MM MECC ANICA

Well, its been a bit over a week since I mentally and emotionally beat the shit out of myself (LINK). When proverbial Kroil, breaker bars and a blowtorch don’t force movement in a stuck bolt or mind, sometimes a bit more chemical reaction similar to oxygen and acetylene is needed.

…and liquid it became…

Much like my 25 year old torque wrenches that recently met the end of their useable life (RIP Made in USA Craftsman) and further investment into them didn’t add up; I’m continuing to find the tools I’ve used to manage myself are similarly at the end of their useable life and are absolutely not worth keeping around. Time for new ways.

This past week has been a rollercoaster of emotionally processing what I went through, catering to my thinking brain’s now melted ego, asking who I am today, and how to take these otherworldly lessons and apply them to live my best life.

Here’s how my brain has been working in a clear universe provided example to help ease the engineering mind into acceptance. A month or so back I was using my torque wrench on a few fairly common jobs. Setting the handle to the appropriate setting and then applying a consistent force, my arm and body felt like I was over-torquing a bolt but my thinking brain said, “you are just weak! wait for the physical and audible click.” A few days later 3 lug nuts snapped on a wheel and I discovered a cross threaded bolt on a motorcycle swing arm.

Left Brain : You have a precision tool that you should 100% trust. If you are concerned, you should be calibrating your torque wrenches more frequently and keeping them in a more temperature controlled environment. Your assumption of over-torque is a subjective feeling and can not be trusted.

Right Brain : Something was off.

While both of these are technically true, my issue has been erring toward the left brain logical processing of interactions leading me to a few stripped bolts, eternal questioning of every bolt I’ve touched in the last year and a predisposition toward an unfulfilled prospective on myself and life.

I have this ability through nature, nurture, practice and somebody training, to not trust my instincts in most day to day situations. To trust instincts is to surrender, surrendering is bad, logic and progress is the right way. This mindset has lead me to endless spirals (getting a theme here?) of creating work, puzzles, problems; busying and drowning me in doing and accomplishing. A self infliction that has supported the business machine of our current western predominately world society, making me incredibly productive, resourceful and capable of solving problems; that honestly, I’m learning don’t really need to be solved.

Every time I do trust instincts, I am fulfilled, feel in the flow, and don’t dwell on what has happened. I’ve touched on this before, but every one of my best decisions in life used to feel like “luck” to my thinking brain. What has been becoming very apparent is that going with that feeling from the right brain, guiding me with my intuition to the better path is the way I should predominately be living my life. Left brain, don’t worry, you have value, just not as much as you thought you should have.

My challenge on a daily basis is recognizing these sensory body & intuitional cues and letting them have a seat at the decision table while simultaneously coddling the thinking and ego mind from throwing a fit of childish rage.

These feel a lot like surrendering to something that can’t be logically explained or scientifically verified. I think most of the problem is what we’ve been taught about surrender. Fuck, every dictionary you look at initially frames surrender as a loss of freedom, livelihood or personal possessions. Surrender, in how I’m discussing it, is to give oneself over to ‘something’. That ‘something’ instantly incites weakness and constriction and that thinking is a mechanism of our culture and it’s precious logical brain. That type of thinking is truly the weakness and what is keeping me trapped. Why wouldn’t I want additional inputs and sensory opportunities to guide me? Is more information and data bad?

There are a lot of fear, weakness and capability themes triggering when writing this, and it’s ok. They are there the same way my emotions, gut, feeling and intuition are; pieces of information with which ‘I/me’ can use to process. What I do know in practice as of late is that recognizing them internally and going with my flow has had the opposite effect as what my thinking brain has been trying to convince me of.

Freedom, capability, emotions, life.