Mid-June 2026 Newsletter

Hello, and a murky-becomes-clear Mid-June to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. Today's issue is about being busy (or not!). Enjoy!

Being busy is largely seen as a positive, since it's assumed the busyness means you are productive and contributing in some important way. Busy individuals are admired, even when they may look stressed or frazzled or overwhelmed or under-slept. "I have things to do! I'll sleep when I'm dead.", we hear them announce proudly.

If you've felt too busy yourself, whether in a corporate career or a chaotic family environment, where everyone seems to need something from you at the same time, you may consider yourself capable, pleased with all you can handle. And just maybe you may also be ignoring or dismissing signs of creeping burnout, and be neglecting self-care. I lived this pattern, as the oldest child with never-ending chores, and later in my computer programming career. To my detriment, I began vision improvement with this attitude too.

One of the foundational principles of vision improvement is relaxation, of both the mind and the visual system. With my focus on being busy and accomplishing, this new learning to deeply relax, to let go of trying to see, felt like tackling a foreign language where even the letters or the sounds weren't familiar. Look without strain? Be OK even when what I see is initially blurry? This is so NOT obvious to me!

The monitor with the exploding pastel colors is an image for me of the confusion in my busy over-thinking mind, as I tried to make sense of the calm gentle approach to vision improvement, which was so contrary to my usual "charge in and make it happen!" style. People had been telling me for most of my life that I was too intense, or "Lighten up, Nancy!" and I just thought that's who I was, someone who dove into projects and tackled them with effort and striving. Could I change my personality enough that I could approach vision improvement, and maybe other things too, in a more peaceful easy-going manner?

Vision improvement practices gave me plenty of clues to how I was straining both my mind and my eyes, almost all the time, without realizing it. If you don't know you're doing something destructive, you're unlikely to change course, so awareness of straining habits is key. If you'd asked me years ago if I enjoyed seeing, the question would have puzzled me. Using my eyes was a tool to get things done, not a game! I was what Aldous Huxley called a "greedy end-gainer" in his classic "Art of Seeing", much more focused on the results than the process.

Like those Buddhist koans which seem designed to fry the circuits in our logical brains, "go slowly to get more done" made no sense in any way I understood. It didn't seem possible to be peaceful and also productive. Was I meant to sacrifice checking items off my long to-do list to be calmer, and why couldn't I have both? As with developing any new skill, this took time. When I need to speed up my pace now to deal with something unexpected, I am usually not frantic about it, not seeing it as a crisis. There is plenty of time to do things correctly from the start, without needing to re-do to fix mistakes, or to rush so that I get upset and off-center. Being busy can be a burden, or a blessing -- it's all in how you look at it.

For a dream fragment which gave me something to think about concerning being busy, click here.

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Please send me your questions and comments
Let me know what you've wondered about concerning energy medicine or vision or dreams. I'll be glad to write a short article addressing that topic. Thank you to those who have sent me questions, or see a question you asked me in a private session written about here. You're helping many other people! Enjoy the second half of this joy-fostering month of June. I'll write again in a few weeks. Take care!