Vol.18
SMOOTH TRANSITIONS THAT GIFT MORE TIME
I wanted to follow on from my share in the previous musing about change and how that has been unfolding. For the last few weeks, I have been moving more slowly, and in doing so, I have been taking note of how my days are structured. And in between my time of deep reflection, I hopped onto Instagram stories to do a little Q&A where someone asked me what my typical morning looks like. As I am writing this to you, it is the school holidays, so it looks different than it does during the regular school term, but this is essentially what I do to get me in the right frame of mind. My days have changed over these past weeks, resulting in re-evaluating how I do things. Where once I was on autopilot, the last few weeks have prompted so much change. So, in short, I have started to do little things to help myself feel more prepared for the day. I have returned to my trusty old mantra, "I go about my day with grace".
Upon waking in the morning, as I open my eyes, I stretch my body and begin to tell my body that I am grateful for what it enables me to do, positively framing my mind. Next, I will say my personal prayer to whomever I am journeying with at that time in my life. This may be a particular Goddess, the Divine or my Ancestors. I then get up, go to the bathroom and make my way to light a candle in the kitchen. It is still quite dark when I wake around 5:30 and 6:00 – not completely pitch black – but the candle is not for light, more so to create ambience, acting as a reference point for myself, my inner flame. If you've been around since the Awaken by The Ritual days, you will know that lighting a candle in the morning to start my day is a favourite ritual to ground me into the present moment. I am not alone when I wake up; my little dog Hilda follows me, and I will take her outside to do her morning business. As she's waddling around the yard (she's a short, little sausage dog with a very low tum!), I let the chickens out of their coop for the day as they are usually squawking happily as the sun starts to rise, ready to enjoy their day of bugs and worms. This little trail from my house to the coop means I pass my vegetable garden and flower beds, allowing me to pick some fresh flowers for the dining table and fresh herbs for our eggs on toast. When I am ready to come back inside, I go to my Apothecary, where I select whatever herbs I feel drawn to for the day or the ones I require if I am treating specific symptoms or ailments. Whatever I choose, I brew in a gorgeous stainless-steel teapot I bought from a Tea Master many years ago in Morocco.
While the herbs are brewing, I make my way to my writing desk, which is separate from my office. It is a little corner I have set up between my kitchen and dining room. I've made it in such a way that it looks like a design feature of the room; you wouldn't think that someone sits there to do work, but I've made it that way specifically, and that's the spot that I write at (it also came out of necessity since my injury has meant that my husband has taken over what used to be my office space now that he's been working from home full time to help with my recovery). I'll open my laptop, turn the Wi-Fi on (we always turn the Wi-Fi off at night time – you can investigate all the benefits of good sleep that result from this, but the goal is to reduce the EMF load in your space) and pour the tea to begin the planning stages of the day. By this time, my husband is usually up, and we share the tea and converse over work commitments we may have for the day, like meetings or projects. This gives us a brief check-in about work plans, what we feel like eating for the day (we are massive foodies), and who will care for the children during stretches of meeting times. After that, it is usually only a few minutes to mull the logistics over, and then the children awake. These moments in the early morning before the children rise are vital to my mental health; they help me set the tone for the day and allow me to be nurtured before nurturing. They are a poignant touchstone within my life.
It has taken me several lines and paragraphs to express these little early morning doings, but it is only twenty minutes or so. These moments of Grace: making the tea, lighting the candle, going outside, greeting nature as she wakes, all create this particular frequency for my day, for my day to unfold on. It does not mean my day will be free from any chaos or drama; instead, how I respond to it that is altered, and I feel more stable and supported. I have Agency.
Currently, my meditation or morning practice is sitting down at my writing desk and re-writing Poetry for the Soul, which is now being reformatted as broadcasts to be shared within this space. Part of the work for me is reviewing the poems I've shared with you (those who were here from the very start know that I loved this aspect of Behind the Veil but that the way I was sharing them with you was not conducive to my current situation) and delivering their wisdom and beauty in a different way. The whole process has been incredibly reflective and beautifully meditative. I am grateful that I get to call this work since this entire process feels like a transmission in the way the feelings I get when reading and working on this project floods my being, returns me to the present moment and keeps me from being distracted by the fact that the dishwasher hasn't been unloaded, the breakfast still hasn't been cooked, the lounge is still full of blankets, and the girls' drawing pencils are still all over the dining table from the night before. This work has become, in essence, a meditation practice that takes me away from all these little distractions and annoyances and allows me to focus on something that is beautiful to me, something that I cherish, something that I have a deep reverence for. So, while I've been unable to be as active, I have since pivoted, enjoying a new way to be with my feelings, my thoughts, and myself.
And it is from this morning practice that I have been able to outline and choose to dive deeper into finally taking the step to sort out different aspects of my health and well-being physically and mentally. I've mentioned in several of the previous musings that I have gone through my fair share of health issues over the years, and I have since reached a point where I'm no longer on any medication. Rather, I am taking supplements for general well-being, like Magnesium and Oyster Extract, things that support my body to operate better.
However, since weaning off the medications I was taking to treat my Thyroid from Hashimoto's related symptoms, I have experienced weight gain or what they call healing pounds. For those of you who don't know, healing pounds results from your body holding on to fat for fuel because it was in starvation and depletion mode for so long. So, although I've been able to wean off medication and heal myself with pro-metabolic foods (carbs, raw sugars, etc.), my body was starved from eating Ketogenic for so many years (I am talking 7-8+ years), and I was Paleo before that, so in total, I am in the process of healing 10-11 years of eating crazily. Eating pro-metabolic foods has meant that my cortisol levels are perfect where they were once completely depleted, and my hormones are also picture perfect. So, the desire, as of late, has been to invest in my health by changing my diet and incorporating a solid exercise regime that is right for my constitution to, in time, shed the weight that I am holding. Investing in myself in this way is why I've taken steps to hire a nutritionist who specialises in women's health and is also a personal trainer/health coach. I've hired her to put together a program for me to monitor and optimise my results, adjusting things as my body responds. The goal isn't to shed this weight overnight but to see a 1% improvement in how I feel each day - 1% each day over a year becomes a 365% improvement!
I do realise that this may seem like a vain pursuit since I know we're in a time where current culture encourages us to love ourselves how we are but at the same time, it's difficult for me to love that I've got this extra 20 kilos from now ill fault of my own, no late night snacking, no alcohol binges or fast food evenings. I am the healthiest I have ever been on the inside, in my mind and strong and active, but I feel like an alien for what is represented on the outside, this current body. I can feel the weight, it's heaviness. I do not feel how I did two years ago. I realised that this was one of the reasons why I had been hiding behind my hair. It is why I have preferred to host online events over the many in-person events I have been asked to do. So I have been hiding all this time. My path forward is ironing out the things that bring me discomfort and hinder my daily doings without the background noise and all the distractions and excuses.
In addition to improving my health and vitality, I want to re-evaluate my relationship with how I do things for work. I am not a person who is on my phone all the time, actually not even when I should take a nice memory snap. I do, however, always have to around me at home, lying next to where I am when inside the house (never outside) and when it beeps or sends me a notification, I quickly drop what I am doing and check my phone. I took note of how much I did this over one day, and all those little immediate checks resulted in hours or wasted time. Not a healthy or sustainable way to live by any means. I had convinced myself that since I ran my own business, I needed to be super available and make sure that I was on top of everything all the time. And to be completely honest, this is such a load of bullshit because whenever I send emails, I don't get replies for a few days, and while I am not pissed off or upset about it when it happens to me, it has made me realise that I've been too accessible, too immediate. If I get five orders in one day for the shop, I have been of the mind that I must process them, and package them, within an hour of the order coming in. Get it shipped and off to the post office so they don't accumulate the next day to 8 or 10 parcels. Again, not a sustainable way to be and do things.
I've done something that has been completely liberating recently, deleting the Gmail app from my phone. Since I am on my laptop almost every day (in the morning to write, after lunch to set up content and newsletter outlines, and then in the evening again to do some extra work, each for a few hours at a time), I now take those opportunities to check my email. I've realised, perhaps a little late, I don't need to immediately see the newsletters from the slew of brands that I am subscribed to until I create the time to do so. I have also removed all notifications from my phone. Instagram, for example, dings at me all the time, sending me notifications about popular posts that day and trending reels and just silly reasons to mindlessly browse and use the app, and it's a dangerous trap to fall into. Just think of how much time passes when all you wanted to do was to see what so and so was up to. I am aware you can turn off notifications in the apps, but I took it further and turned off notifications for apps in my phone settings. So now, if I look at the time on the phone screen, there is nothing there but the time.
Inspired by a book my husband recommended called The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferries, I have implemented a few principles that the author suggests to make us more efficient with our time. One strategy that I've implemented in my own business is automating things. I schedule all my social media in an app called Planoly, which means that I can take one hour of my time at a computer plugging in images and captions for the week ahead so that I can then schedule them to appear on my feed for both accounts, which means I don't have to be on Instagram to post each day. The only thing I have to be on Instagram for is to check in on those country manors, French castles, and pastry chefs and, of course, to communicate with all of you through DM's or comments because I do love connecting with you all in that way. Some of the things you share with me are so beautiful, and it's a really beautiful way to connect and learn from each other (most days!) in an expansive way – it's wild to me that I can be connected with so many people from the Northern Hemisphere and from way across the world to where I am.
The only app where I have left notifications is Shopify, and the reason is that whenever we get a sale, it makes this little cha-ching pokey sound and both my husband and I really like it because as soon as we hear that, we immediately say "Blessing already received!" it just gives us a little boost to know we've got a sale. Truthfully, it removes us from the thick since we only see the back end of the website or the product. It reminds us that we are doing something right and that we have got this up and running.
All these things have been helping me structure my day much better and much more reflective of my morning: calm, centred, and present. And the amount of overwhelm and stress that I am no longer experiencing, as a result, is the icing on the cake! In many ways, I am stripping things back with the intention of making things simpler. This has changed how I look at food, how I look at my wardrobe, and how I groom myself and present myself. It's shifted my brain and my mindset, and I've opened myself to the idea that there is actually so much time in a day. Rather than competing with myself about how much I can get done and how many things I can cross off my lists. I am allowing myself to put my full awareness and attention on the things that immediately matter the most to me. So, if, for example, I'm feeling a little bit off-kilter and need to make some food or the kitchen needs a good cleaning, I know I can do so more quickly and efficiently, knowing I will not be distracted by some random person emailing me to tell me how they're annoyed that they aren't getting free shipping on a $20 order (it happens, I swear!) or something like that. As simple as it sounds, I am taking my time back – I don't have to over-serve.
I can confidently say that this unlearning had to happen in my own process, and I am sure many of you can relate. As someone who has always had to do things on her own for most of her life, I had to unlearn the idea of being an overachiever. I have often had to work harder than other people who have had a leg up or had support, whether emotional, physical, or financial. It's unlearning that I must continually jump on that hamster wheel of burnout to get just slightly even with the person next to me. In this comparison frame of mind, it becomes easy to forget your ethos and what is important to you. Because the truth is that so much of our time is spent only partially immersed doing what we love, whether it be meditation, esoteric practices, or sound studies. Rather, most of our time is, in fact spent checking emails, responding to people, cooking food, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking care of children or others….
In this way, I am simplifying my life, prioritising and doing what matters most to me, and creating that time for the things I love. The world's not going to implode because you don't have notifications on for social media. You will not get fired because you're not checking your emails outside of office hours. A phone is a phone. Let's look at it for being what it is – a device that enables more accessible communication. And although I love the way technology has been amazing for reducing time, it's not something that should be ruling and dictating our lives or our schedules. There is a time and a place for it. Technology should be something that we use to enhance and maximise the time that we have so that we don't have to spend as much time working and instead spend more time playing.
We often spend our time doing the same thing expecting a different result. And according to Einstein, that was the definition of insanity. If we want different, we must move differently...
We often spend our time doing the same thing expecting a different result. And according to Einstein, that was the definition of insanity. If we want different, we must move differently, and these are the ways I have been reconsidering, re-evaluating and changing my life at present. I hope you find my experience helpful. Feel free to share with me your morning practices and rituals. I think it is quite a beautiful thing to have and to share, and if you don't have one in place and have been running from bed to work, to supper, to bed and back again, take this as a sign to slow down and reconsider the way you do things. Your time is so valuable – make the most of it for you.
Amoureuse,
Brooke x
Comentários