I’m back home from Texas, fresh from a family Christmas gathering. It was a long soujourn to snake it back from Bryan TX to the Hollywood Hills. The raw distance is overshadowed by the throngs of people also going from point A to point R. Most of them are filled with stress and artificial urgency. Many are sick. Alot of them, are quite noisy. The whole experience can be really stressful and take a great deal of energy out of you. Copuled with your deadlines and delays, travel can make you just lose it.
Being a traveler in “prime time” reminded me of the different techniques I have adopted over the last few years to cope with my constant state of business travel. I was on the road more than one hundred days this year alone, and it was a light year.
Recently, I came across a home spun remedy that is part meditation, part self-medication. I hum to myself very quietly when I am in a stressful situation. Humming helps me deal with travel stress. It works whether I’m stuck snailing my way down an elevator at the airport, while the final boarding of my connection commences or when I’m trapped sitting behind a screaming, sneezing baby on the airplane. I’ve found that the resonance of a hum (take the ah sounds that rhyme with God) disolves much of the trap inside me for external negative energy. I’ve even found it helpful to hum outloud, songs that are stuck in my head.
You might be wondering what other business travelers might think about you — but don’t worry, they are talking to themselves on bluetooth and couldn’t look more crazed.
I first started thinking about this when I read The Power Of Now by Tolle. Wayne Dyer hammered it home with some of his meditation techniques. But the capper for me is the new book (Don’t Get Scrooged) by Richard Carlson on how to cope with negative people throughout your life. One of his recommendations is humming to yourself and he gives some pretty sound reasoning for it.
Whether you are still at the family gathering (my family was awesome, by the way) or on the way back home, don’t let negative energy or self-imposed stress get you down. Just hum and let it go away.
Recommended Read: Don’t Get Scrooged: How To Thrive In A World Of Obnoxious, Incompetent, Arrogant and Downright Mean-Spirited People by Richard Carlson (who wrote Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff)
