We get up and do our meditations, prayers, mindfulness practices, we sometimes do our cardio, our yoga and then we sit down with a quiet cup of tea to give ourselves some “me” time and this is all part and parcel of the current cultural spiritual dialogue. But what if one day you wake up and you just think... “nah!”. You've done that before right? I know I certainly have. Now you might think I am going to offer you techniques about how to overcome that and push through or even talk about how that lack of commitment is often a reflection of a deep unresolved fear but for today the opposite is true. Just in case no one has done it before I want to give you full permission to take a day whenever you feel like you need. I give you permission to cancel appointments, book a massage, eat crappy food, binge on Netflix and not even consider washing your face. You are allowed. Now, making a lifestyle out of it, that's a separate blog but there just so much pressure on being productive these days that we almost demonise downtime. It's ok to scroll for hours, disconnect completely and get lost in the landscape of your own mind. Again, just don't make a lifestyle out of it.
Now all of you know that I like to be productive. My daily list is insane but, it's designed that way intentionally. I know myself that if I don't compartmentalise the things I want to do and create a time during the day to do them they they just won't get done. I also intentionally give myself too much to do in order for me to get more done than I would have normally. Now sometimes that means that I do rush a little and sometimes that means I make mistakes but on the whole the more I dedicate sections of time to a certain idea or project the more I seem to be able to focus on it. Like my 20 minutes of sketch time a day. For those 20 minutes I'm not thinking about my books, or readings, clients, call backs or any of that stuff and those 20 minutes are so focussed on one task that by the end of the week I am surprised at what I can get done. But there are those days when I look at my list and even though I am not particularly tired or exhausted if I'm not feeling it then I give myself licence to stop. We often wait too long to take breaks and sometimes we even wait for illness to strike before we give ourselves the agency to take a moment. I know I certainly used to be crazy for that.
I only ever used to come to a stop when I either had a migraine or I was physically out of the country. These days if I wake up, pull back the curtains and look out over our beautiful little city and my intuition sends me a message, “not today!”, then I listen. If my body, my mind, my soul needs some time to replenish then that's what I give it. I know I have commitements, we all do but my biggest commitment is to my well being. If I don't take care of me and put myself first then I can't share love with the people around me. Loving those around you is built on a system of self care. If you're not active in the space of loveing who you are then all you end up doing is investing in power plays with those around you. You deserve better. You deserve time and you deserve to design a life that gives that to you. I know it can be tough, being self employed if I'm not working then there's no cash coming in but at the end of the day if I collapse from exhaustion then I'm not going to work full stop! Put the love inside of you first and make a space to listen to it.
Thank you for reading,
Big Love,
Ryan James x
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