Unwind. Rewind.
How to Yoyo
Published: 5/26/2021
Edited: 2/5/2022
By: Andrew Neyer
The yoyo is an ancient toy dating back to 1000 BC. It uses gravity and rotational energy to unwind and rewind. There have been several manufacturers over the years, but one company changed it all. In 1946, the Duncan Toys Company opened a yoyo factory in Luck, Wisconsin. As Luck would have it, the yoyo has remained a toy icon, even though Duncan has had its ups & downs.
The yoyo leverages two contrasting behaviors; unwinding and rewinding.
The act of unwinding is releasing tension. Unwinding can show up in our lives as a weekend vacation, evening walk, or kayak ride with a close friend. Unwinding is the easy part.
Rewinding, on the other hand, leverages tension to pull everything back together. It requires more skill and creates an opportunity to redo.
Rewinding in our lives is a profound exercise. It recalls memories of joy, gratitude, nostalgia, pain, loss, discovery, and growth. Too often, we are tempted to shop for another life filled with newer, bigger, better, hipper and more fashionable junk. Rewinding allows you to rediscover lost passions and forgotten favorites. Here are some easy cheat codes to rewind:
• Read notes from loved ones
• Listen to music on an old Sony Discman, click-wheel iPod, or turntable
• Rummage through childhood bins
• Drive through your hometown
• Call an old friend
• Scroll through your photos
• Read your journal from last year.
Rather than shopping for something new to love, recall what you love about your life.
"Scroll back through your life, not forward through someone else’s."
– C.W. Waggins
Rewind is a three-step cycle:
Reflect
Redirect
Redo
The focus of Rewinding is to Reflect on what you love about your life. The leverage is your Redirect, or the opportunity to remove obstacles and junk you don't love. Finally, the goal is to Redo and begin introducing more of what you love into your life.
For some, this might look like rereading poems you wrote in college and remembering how much you love writing. The obstacle to writing again might be a lack of inspiration, so you set up a little desk by a window with a few of your favorite collected objects. Now, every morning you type a line on your typewriter while you drink coffee. After a few months, you compile your favorite lines into several new poems.
Redos don't need to be complicated or complex. Just play that Weezer album, or cut your hair with bangs again.
If you love playing guitar but no longer play, take it out of the case and plop it on your couch (go ahead and toss that TV remote in the guitar case instead). Our lives can quickly become overcrowded with junk we don't love. Removing the 'unnecessary' makes room for the essential and positively directs your life.
We don't need more things to love; we need less junk getting in the way.
When we combine unwinding and rewinding into the same activity we are likely to make Art.
Sometimes a yoyo does not rewind properly, and the string gets all tangled in itself. Stop. Take the time you need to fix the issues you've uncovered. This is the best practice for resolving issues in your life too. Don't expect something tangled to unwind and rewind well. Fix problems immediately. Explore the possibilities in-between unwinding & rewinding and teach others how to perform your tricks.
How To Yoyo
In the simplest play, the string is intended to be wound on the spool by hand; the yoyo is thrown downward, hits the end of the string, then winds up the string toward the hand, and finally the yoyo is grabbed, ready to be thrown again.
There are many other techniques with yoyoing. One of the more common moves is the "sleeper." This type of throw involves a very pronounced wrist action, so when the yoyo reaches the end of the string, it spins in place rather than rolling back up the string to the thrower's hand. The "sleeper" is the basis for countless yoyo tricks.
Yoyo competitions are continually pushing the boundaries of what can be performed using this modest toy.
Source: Wikipedia
Thoughts
– How often do you Rewind?
– What do you love?
– What junk is getting in the way?
