I took my six-year-old niece miniature golfing during school break. My childhood memories of miniature golf are conflicted: It’s one of those activities that always looks like it will be fun (all those turrets and railroad cars and gnarled fake trees with moving trap doors in their trunks), but I’ve always been been bad at it, and having the worst score in the group was painful for a high achiever like me.

The attendant handed us our mini-clubs, balls and a scorecard. I asked my niece whether she or I should be the scorekeeper.

“Let’s not keep score,” she said.

Wait—was this even an option? Since it was her date with Aunt Janet, I let her set the rules. No scorecard.

We ambled along, taking as many strokes as we needed to get the ball through moving doors, up anthills, and into 18 holes. We helped each other out, standing in front of water traps so the other person’s ball wouldn’t go too far astray.

Miniature golf is a lot more fun when you don’t keep score.

Where else am I keeping score, when I don’t need to be?

Often when I travel, it’s to give speeches and workshops. Last week, I was in the audience for a change, attending a conference by speakers for speakers.

I like going to conferences—the stimulation, the connection. But it’s also exhausting and draining. All those ideas crammed into my head for days in a row. All that intensive notetaking. All the small talk. After a couple of days I melt down—hyper and spacy at the same time, overcaffeinated, overstuffed, worried about whether I’m getting everything I came for, and incapable of articulating a coherent sentence.

I tried something different this time, something I took away from the Wisdom 2.0 Conference last February. At that conference last winter,  I was surprised that I didn’t go into Conference Burnout, and that I was able to relax and enjoy the experience more than I typically do. One reason is that, every day, everyone in the general sessions spent a few minutes sitting in silence. OK, this was unusual! — maybe not for the mindfulness community, but certainly for a conference setting. I found myself letting go a bit of my standard fretting over what semi-famous people I must try to connect with, what action points I must act on. I was able to let things unfold. I even offered, and led, a spontaneous breakout session on one of my workshop topics.

Hitting “pause”

So a few times at last week’s conference, when I felt meltdown approaching, I just paused. Wherever I was—standing by the coffee bar, sitting in a meeting room waiting for the next speaker—I closed my eyes and took a few slow breaths.

It worked. I got my brain and body back.

I had some minor concerns about whether this looked weird. It seemed like the majority of people didn’t notice—they were too busy running around being hyperstimulated themselves. Invariably, though, after a minute or two, somebody would come over and say, “Oh, meditating, eh?” or “Having a quiet moment?”  At that point, part of my mind would wonder, “Huh, what would make a person interpret closed eyes as an invitation to come over and chat?” A bigger part of me was receptive and found it kind of cute. Maybe they were looking for a little vicarious calmness. Maybe they were just curious about this unexpected behavior. I rolled with it and had some pleasant, quiet conversations—more testament to the benefits of breathing.

I’ve been buried in a couple of big projects the past few months, developing and/or learning new presentations for tough audiences with rigorous standards. I needed a particularly strong and simple way to deal with the demons that drag me off task and threaten to sink my confidence.

Inspired by the book You Are Not Your Brain, about how to separate impulse from action, I’ve been experimenting with labeling my doubts and stumbling blocks as “mental habits”—noting them as habits when they rear their ugly heads.

In contrast to the split-screen strategy (which I still endorse!), this technique isn’t concerned with the content of the thoughts. I simply acknowledge them as habits. Labeling creates distance; distance breaks the downward spiral.

Hm, just spent 20 minutes massaging one phrase…Habit! Imagining myself failing publicly…Habit! Heart racing, skin prickling, as I try to focus…Habit!

I remembered to identify habits as habits some of the time. Although I’d have worked more efficiently if I’d noticed habits more often, remembering some of the time is real progress. I moved forward and met my deadlines without sacrificing too much sleep.

And the projects, um, succeeded beyond my wildest imaginings. Being afraid to trust past success? Worried that confidence will jinx future success? Habit!

After years (seriously, years) of thinking I would somehow get to like gardening, I finally gave up my community garden plot.

I made the decision on one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever experienced in the garden. It was foggy yet a little warm, with a misty beginning-of-the-world feeling, birdsong stirring the stillness. Ah, I thought, this is why I keep coming here. This is why I can’t let go.

And then it occurred to me: But I only feel this way a couple of times a year. The rest of the time, even thinking about the garden makes me feel pressured, discouraged, resentful. Something that’s supposed to be a pleasure is for me a burden.

As if to support this revelation, the free compost I’d applied a few weeks earlier had turned the plot into an oxalis bed. (Lesson: Never accept free compost!!)  That merely confirmed the decision I’d just made the moment clarity dawned.

For a few days after sending in my resignation, I had pangs of regret. What if I’d torn out the flowers and grown more vegetables—maybe vegetables would have made me happier?  Couldn’t I have learned to be less of a perfectionist, mulching the weeds instead of pulling them out by the roots, accepting that pests are part of life, recognizing that nothing is ever finished?

But mostly, I’m relieved.

So what kept me hanging on for so long?

One big reason was the sheer length of time it took to get the plot in the first place. I was on that waiting list for six years! No doubt the behavioral economists have a name for this phenomenon—overvaluing something because it’s hard to get.

But I also loved the blueberries (a love tinged with frustration, as I had to fight the birds for them). I loved the “volunteers”: wild arugula, tiny wild strawberries sweeter than any strawberries I’ve ever tasted, tomatilloes, johnny jump-ups, poppies. Those volunteers were easy to like because they were hardy and came with no expectations—they were delightful surprises from nature.

I guess I’m talking about tradeoffs, and the emotions and hopes that kept me from seeing the tradeoffs clearly. I was clinging to what I thought gardening would give me—satisfaction, fun, community—and not acknowledging what I was actually getting (not much of any of those things), or the cost.

My neighborhood farmers’ market sells blueberries all summer long. I transplanted a few wild arugula seedlings to Mom’s backyard. (Thanks, Mom!) I can still visit the garden on misty mornings, free of the responsibility to make it turn out a certain way.

Worth asking: When have you held onto something because of how you thought it was going to be, rather than how it actually was?

I attended my first improvisational theater workshop last week. Improv is all about staying present and quieting the inner doomsayer and playing with what shows up in each moment, even when it isn’t what you planned. Improv is the opposite of planning. That’s helpful for an uber-planner like me.

Some useful life skills I got to practice during the three-hour workshop:

• Be average. Don’t worry about whether your idea is funny or sufficiently creative. Say the obvious thing.  Stories need the obvious to move forward. Also, what’s obvious to you may not be obvious to others. Jump in!

That means if a scene calls for a car, go ahead and be a car. You don’t have to think up a submarine or giraffe. (Although if you thought of a submarine or giraffe instead of a car, that’s cool too.)

• Let go of control. Your partner might have a different idea than you do of where the story is going. Together, you can take it in completely unexpected directions.

If you pretend to hand your partner a baby, and they say “Thank you for the cat,” and you say “No, but it’s a baby,” one of you then has to spend a lot of time explaining why it’s a (baby) and not a (cat) and the scene spirals down from there. You’ll have a lot more fun if you just go with it. (A humanoid cat?) It’s fun to share control. Seriously!

• Take a Circus Bow. When something doesn’t work, do a Ta-Da: “Yay, I failed! Yay, I let go of the trapeze! Missed the other trapeze and fell into the net! Applause for me!”

• Remember you don’t have to do it alone. Other people will step in when you’re stumped. You’re looking out for each other. You’re in good hands.