Day 28: Ignite

I thought I’d use today’s post to plant some more seeds to inspire our curiosity around what growth can look and feel like. 

Sometimes, I feel like I’m caught in a never-ending consumption loop.

(These days, that sounds like an understatement, to say the least…)

There’s simply SO much content out there ready for us to consume. And it’s all at our fingertips, on demand.

Some of it feels inspiring, elevating, vital, essential. 

And yet, I feel like those moments can be so rare, especially compared to the hours lost going down the rabbit hole of the nonstop news headlines or social media. (My short & sweet tech rule: if I don’t know why I’m using my phone, my phone is almost certainly using me!).

It’s so easy to feel inundated by all the noise whirling and swirling around me that sometimes I forget I have a choice to say no.

I can choose to unplug, not look, not go there.

Put down the device and back away.

In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, she assigns a week of “reading deprivation” — no books, no poems, no blogs, no news (!), no emails (!!), no consumption of other people’s content for a week.

I usually have about 3-23 books on my desk at any given moment. So this was a challenge, to say the least.

But my regular weeks of reading deprivation bring me SO much clarity.

With seemingly endless inspiration and posts about everyone else’s bright ideas, it can be easy to lose sight of yours.

When you take in less of other people’s voices, you can more clearly begin to hear your own.

So, today, I’ll assign you a silly, lightning quick exercise from Julia Cameron’s reading deprivation week. To see what might emerge when we stop looking to others for answers and turn, instead, to ourselves.

“As recovering creatives, we often have to excavate our own pasts for the shards of buried dreams and delights. Do a little digging, please. Be fast and frivolous. This is an exercise in spontaneity, so be sure to write your answers out quickly. Speed kills the Censor.

1. List five hobbies that sound fun.

2. List five classes that sound fun.

3. List five things you personally would never do that sound fun.

4. List five skills that would be fun to have.

5. List five things you used to enjoy doing.

6. List five silly things you would like to try once.”

Try the reflection exercise and have a little fun with it.

Let it bring you some ideas about what you might get up to when you’re not taking in yet another news cycle.

And try the reading deprivation exercise. It doesn’t even have to be a week.

Right now, an abbreviated version just might be setting some boundaries around your devices at certain hours of the day or days of the week.

A simple restful revolution for any of our nervous systems at this moment.

I’ll see you right back here tomorrow,
Cath

Meditation: Last day for Nadi Shodana - how did it go? Leave a comment below & let us know!

Reflection: Try at least one of Julia’s prompts above.