What a Tuning Fork Can Teach You

I have written, in an earlier blog, about the tendency of our minds to seek experiences outside, always outside.

Steve took stock of his day before turning in.

His head was abuzz when the alarm woke him in the morning. He hit the snooze button and grabbed an extra ten minutes before jumping out of bed to do his morning calisthenics. He skipped the jumping jacks he normally did because he wanted to get to the office a few minutes early. He showered, grabbed a bagel, kissed his wife goodbye and drove to work.

He was CFO of a tech startup that was trying to raise $300 million. His phone was ringing off the hook and there were a dozen messages his assistant had taped to the wall at eye level. He took his iPhone out of his briefcase, put on his headphones and started calling. He joshed with the PE guys. He knew most of them and asked about their vacations, their dogs and – in one instance – about a concealed mistress. He did a masterful job of telling them about the rosy prospects ahead of his company.

At lunchtime he sneaked out to a nearby park, finished his bagel and read a few chapters of the thriller he had begun over the weekend. He felt guilty about it, but each chapter ended in a cliffhanger, and he simply had to know who did it and how it all ended.

There were a score of things vying for his attention. He had to send a check to maintain his automobile insurance. It was expiring this week and, somehow, his auto-renewal had failed. His daughter’s teacher wanted to speak with him about her disruptive behavior. His wife’s retail business was failing, and she wanted him to help with a new marketing strategy. His doctor wanted him to visit to discuss his blood work results.

He was late coming home, but he knew that his wife was out with her girlfriends and his daughter was at a sleepover.

He nuked a frozen dinner and ate it hastily while gulping a glass of wine. He was torn between finishing his thriller and watching the new horror offering on Netflix. He plopped for Netflix.

He was sleepy by the time it ended. He was too lazy to brush his teeth, so he gargled with mouthwash, checked his phone for any urgent messages and hit the sack.

It was a good day. It was a normal day for him.

Here is a funny characteristic about tuning forks. Each tuning fork vibrates at a particular frequency. If you set a tuning fork vibrating and bring it close to another one that is tuned to the same frequency, the second one begins vibrating. And it continues vibrating even if you dampen the first one.

Now think of your brain as a mass of tuning forks, hundreds of tuning forks. Each one is set moving by some external stimulus. One by the horror movie you watch, another by your worry about being unprepared for an important presentation, a third by your disappointment at your son’s poor grades and so on.

These tuning forks keep vibrating for a long time. So, you have finished watching the horror movie and are about to go to bed, but the tuning fork in your head is still vibrating and will continue to do so for some time. The external vibration is dampened but not the internal one.

Now consider Steve and his normal, good, day.

He lives a high-pressure life and has set hundreds of ‘tuning forks’ vibrating in his head. Some related to his work, some related to family, some related to his feeling of hurry and overwhelm, some related to his entertainment choices. Each day Steve gets more tuning forks vibrating in his head or gives a spurt of energy to the ones already in motion, so they vibrate more vigorously, or both.

This is the reason Steve feels an undercurrent of tension in his life that is always there.

This is the reason you have stress and anxiety in your life.

What can you do about this? How can you get those darn tuning forks to stop vibrating?

I will tell you in my next blog.

Or perhaps sometime in the future.

Let me know if you would like the answer sooner rather than later.

Peace!