When I was a little kid in Ohio, there were lots of tornadoes, some of which devastated whole cities near ours.
We had regular tornado drills in school, where we’d line up single file, march out into the long hallways of the building like stubby little soldiers, sit down cross-legged against the walls and hold our first-grade textbooks over our heads for protection. There were sirens that wafted across the neighborhood and whirling cyclone graphics in the corner of the TV screen as a warning that “conditions were right” for destruction.
I remember the angst of huddling up in my butterfly canopy bed at age eight and pondering how I’d ever live through enough tornado seasons to get the hell out of Dayton. Tornadoes absolutely terrified me every day of my young life, whether it was high season or when I was anticipating next year or next month.
Eventually I did escape physically, but I have not outsmarted the metaphor, thanks to the way my brain works.
When I am uncertain and/or overwhelmed, I can see and feel my thoughts swirling around me, plentiful and unruly, stirring up dust and chaos in my mind and my heart.
This phenomenon applies even when I am delightfully happy on all other fronts, and when it ramps up, it can cause stress, frustration and even a kind of decision paralysis.
I’ll give you an example from my current work life. Setting aside the fact that I moved to France last year and I’m still dealing with all that a huge change of life brings with it, I also just sold a business two weeks ago with mixed feelings. If that’s not enough, I also have an unrelated but important decade-long contract coming to end in 2024.
The activities related to both those endeavors have kept me very busy for a very long time. Now, as I navigate a reinvention, I find myself often whipped up into a real thought twister. It starts when a question or two first kick up a little dust in my mind.
What do you want to do next? What would really excite you?
Taken at face value, those are fun questions to ponder, no? What a privilege to even be able to even have options, especially as someone who has no university degree and who started without a lot of outside resources or networks, and without a strong idea of what path to choose.
But when it comes to my reaction to these new opportunities, there’s something about the largeness of both the possibility and the responsibility for making a potentially huge “next move” that for me stirs up wind and bits of dirt and twigs and gum wrappers and existential dread.
How are you going to earn money? Why don’t you just do what you’ve always done, but for someone else? What will your husband think if you’re no longer a high earner?
Then, once the funnel begins to rise and gain power, the roiling questions begin picking up other random thoughts. I wrote these down in my notebook after they (and some persistent Parisian mosquitos) woke me up last night while Monsieur B was peacefully sleeping:
You won’t be able to repeat your success.
It’s too hard to start something new now.
You should’ve launched an amazing new project already.
You could’ve had 100K followers on Instagram if you’d started earlier.
You’re going to run out of savings.
Stop being such a baby and just work harder.
You can’t handle it.
And the worst possible work-related thought if you’re a serial entrepreneur:
You’ll have to work for someone else, and they’ll tell you what time to be in the office. ⏰😱
Over the last few months, these unproductive and even harmful thoughts have been causing small cyclones in my spirit, disrupting my sleep and sometimes raining debris all over my beautiful new life in France. I find myself trying to reach up and grab a thought out of the center of the storm in my creative mind, so that I can try to manage it or work on it.
I’ve had a relationship with Tornado Thinking for a long time, but this feels like a particularly acute incident, so last week I made a plan to help myself manage the situation and move forward in positivity.
Here’s what I’m trying:
Meditate for at least 5-10 minutes per day. The only piece of furniture I brought with me to Paris is my low-slung meditation chair, with its wide seat and comfy cushions that let me cross my legs and breathe (without the need to cover my head with a textbook). I find that if I just breathe and bring my thoughts back to breathing whenever they roam, with that being the only goal, it really helps, and my brain feels focused, refreshed and almost as if it’s vibrating afterwards.
Work towards eating a little healthier. In France it’s so easy to just get lost in the warm bread and the magnificent cheese and wine, but we also have super-fresh produce and lots of local meat and seafood. I’ve started trying to pay more attention to how fast I sometimes eat, and I’ve been doing an exercise in mindfulness where you take one bite of food, then put your fork down and wait two full minutes before taking another mouthful. It’s a very interesting experience.
Stop living in the future. It’s tempting to worry about what will happen. I’ve literally been a professional planner for the past twenty years, so shedding that habit is a challenge. But if I remind myself, “Everything is alright right now, in this moment,” that gets me in line with what is really true. All we have is this moment.
Stop living in the past. You know those investment ads that say something like, “past performance is no guarantee of future results”? Well, you can look at that in a very positive way. Even if you’ve failed in the past, it doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in your next journey. In fact, as some very smart people have told me, your failures teach you what you need to know for what’s coming next. I really have to stop telling myself that I can’t top what I’ve already done, because that type of thinking can really get me down. The bottom line is, as I’ve learned from at least one helpful Instagram account, “there is only the present moment.” So while we can plan, we shouldn’t get too far ahead—or behind what we’re experiencing right now.
Open up to gentleness and inspiration. Something I’ve realized about myself is that in my general scrappiness of spirit, and sometimes out of necessity, I’ve had to really hustle. To try to control things before they get out of control. But right now, I’m in a place of true happiness. I’m loved and supported, and for once I actually have the time and space to think deeply, to let ideas bubble up. I have the benefit of being able to think about what I really want to do. I just have to try to stop beating myself up about getting shit done.
Get outside every day and move. Walk, dance, look up at the sky, run a mile or two. It never fails to make me feel a little better, even if it’s just ten minutes.
Give yourself time. Sometimes in transition, it’s impossible to move seamlessly and well from one thing to another. We need time to process and even heal and to be inspired anew. Good things take awhile. There is no deadline.
Talk to yourself. I stole an idea from the author of Tiny Habits (a great book). He says if you can do one thing for yourself every morning, look in the mirror and say some version of, “Something great is going to happen today.” If you pronounce it with a silly kind of conviction, it seems to work to at least produce a smile, which can be a big help if you’re feeling stressed. Let me know if you try it!
Were you terrified by tornadoes as a kid? As an adult, do you ever experience Tornado Thinking or do you have another name for it?
If you have any advice, please do share. I’d love to hear from you in the comments, as maybe we can all inspire each other in this community. Or you can always email me at karen@karenbussen.com.
Sending you blue skies and thanks for sharing this moment.
Karen