What’s that Bands Name?

I just had the craziest moment. I was like “Who sings that song that goes ‘I can ride my bike with no handlebars?’ It’s on the tip of my tongue. They are so popular I must have heard their name 1000 times I’ve gotta be able to remember this”. I’ve recently been trying to improve my memory so I decided I wouldn’t use google and I was going to remember the name of this band on my own. “Okay - for some reason I want to say Free the Robots but I know it’s not that cause he’s an instrumental hip hop artist. These guys are a band that had a pretty awesome album in the early 2000s and their name starts with an F… the Fleet Foxes? no but close…”

Things were not going well trying to remember the name of this band. I had been listening to a lecture on mindfulness earlier, and I realized that from the perspective of mindfulness, I was in a “trance” over this. I was limiting my mind by attaching the frustration of having a bad memory to the attempt to remember. I decided to try and totally clear my mind, return to a meditative state, and get into a different thought pattern. Like how if you dig a hole and hit an obstruction, you have to remove your shovel from the ground, “go all the way out” and try a different entry point. So I sat and meditated for a moment, and I started to feel a bit thirsty and I went to go get some water. As I was walking to the kitchen I thought to myself “Yes. I bet I just have to move around a bit, be present, and go with the flo- Flobots! Flobots! That’s that band’s name!!!”

Draw from this whatever conclusions you will, but I would like to think that this “digging a new hole” strategy for overcoming our perceived mental barriers has some potential. Now I don’t know about you but I’m gonna go listen to some Flobots.