Slow Down and Enjoy Life.

Posted on January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 by Leontien Reedijk

Slow down and enjoy life

Children always ask: “Are we there yet?” and we call them silly and tell them to have some patience. At a certain age we stop asking that question, but as adults we still want to get everything done as quickly as possible.

Why?

I asked myself this question when I started the huge task of painting a 10-foot wide mandala on an outdoor wall in front of my house and business. It is an oversized project, and I have never done such a thing before. I have no idea how fast I could finish the whole thing.

Once I started painting, I realised that I could not go fast, because every time I put in a bit of colour, I have to wait until it dries before I can put in the next round, to avoid staining everything.

This huge project will have to go slow by default. It was a confusing realisation that I was forced to allow myself to go slow, not to feel like I need to finish this as soon as possible. I had to shift my mind away from the familiar urge to rush, and reset it into a slow-but-steady mode.

We always feel rushed, don’t we? We always want to do things fast, get it over with, because there is so much more that we shoulda coulda woulda.

So many chores to do, so many tasks to accomplish. So many needs to be met, and so many desires to fulfil.

We always want to get things over with. We’re forever rushing through things to get to the end. We seem to have an aversion to really experience the actual task. We tend to stay out of touch with the things we do all day.

We either rush through a task, plowing through it and getting it done, or we never start it, overwhelmed and intimidated by the sheer vastness of it. Both attitudes are coming from that aversion.

In our rush to get as much done as possible, we forget to savour the moment. Things only get done as a sequence of little steps. Each step is a moment, and experiencing that moment consciously is what makes life worth-wile.

“We come to life and our energy soars when we join that moment, rather than standing separate from it—when we rise to the occasion rather than sink into the pit of resistance.” ~ Donna Quesada

If I would have given in to my sense of overwhelm by the sheer size of that mandala, I would never have started, I would have sunk into that pit of resistance. But I have chosen to allow myself as much time as needed to finish this mandala. Actually, I have started to think of it as an intentionally never-ending project, where I can keep adding and altering little details into eternity.

By now, instead of feeling overwhelmed by its vastness, I am excited about the endless field of possibility that this wall-painting is offering me.

We tend get lost in busy-ness, and often use that as an excuse for not doing something, for not being able to meet someone, help them, do something for them.

Too often we also have that excuse ready for ourselves: we don’t have time to exercise, to meditate, to write, paint, garden, to take care of ourselves in a nourishing and nurturing way.

Basically, by letting ourselves get sucked into this false precept of busy-ness, we don’t have time to love ourselves and do what inspires us, what makes us feel alive, what keeps us healthy and thus energised.

Stop the rush, slow down! We can do each thing with attention, enjoying each little moment of the chore, of the challenging task, the tedious job. In every moment there is something to observe, to enjoy and to marvel about, to learn and to absorb, as an essential part of life.

Let’s try and not miss out on all those special moments!

I don’t have two or three months to paint that huge mandala in one go. But I have a little bit of time almost every day to work on it.

Every day a moment to decide on a new shape or another colour.

Every day an opportunity to tackle a little obstacle, meet a small challenge. Every day the opportunity to get into a short bout of high meditative focus.

For the next year or so, or maybe for as long as I live here.

It’s great practice for life!

How we can Change our “Settings” for the New Year.

Posted on January 1, 2018 by Leontien Reedijk

How to start the New Year in a mindful way

I never make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t believe in them.

Saying that you want to do something is very easy. Doing it is the hard part, and most of us fail.

Especially when our brain is still fogged with heavy alcohol clouds, the intention we’re trying to set with our resolutions might not register in our brain as a non-negotiable new behaviour.

Many people say that the way we start our day is crucial to how our whole day will evolve. I’ve experimented with it quite a bit and firmly believe it’s true.

For years now I’ve been in the luxury position of having about four hours each day between waking up and starting work. Four hours which I can use exactly as I like. No kids, no partner, no commute either, just me and those 4 hours.

By trial and error I have learned that the way I spend those hours can make or break my day.

The things I do each morning, set the pattern for the whole day and make me do more of it during the rest of the day. If I indulge in rolling over, my whole day seems to be lazy and I don’t find energy for anything. If I first read for an hour, I end up reading all day. If I get active straight out of bed, I run around full of energy doing things all day. If I find my focus and inspiration with meditation and writing early in the morning, my whole day seems to be inspired and focused and flowing with ease.

Last year, around this time, when people started talking about New Year’s resolutions, I realised that I could apply this principle of “setting” my day to the New Year as well. Instead of just setting an intention to do certain things in the New Year, I decided to “set” my year by very consciously filling my first day of the year with doing things I find important for my well-being and growth.

We all know there’s a significant difference between thinking or saying something, and actually doing it.

Continue reading “How we can Change our “Settings” for the New Year.” →

The one Thing we Need to do to Break Through our Procrastination.

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Leontien Reedijk

procrastination, writing every damn day, just do it — Photo: Lisa Monseglio/The Fern Feather

A year ago I subscribed to a 30-day creative writing challenge.

On day two, the writing prompt was a dialogue between our inner critic and our artist self.

I happen to not really have such a big inner critic, thank God, but I am a great procrastinator, so I gave my procrastination (P) a voice instead.

This is what I wrote:

Waking up at 5.15am, after a good nights’ sleep ( I went to bed at 8pm and slept through the whole night), the first thing P says is:

“Great! Only 5.15am, loads of time…what shall we do: a game of Scrabble, some reading…anything else we can do here in bed? Meditating? It is soooooo comfy in here, and there’s no money-making work waiting for us today anyway.”

Me: “Oh come on P, we talked about this last night! We were going to get out of bed as soon as we would wake up. No delays! Remember? And you know very well that meditating in bed turns into hours of random trains of thought.”

P: “OK, I forgot about that promise…but are you sure you don’t want to stay in bed a little longer, I mean, all those healthy routines you are going to be doing next, do you never get tired of all that?”

Me: “Tired? Are you crazy? It’s what makes me tick all day! It’s what keeps me healthy, and balanced and motivated!

If it weren’t for you I would be doing that every day of my life. Why do you have to try and talk me out of it every single day? Do you never get tired of THAT? Jeez! It’s thanks to you that I gave up running already, while it used to make me feel really good.”

P: “Well, I have been hired for it, haven’t I, to keep you from doing stuff? And what’s this writing thing, are you going to add that to the whole routine-machine as well?

There’s going to be no end to all those things that you will want to do every day. You’re making it harder and harder for yourself to do it all. It must be quite overwhelming for you every day…(I can hear the sarcastic snicker in her voice)…I bet you cannot keep it up even for those 30 days, let alone for the rest of your life…”

Me: “I know you want me to think that I can’t do it, because that’s your job. Well, let’s bet your job over this: If I succeed to write 30 days in a row, you will lose your job for good. If I don’t finish these 30 days, you can hang around some more and get another chance in defeating my efforts (“but I will keep trying anyway”, I whisper under my voice). Is that a deal?”

P: “Sure. I betcha you can’t finish it!”

Me: “I betcha you will be without a job in 30 days!”

So almost a month after I wrote this dialogue, I fired my procrastination from its job, since I had fulfilled the 30-day challenge. I had written every damn day for 30 days. I felt more alive than ever, and was gung-ho about starting my blog and book. I was going to do it!

I was so motivated, that I overcame all my fears for the digital world (I used to call myself a proper digital dinosaur), and even figured out how to make this website on my own (I became quite intimate with some of the help-desk staff of my web-provider). It took me two months, but I did it. And it looks pretty good, doesn’t it?.

In December I was ready to start blogging, and I kept it up till the end of May. I didn’t aim too high, so I only posted every 10 days or so, thinking it would be easier to crank up the frequency and boost my confidence than having to slow down, feeling defeated.

But.

Living the secluded life I live, I have reduced my social circle to the bare minimum. I am one of those people that is very happy on her own. Now that turned out to be my major handicap. I was writing loads of inspired and fun stories, with interesting takeaways, but had barely a handful of people reading them.

It reminded me of that famous Koan: “When a tree falls in the forest, but there’s no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I started to lose momentum, leaving bigger gaps between posts every time.

I wasn’t ready to give up, but I knew I needed a readership if I wanted to stay motivated. The only way to do that, was getting my ass out of my cocoon and venture out into the world to connect with people and invite them to read my words.

I was not happy about that prospect. That is hard work, and it involves social media. I have a certain disdain for social media, apart from the fact that they scare the shit out of me (link). I don’t like to be in the spotlight, and find it very hard to be in groups. Getting my words out there was going to be a major personal challenge in multiple ways.

Then I saw the ad for Elephant Academy, an apprenticeship promising me to learn everything about social media, journalism ethics, writing and (self-)editing. That sounded like the perfect medicine for my ailing writer-self.

I signed up and got very busy with it. I got more than a dozen articles published in Elephant Journal.

I took the busyness of the apprenticeship as a proper excuse to completely withdraw from my blog. I didn’t look at it for 3 months straight, and didn’t even feel guilty about it. I needed a break from it, obviously, and then recoup.

Now the apprenticeship is over. I learned a lot, feel much better equipped, and I have received a lot of validation for my writing over the last three months, so I know I should continue. Basically, there is no excuse to not pick up my blogging again, and get my words out there through social media.

So what’s keeping me, you ask?

Procrastination.

That stinky bitch—kicked her out a year ago, but she snuck back in through the backdoor. Now I have to find a way to get rid of her again.

I have several stories going, but none of them want to evolve into an interesting, fun article with a good takeaway for the readers, so I walk away from them quickly.

I am starting to fail my writer-self big time, spending days without seriously sitting down to write creatively. I’m working half-heartedly on my social media network, but could definitely do much more there too.

I am back to procrastinating, big time. But I don’t like it, and don’t want it.

Then my friend and writer Lindsay Lock posted these words on Facebook:

“Have you noticed…how moving toward a great dream summons from life’s jungles the fiercest lions, the scariest tigers, the grizzliest bears…who eventually turn out to be the noblest teachers, the bravest guides, and the dearest friends? You’re on your way. ”

My comment was: “It’s funny when we get the courage to look fear straight in the face, its face changes immediately!”

And then it struck me: I was saying it right there, but not doing it. Walk your talk, Leontien, and face your fears, your major blocks!

So I decided literally to get back to writing and working on my social media network by looking procrastination straight in the face, investigating it, learn everything about it, and write about it. I will be looking into all the fears that lie hidden beneath it, and look each one of them in the eye, to see what they can turn into. It’s going to be fun. I’ll be breaking through procrastination in no time.

One of the quotes that came to my mind in this process, was this one:

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.” – Lao Tzu.

To break free from the prison of our own procrastination we only have to take one step.

This blog post is the first step. The next one will tell you everything about procrastination in general and mine in particular. I bet we can all learn something from it.

See you all in a few days!