The Joy Diet, Ingredients 8-10: Laughter, Connection, and Feasting

After I wrote my post on Play for The Next Chapter’s trip through The Joy Diet by Martha Beck, I hit a wall.  In fact, it was the day I should have posted on Laughter.

The writing on that wall clearly said, “outputted out.” 

That immediately preceded Connection week and my week’s vacation–well, staycation–from work.

Time has been short this month, and energy for writing blog posts, shorter.  Basically, during weeks 8 through 10, I tried to just keep in mind the main subject of each chapter, the “ingredient.”

Ingredient 8: Laughter

Laughter week was a lot of fun!  My sister and I do this silly thing where we do funny impressions of cartoon characters, public figures, movie characters, people we know, etc.  We laugh uproariously over these.  I instigated a lot more of that.  I also watched a lot of YouTube videos, this one in particular, which never fails to make me laugh:

Seriously, laughing babies never fail me.  Their laughter is always contagious!

I tried laughing for no reason as Martha suggests, but it didn’t work out very well.  I stuck to the sure-fire laugh-inducers.

Ingredient 9:  Connection

Truthfully, I didn’t read the connection chapter until Wednesday this week.  Shame on me.  But, like I said, during the appropriate week I did hold the concept of connection in mind.

This ingredient’s week landed after I hit the aforementioned wall.  I spent Connection’s week mostly connecting with myself and “filling the well”, so to speak.  I tried getting at the root of what had me so worn out.

As usual, it was imbalance.  I was in constant “output” mode at work.  I was trying to do NaNoWriMo and keep up with the Joy Diet and keep up with my friends and so forth.  I had, as I often do, gotten overly ambitious for what I could reasonably get done this month.  Also, I was flagging in taking my time to do Nothing.  I’m still not entirely back on that horse, but I’m getting there.

I have to say that do love what Beck suggests about connecting with strangers.  My job requires me to connect with strangers, usually strangers in all manner of negative emotional states, many of whom are  also the sort that will totally drain your energy if you let them.  I’m going to try in the coming weeks to find that Nothing stillness while I’m dealing with them.

She makes other solid suggestions in the connection chapter as well, though I don’t think I’m quite ready to implement it in its entirety, for instance risking openness with the family members who drive me crazy.   As an introvert and people pleaser, that one has me shaking in fear a bit.

I can see Connection Step 2 being extremely useful for me going forth, namely learning to tell myself the truth while interacting with others, and answering the questions Beck suggests we ask ourselves. 

Ditto for identifying what I want from a particular relationship, though, in most cases, I already know.

Ingredient 10:  Feasting

How much do I love the chapter on Feasting?  I just finished reading it this morning, but I realized that I already do a lot of what is suggested, just less often.

Also, I like the expanded definition of feasting.  I think a lot of people, myself included, get caught up in narrowly defining and conceptualizing things.  For instance, we think a feast has to be a big meal. 

Yesterday, after the Thanksgiving food coma wore off–we had our meal at midday–I feasted on beauty in the form of music and danced.   It was glorious!   I sat down and wrote in my journal about how it made me feel, as though I were writing to the band, and thanked them for putting their songs out there.  I’m going to have to do that much more often!

I regularly feast on books and movies, and, to a lesser extent, TV shows.  I already keep a gratitude journal, though I haven’t been writing in it daily as of late.  (Must get back on that horse, too.) 

This chapter also contained perhaps my favorite quote of the whole book, something I definitely needed to hear:

You were born to be open and honest and brave and playful, to laugh often, to love much, to be loved much in return.  You were born for joy.  Sit.  Feast on your life.” — Martha Beck, The Joy Diet, p. 226

In Closing…

This has been a good experience, on the whole.  I know I’m behind in posting, behind in commenting, and behind in implementing everything, but I’ve learned a lot and gotten clear on a lot of things in the past 10 weeks, partly due to this book and reading the posts and comments of fellow Joy Dieters.  I have a lot of ideas of how to work joy into my daily life that I didn’t have before, a few more “tools in the toolbox” if you will.

Thank you, Jamie, for leading us in this experience, and thank you to my fellow Joy Dieters for reading and commenting!  You made me think and smile and feel supported.

The Joy Diet, Ingredient #7: Play

This week is Play week for the participants in Jamie Ridler’s The Next Chapter book blogging group, and we are reading Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life.

Alas, this week has not felt very much like play for me.

My day job has had me, up until today, slammed with things that have to be done right this minute and with cuckoo, off-the-wall requests.  I had trouble sleeping through the night up until last night as the other three occupants of the house prowled and made noise at all hours of the night.  I’ve felt like I may be fighting off some kind of stomach bug…In short, it’s just been one of those weeks in which you’re ecstatic to see the weekend finally come.

Also, my time doing Nothing has gone right out the window in the past two weeks.  A few times I’ve taken, maybe, five or ten minutes, but none whatsoever this work-week.   I had to make that confession, as, in hindsight, doing Nothing would have helped get everything else I had on my to-do list go a lot more smoothly.  But, you live, you learn, right?

Now, for the discussion of the chapter at hand…

I love Beck’s concept of what our real careers are, that they are the ways in which we want to change the world, whether large or small, and the experiences that will allow us to feel we’ve lived a satisfying life, as opposed to the generally accepted meaning of “career”, being “the means by which we make our money.”    She asked two questions (pp. 137-138) to guide the reader toward his or her real career, which questions–with my answers–are as follows:

When your life is over, how do you want the world to be different–in large ways or small–because you have lived?

I want to have contributed to the beauty in the world by using my photographs to show the beauty that’s all around us if we just take the time to look, by making art, and by writing.  I want to write novels that people will while away comfortable, enjoyable hours with in overstuffed armchairs, that make them dream, and take them on journeys through the imaginary place where the possible meets the impossible.  I want to learn and practice reiki, so that I can participate in healing, one person at a time.  I want the charitable organizations that I support to have grown and flourished, to have made strides in reaching their goals.

What experiences must you have to feel you’ve lived a completely satisfying life?

I want to travel abroad, and to Oregon, and capture bits of those journeys for myself, my loved ones, and others in the general public.  I want to have found the place that is my home, that feels like a true home, somewhere that nurtures me, somewhere I can live this life I want, unlike the place in which I currently live.  I want to fall deeply in love, and to stay there, with that love being returned, to find my soulmate.  I want to have at least one child, and I want that child or each of those children to know that he or she is deeply loved and wonderful as he or she is.   I want to be a published author, and to have at least one gallery show of photography or art, or a mixture of the two.  I want to learn and practice reiki, as I said above.  I want to laugh with friends, and make good food regularly, and let go of all the things I’m holding onto that do not serve me, and make that a continual process.  I want to learn to be my true self openly, rather than hiding behind a forest of masks, despite what others may think of me.

Something else I learned from this chapter is that the game I’m spending most of my life playing, my day job, is only serving my “real life” by allowing me to save up the financial nest egg I will need to fund chasing my dreams.  It does take time away from my “real career” (though I am still practicing elements of my “real career” in my free time), I’m not having fun, I’m mediocre at it (and could only be good at it if lobotomized), though I do like my teammates for the most part, and, in one instance, my boss wound up being my photography patron as mentioned in last week’s post.  For now, this is enough to ask of this particular game.  However, it’s not a game I’m going to want to continue playing indefinitely, and I’m ending my play of it in late-April next year at the latest.

Oh, how I love, love, love the concepts of “mouse vision” and “eagle vision”!  Right now, my “eagle vision” is doing very well.  My “mouse vision”, however, could use some improvement in locating tiny steps to take between here, Point A, and there, Point B, where the “eagle vision” big dreams are in certain areas, like the Big Move and figuring out how to, eventually, maybe, hopefully, make money doing what I love.  Right now, my inner mouse just wants to go somewhere and sleep, hoping that, when she wakes up, she’ll magically be closer to Point B in those areas.  That’s just this week, though.  I anticipate, with some prodding–and playing!–that “mouse vision” will improve.

One place “mouse vision” is working is in my participation in NaNoWriMo, where I am “playing” at writing a novel.  If I finish this one, even if it’s horrid, I’ll know that I can, in fact, get a novel down on paper.  The next mouse step will be honing that craft through practice.  Also, as I’ve stated previously, the “mouse vision” step toward the photography dreams has been getting out and about in nature and snapping away at every opportunity.  Art is on the back burner, but my mouse knows how to go about doing that, too: just do it!

All in all, I found the chapter fulfilling, even if my daily practice of The Joy Diet was spotty, even having “one of those weeks”.  I am clearer–ever more so–on what I want out of this one wild, crazy life.

How was Play week for you, fellow Joy Dieters?  Fun, or at least fulfilling, I hope!

Here’s to looking forward to the next week of Laughter!

The Joy Diet, Ingredient #6: Treats

This week is Treats week for the participants in Jamie Ridler‘s The Next Chapter book blogging group, and we are reading Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life.

Let me preface this by saying that this week has been extremely busy for me, hence the vision card taking a vacation.

Before I get into the specifics of the chapter, I want to talk about how certain risks in the past two weeks became treats, to play off last week’s talk of Risk.

Yes, you read that right.  For me, a few risks I recently took either led to or became treats.

Just before heading full-steam into the Risk chapter, while I was still reading it, I bought a new digital camera: a 12.1 megapixel Canon PowerShot A 1100 IS, fitted with lots of lovely bells and whistles (which bells and whistles I’m still playing with and figuring out), a distinct improvement over my 7.1 megapixel, store-brand point-and-shoot.  I say it was a risk because I spent some money on it, and I felt a little tug of fear at that.  What if I spent that money and never used it?  What if I spent that money on that camera and never took a decent picture ever again?  Irrational worries rose to meet my assertion that I am going to start investing in my creative dreams, in the things that make me authentically happy.

Let me tell you, that camera has brought some heaping servings of joy to me in a short span of time!  I’ve been much more inspired to go outside on sunny days and snap away.  Sunday, I had an awesome day at the lake and ended up with two sets of decent–some great—shots.  You can look at them here and here, if you want.

Another risk that turned into a treat was showing my boss the photos from Sunday at the lake on Monday during lunchtime.  He’s an autumn-leaves-photo-enthusiast, so I ran through some of them.  Then, he decided he wanted photos taken of a local Boy Scout Camp of which he is a trustee.  Yesterday, during work hours, partly during my lunch break, I went there and spent about an hour snapping away.  I walked through spider webs, slogged through mud, and happened upon a snake’s tail disappearing up an embankment into some leaves, but I was so focused, so “in the zone” that it didn’t matter.  Just being there, being allowed to photograph one of the prettiest places in the county, was a huge treat, particularly falling in the middle of a workday, when I’m usually imprisoned indoors and chained to my desk.

Finally, as I was getting ready to leave the camp yesterday, I decided to take one more risk that turned into a treat.  I walked, very carefully, out onto the ledge of the dam that forms the lake at the camp, and took this picture, which is one of my favorites from the set:

An example of Risk as Treat: Beautiful picture taken from precarious perch.

That said, kids, don’t try that at home!

Now onto the chapter itself…

I loved the idea of making a list of spontaneous smile sparkers.  Here are some of mine:

• Singing along with one of my favorite songs while driving.
• Looking up at a beautiful blue sky with scattered clouds.  (This morning as I was leaving to go to work, I raised my arms out as though giving the sky a hug, and said, “Beautiful Morning!  Thank you!” and grinned hugely.)
• Slipping my cold feet into cute, patterned or brightly colored fuzzy socks.  I love a bit of whimsy, and warm feet.
• Watching the squirrels play in the front yard and around the neighborhood.
• The way our family cat will hold your finger in his paw to try to keep you cuddling, as opposed to putting him off your lap and going to take care of human business.

I regularly catalog sensory delights.  Some of my absolute favorites:

• I love the taste of peanut butter and chocolate together, i.e. Reese’s Peanut Butter cups.
• I love the sight of the sky reflected in a body of water.
• I love the feel of slipping just-shaved legs into clean, soft sheets when I got to bed at night.
• I love the smell of laundry dried out in the summer sun.
• I love the sound of Placebo‘s instrumental B-side, “The Innocence of Sleep.”

As for employing the strategy of being the Dr. Jekyll to one’s own Mr. Hyde, I don’t really have a problem doing that now and again, but I’m not going to do it every day.  For instance, yesterday I broke from my routine of always being perfectly on time during the photoshoot, as I was late getting back to work.  I did have my boss’s permission, but, had I been doing anything else anywhere else, I would have still made the best effort possible to get back to work within the hour.  I skipped class a couple of times during my university education purely for enjoyment’s sake, when, for the most part, I was a very conscientious and punctual student.  I do think there’s value in breaking out of one’s mold every now and again and taking a stroll in your opposite’s shoes.  I don’t know that I’d characterize it as always a treat, or as always leading to treats, but, not long ago, I’d never think a risk could become a treat, either. 

I definitely like the idea of being a little childish now and again.  I was gleeful like a child planning that photoshoot and doing it.  I sing in the shower and spin around in circles regularly.  For some reason, ever since I was a kid, I’ve liked to hang upside down from the bed, then sit up because it tickles and gives me a head rush.  Weird, I know, and my Mom has continually scolded me for it and told me I would break my neck one of these days.  Twenty-five years later, I’m still going with no broken neck.  But, I digress…

Today, I’m treating myself to being unproductive.  I still have days left to do on the–thankfully, self-paced–e-course I’ve been taking, but, with NaNoWriMo coming up, I feel I have bigger fish to fry.  And, instead of pushing myself to finish writing answers to all the journal prompts in that e-course before November 1st, I’m taking a break until after I get my word counts up on the novel I’ll begin Sunday morning, and then work through one or two prompts at a time.  (Each lesson has 10!)  It was an excellent thing to do to get me used to getting a lot of words out, and a great way to learn to be the mistress of my Inner Editor, but that was in preparation for writing a novel.   I think the remainder of the e-course’s prompts will make good writing warm-ups for days I find myself stuck.

Oh, and let’s not forget being profligate, as mentioned in the chapter.  I have picked up a bad habit in recent years from my parents: scarcity thinking.  As in, there’s never enough money.  My mother is one who freaks out about spending more than $3.00 on a nice bath soap, etc.  Now and again, I find myself freaking out about spending, though I do have some expendable cash and stay well within those parameters.  This week, I treated myself by ordering some music I’ve wanted for a while by Iron & Wine, The Creek Drank the Cradle and The Sea and the Rhythm, and a deck of oracle cards, as I’ve been curious about oracle cards and this deck looks gorgeous and feels timely to me.  All of the above should be arriving in the mail soon.  (I live in a small town, rural area, and none of these treats were available locally.) 

Yes, my week through treats has been fun and productive and surprising.  How has your week with treats been, fellow Joy Dieters?

Now I am off to treat myself to a long, hot shower and that hour of uninterrupted reading I wished for on Wednesday!

The Joy Diet, Ingredient #5: Risk

The Fifth Ingredient for Joy: Risk

This week, those of us following Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet via The Next Chapter worked with Risk.

No, I didn’t do anything as risky as standing on my head in the middle of what appears to be Times Square as Dharma Mittra does on my vision card, but I did take a risk.

First of all, I actually followed through all the proscribed steps as they pertained to one goal:

1. “Choose any scary goal.”  I’ve been wanting to write a novel for a very long time now.  It’s a repetitive desire.  Writing novels–plural–is, in fact, one of my life goals.   It’s scary, though, because every time I have tried to write fiction, short or novel-length, in the past three years, it has been a bust.  I let my perfectionism and Inner Critic get the better of me.  That, or latent slacker tendencies.   This is the goal I chose.
2. “Take the smallest scary step possible.”  I signed up for NaNoWriMo, a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month, where loads of would-be novelists from all over the world come together via the internet and try to bang out a 50,000-word novel in 30 days alongside each other.  I tried NaNoWriMo in 2006, but didn’t get past 5,000 words, and felt myself a failure.  It’s intimidating if I let myself think too much about it, but I’ve grown a lot, too, in the past three years, so I think making another go of it, though slightly scary, will be good for me.
3. “Make backing out as hard as going forward.”  I’ve already outed myself on Facebook, in this week’s Wishcasting, and on my semi-private, password-protected blog for my closest friends to read.  I have two writing buddies so far, and anticipate more to come onboard.  I’ve got a bit of time to develop a concept, plotline, etc., but not so much that I talk myself out of it.  If I don’t at least give it my best effort, I’ll be the target for much (mostly) good-natured ribbing come December.
4. “Don’t be afraid to be afraid.”  Right now, as I type this, I’m not very afraid at all of NaNoWriMo, or writing a novel.   I’m actually getting excited about it. On this point, however, I vacillate wildly.  Ask me tomorrow, or next week, and I’m sure I’d give a different answer.
5. “Walk into the monster’s maw.”  Well, I’m on my way to the monster’s maw.  Only a little bit longer before I’ll be right inside it!  I will not back out.

Sidenote:  There is a risk that came with signing up for NaNoWriMo that I chose not to take.  I didn’t link my blog on my NaNoWriMo profile.  Why?  Well, certain people in my community may decide to participate and find me there.  I would rather keep these musings separate from them.  You see, I speak a lot of my spiritual and religious beliefs here, which, as I am searching right now for my right fit, are not at all orthodox, and certainly do not align with the dominant cultural beliefs of this place on such matters.  Where I live, there is still a lot of prejudice and brow-beating aimed at people who are unorthodox in their beliefs.  At this juncture, I would rather avoid the prejudice and brow-beating.

When I decided to join in on this adventure called The Joy Diet, Risk is the ingredient I was dreading.  The previous four were so difficult, and, on the first read through, last week’s ingredient, Creativity, the one I expected to enjoy most, frustrated me more than the others up to that point.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself enjoying the Risk chapter!  I must have more courage than I’d thought!  The October dreamboard, it seems, has worked its magic.

I started looking for little, situationally-specific risks to take, too, with something very much akin to glee, but with slight reservation.

For instance, I cannot afford to go out to eat lunch every day and continue saving money to finance the Big Dream at the rate I’d like, so I eat in the office most days.  There’s a problem with this, however.  I view lunchtime as my time.  It is my time, if I leave.  When I stay, I always ask my boss if it’s okay to eat my lunch before I start heating it and/or eating it.  He says yes, yet, a lot of times he will not take lunch during the prescribed time, and, because he has decided to keep working, will constantly interrupt my eating.  This has been a continuous boundary issue.  For a while, I was taking my lunch and my car to the city parking lot to get some peace, but that ran out gas and, with it becoming cooler, won’t be practical as I’d have to keep the heat running.  I devised a new plan.  Wednesday, I asked if it was okay to eat my lunch at the appointed time.  He said yes.  I then made a visible show of placing earbuds in my ears and turning on my personal CD player, then went about microwaving my lunch while listening to the 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of Placebo’s debut album, one of my favorites, which does a good job of drowning others out.  I then proceeded to ignore my boss and the clients who insisted upon trooping in during the lunch hour as my boss chose to leave the office unlocked when ignoring them was possible.  (Ignoring them was easy, as the music drowned them out much of the time.  However, it was hard to ignore them on the occasions they stood over me.)  When ignoring them was not possible, I pointed out in very polite, nice-girl tones that I was eating and would address their concerns when I was finished, and not before.

I’ve wanted to do this before, but I’ve been terrified that standing up for a healthy boundary–an uninterrupted, unstressed meal, which never even takes up all the time I’m alotted–would have unpleasant repercussions for my job situation.  With the economy the way it is, everyone’s autopilot setting is to do whatever it takes to please his or her boss at all costs lest they end up sanctioned or fired.  I decided, however, this week that this was a risk I was willing to take.  And it seemed to work.  I made my point.   I was neither sanctioned nor fired.  I intend to use it again when necessary, as I’m sure that boundary will need a lot of reinforcement.

Beck said a lot of things on the subject of Risk that truly resonated with me.  I highlighted quite a few passages to look over later, when I need an extra shot of courage.  Among them are the following:

“Experience has taught me that the way to a joyful life is always fraught with fear, that to find it you must follow your heart’s desires right through the inevitable terrors that arise to hold you back.  If you don’t do this, your life will be shaped by fear, rather than love, and I guarantee, the shape will be narrow and tiny compared with your best destiny.” — Martha Beck, The Joy Diet, p. 93

“…Living to avoid fear is more dangerous to your true self than a life full of obvious risks.  It precludes all the rewards that can only come by daring to try, and it can never avert all tragedy.” — The Joy Diet, p. 93

“Whenever you are contemplating a risk that is necessary to achieve your heart’s desires, there will come a time when the only options are to live with a demon spirit–the ghost of a hope that will not leave you and will not die–or walk right into the thing that terrifies you most.  After going through it a few times, you’ll recognize such situations sooner, and walk toward the monster with less uncertainty.  Oh, you’ll still be scared.  If your doing something really important, you’ll be scared beyond description, but you’ll also feel the yearning to go on, fear or no fear.  You’ll find that you can follow that sweetness into the most dangerous undertakings, and that just as your terror destroys the person you used to be, someone stronger and braver always appears.” — The Joy Diet, p.105

I say I marked those passages, and more, for when I need an extra dose of courage, as I’ve made up my mind about certain long-term risks.  Some are time-related, as detailed here, and involve putting certain things to bed, and stopping trying to rush through that process.  Others are related to the steps I have ahead of me toward the Big Dream.

For the steps to the big dream, I found this guideline Martha Beck listed in her Risk Assessment immensely helpful:

“A good risk feels like taking a high dive into a sparkling clean pool; a bad risk feels like taking the same leap, but into polluted swamp water.” — The Joy Diet, p. 96

I’ve been going around and around about where to move to.  I know I need to move away from here, somewhere where there are more opportunities to connect, in person, with like-minded people and a wider variety of occupations.   This is chiefly what I’ve been saving my money for: financing a move.

Oregon has been calling to me for about a year, even though I’ve never been there.   It won’t leave me alone.  It just keeps intensifying, the pull to it.  It crops up randomly, in books that say nothing about being set there on their covers, in night dreams, in daydreams, in the blog posts of people I read, even the ones that don’t live there, or the ones I stumble across via links on the blogs I regularly read, plus in random browsing of “interesting” photos on Flickr.  I see bits of its landmarks on TV, channel surfing, and know them instantly, though I’ve never been there.  Looking at pictures of the Columbia River Gorge or Multnomah Falls, it seems like I can smell the forest, thick with evergreens and moss, and damp earth, and the water, that I can feel the mist on my face.  I want to see the sun set over Cannon Beach myself.  (THAT is on my Bucket List!)  In my obsessive researching–“research” was my librarian’s assistant specialty back in the day–I have looked at a handful of maps, and most are now committed to memory.  Am I set on living right in Portland?  No.  In fact, the longer this goes on, the more I think I’d rather live on the outskirts, or maybe even a couple hours away from the city itself, or even across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, which has cheaper rent.   The point is, that area calls me.  All that praying for guidance I’ve been doing?  The more I pray for that, the more visions of Oregon dance in my head, both while awake and asleep.  It hits something deep and primal that I can’t quite put my finger on.  There’s got to be a reason for that, right?   And, after reading that someone besides me moved somewhere on a dream, and going back into her archives to read some of the moving process for her and her family, I am feeling much better about the possibility of following heart over head on this one, having–surprise–landed on her blog via a link on another blog which I found linked on a blog I regularly read.

In mid-to-late April, I am planning to quit my job and moving to Oregon shortly thereafter.  I hope to make an exploratory trip in March to look at apartments and look into employment opportunities.  This, the place and timing of it, feels like “a high dive into a clear pool” as opposed to quitting my job in December and leaving in January, which feels like “taking the same leap, but into polluted swamp water.”

Moving in the winter, I have figured out, is not for me.  Me saying I was quitting my job and leaving in January was me being reactionary to the state of things at my job and in my personal life.  It was me just wanting the uncomfortable parts to be over as soon as possible.  As prone as I am to seasonal depression (it’s hit me the past three years in late winter), winter is not a time for me to go somewhere strange where I don’t know very many, if any, people beforehand.  That would be adding unnecessary stress to an already, by its very nature, stressful time.  Winter, seasonal depression aside, is the season that my hermit’s heart is even more a hermit than the rest of the year, which doesn’t make it the best time of year to try to make new friends.  Not to mention that quite  a bit of country–much of it then-frozen plains and mountains–lie between me and where my heart and soul so obviously want to be.  That’s why that scared me so much and didn’t feel at all like a positive risk.

I think, having made the risky decisions I made this week regarding the Big Dream, the two sides of myself, the Logical One and the Emotional One may stop arguing quite so much.

The risks I’ve taken this week, in general, have done and will continue, I’m sure, to do me good.  I actually surprised myself!

How was Risk for you, fellow Joy Dieters?  If you stumble across this and haven’t been following along with us, what positive risk could you take toward one of your dreams or deep desires?

The Joy Diet, Ingredient #4: Creativity

The Fourth Ingredient for Joy: Creativity

Knowing creativity was coming up for this week working through Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet, I got excited.  I thought, “Oh, yay!  It will have me dipping into my art supplies, taking photos, writing and other such creative pursuits!”  You know, the things one generally thinks of when one hears the word “creativity.”

Not so.  It was more about creating one’s life.  “Ugh, just what I don’t need.  Like I don’t obsess about that enough?” I thought to myself. 

Also, it was about coming up with creative ideas to fulfill the desires we found we had previously, supposing, of course, they weren’t illegal or morally reprehensible desires.  I admit, I was frustrated by the first read through.

So, I wasn’t doing what Beck suggests, making a list of any and all ways–no matter how off-the-wall–to make your desires reality.  I totally did not resonate, at all, with the suggestion to take on the viewpoint of the enemy, either.  Being the perfectionist I am if I’m not being vigilant, I was about to throw in the towel halfway through the week, since I wasn’t doing much of anything the chapter suggests.

Then, Thursday, I decided to just take what worked for me and forget the rest, lest I spend all my time nursing frustration both with myself and the book.  (This is what I intend to do for the remainder of the book, just for the record:  Take what works for me, what resonates, and leave the rest.)

The truth is, getting at most of the desires I wrote about last week, making them a reality, is simply a matter of doing them. 

So I want to spend more time in the Great Outdoors?  The only way to do that is to go outside. 

The only way to make art is to take the time, gather the supplies, get my hands dirty, and make it! 

The only way to clean and declutter the parts of the house over which I have control is to dive in and do it.  If there’s something I feel reticent about keeping, but feel I should anyway, I should stop and ask myself why.  If it brings up a lot of emotions, I’ll stop and ask myself why.  When it’s finished, I intend to do some energetic space-clearing.  This point is the one instance that I came closest to following the rote instructions of the chapter.

If I want rest, I have to take the time to rest, and I have to let go of whatever is going on in my head that doesn’t want to let me rest.

If I want to publish a book, I have to write it.  I have to figure out what sort of book it will be, and then I have to write it.  If I want to write, I have to sit down and do it.  After that book is written, then comes the editing process, and after the editing process, out go the query letters and writing samples or the whole manuscript, depending on the standard practice for that genre.  The only way to do these things is just to do them.

And my Big Dream is pretty much the same.  (I do feel protective of it at this point, so, for now, I’m keeping it to myself, but many of the elements of it I did write about in last week’s post.)  It’s a matter of overcoming the fear that stands between me and just doing the necessary tasks to get me there.

Now, before anyone thinks I’m throwing the baby out with the figurative bathwater, there were parts of the chapter that helped, that did resonate with me. 

First, was the continued assertion that failure is okay.  Beck pointed out that the most successful people she has worked with or known also have a lot of failures under their belt because they took creative leaps and risks…They tried for what they wanted, even though sometimes it didn’t work out.  As she put in all caps: “IF SOMETHING IS WORTH DOING, IT’S WORTH DOING BADLY.”   I am always so afraid of failing, which causes me to get in my own way a lot of times.  I’m  beginning to think I should perhaps have that all-capped saying tattooed on my forehead.  (Just kidding.)  I need a constant reminder that, if something doesn’t work out, I need to take away what lessons I can from it and move on.

Second, I liked the exercise unifying false dichotomies.  Life isn’t generally an “either/or” thing at the heart of it.  It is generally a “both/and/all of the above” thing.  I’m slowly deepening my study into the more philosophical and spiritual side of Yoga, and into Buddhist thought, and this dovetails nicely with what I’ve been reading on the subjects lately.  Everything is all together, and “good” and “bad” are only our perceptions with the exception of things that harm others, like murder, for instance, obviously.  Things like failure, for instance, can be both good and bad at the same time: good because you tried and you have the opportunity to learn from what did not work, and bad because, obviously, it didn’t work out as you’d have liked and you’re disappointed.

Third, doing one thing different is something that works for me.  Even if it means doing something off the wall–in my case, stopping trying to live this book by the letter and, instead, taking what works and leaving the rest–doing one thing different has a way of breaking one out of whatever rut one finds oneself inhabiting.

Finally, it never hurts to be reminded that, to a great extent, we are the captains of our own destinies.  Sure, we may not be in control of every single detail of our lives, but we are in charge of more than we think we are.  We create more of our circumstances than, at first glance, it appears we do.  For instance, I may have a job that doesn’t feed my spirit, but it is making me the money I will need to carry me toward my dreams, and I can do what I like in the time I’m not at the office instead of moping outside the office about the time I am at office. 

Speaking of which, I think I may have figured out the timing of my departure as I explained in my post on Truth: Spring 2010.  I feel like I’ve been pushing too hard to make things happen faster, instead of going with their natural course of development, and, I think, that’s part of the reason why I’ve been running around so scared and frustrated.   I think this is a date that both sides of myself, the Logical One and the Emotional, Intuitive One, can live with. Plus, I have things I must make peace with before I leave, so I don’t carry those things with me and project them onto other jobs, people, and places.

How has creativity week been for you, fellow Joy Dieters?