I’m not sure I’ve ever before in my life experienced quiet mind, despite yoga, meditation, and myriad attempts to slow the mental galloping or at least channel it into a novel. I blame the double dose of gemini in my birth chart for giving my grey matter rocket fuel, but quiet mind has been an impossible mission. Even when my body was at rest, my brain was orbiting the planet.

Until now.

I sit and look outside at the trees and watch birds at the feeder and my mind is quiet. I go out and work in the garden, and beyond the occasional “is my lower back going to survive this?” thought, my mind is quiet. After a lifetime of mental racing, the quiet is unbelievably restful. When my brain starts going into overdrive again, I just look out a window, or go sit out on the deck, or on a garden bench, or in the gazebo, and quiet returns. I’m in the moment, not years in the past or future or trying to figure out how to solve next month’s problem this minute. When my mind is quiet, there’s room for solutions to come.

If your mind won’t quiet indoors, try getting outdoors. Take your notebook and pen with you. Do enough physical activity to tire you out a little, and focus your mind on your task so it isn’t running away with you, and find quiet. Along with it, you might find the plot solution you need, the idea you were missing to make some task easier, or the answer to a personal dilemma. A quiet mind is like a weeded garden.