lessons I learned during my South Georgia reset, but I’ll save the others for another time.  I know everybody’s situation is different, and we all don’t have the same access to the type of peace and solitude that I experience when I go home.  However, I do think we all need to make an effort to find something or someplace we can turn to when we need to recenter.  It can give us just the recharge we need to face the challenges and difficulties present in our day-to-day lives.