Jamie Ridler is doing the Joy Diet by Martha Beck as a book club and I am joining in the reading. I really enjoyed reading about other’s experience with the book. I’ve been continuing with my nothing from between 5 and 20 minutes, asking myself about the truth, and discovering what I want.
This next chapter is on creating. Since we’ve been finding out what we want, it’s time to think of some ideas to get there.
One of the desires that came up this week was wanting more energy. Fall allergies have made me not very peppy.
Some ideas to feel energetic that emerged:
- Exercise more often
- Drink extra water
- Quit eating junk
- Enjoy my fruits and vegetables
- Get enough sleep
- Listen to energizing music
- Get up and move around more often
- Quit saying I am too tired
- Pray
- Deep breathing
Now all the ideas that some up aren’t going to be great. In fact, if you get creative a lot of them will be stupid. The next day I still had the desire to feel energetic and I needed to come up with more ideas. So some of them got pretty silly.
By the third day I was already feeling more energetic even though I hadn’t consciously done anything on the lists.
I also came up with some ideas for other desires like learning something that sounded interesting and connecting with others at someplace I was going.
The minimum requirement was one feasible idea for a desire. And we can do whatever we want with it or nothing at all.
Did you decide what you wanted? What are some ideas to make that happen?
I decided that the chapter on “creativity” was pretty much a waste of my time. And then discovered I wasn’t the only one that felt that way. I didn’t care for some of Martha’s suggestions…not because I couldn’t do them; they offended me and my sense of how to live my life. I did find a few things I could use and made appropriate choices. I’m left tonight with the feeling that this book probably isn’t for me.
But the silly ideas CAN be the best – sometimes. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for the post – nice. I did the list, but I didn’t do it more than one time…maybe I should keep revisiting my lists of “how to” – I knew that I hadn’t really gone much below the surface and definitely didn’t get to silly. I think I need to…
thanks for sharing your week with creativity.
I love your post! One of my favorites so far! Your list is a perfect match to what I would list. I need to keep this thanks!
It sounds like you are are on the right track toward understanding and embracing you desire…. I love that you allowed yourself to get silly. That was huge for me this week! 🙂