For a few months this year I’ve I felt in a rut. I’ve felt disconnected with BGC, disconnected with myself, and just a bit pissed off really.
After Project Self turned 4, my workload finally became a bit easier, a bit less crazy-frantic, a bit more routine and comfortable. Then not long later,
I slid down the slippery slope into too-comfortable land.
So in the last few months I’ve started going after things that both scare and excite me in equal measures.
I’ve started facilitating corporate workshops all over Australia, I’ve started tutoring medical students at Monash uni in mindfulness, and I’ve started working on a book proposal.
I’m stretching myself and it scares the shit out of me some days, but it also makes me feel alive and excited.
Bloody Good Chap and I talked about how we could switch things up in our relationship – simple things like dressing up and meeting each other out at a restaurant like a first date, taking time apart to focus on our passions and then come back together re-energised.
I feel more present, connected with BGC and much more connected with my values again.
These big and small changes I’ve been implementing bit by bit have shifted my perspective, and very quickly, my mood.
I’ve also started to work more and stare into the fridge less.
Even if you’ve done everything the same way for as long as you can remember, tomorrow you could wake up and change everything.
- Move your room around so you wake up facing a different side.
- If you get your coffee from the same place every day, try somewhere new, and order something new.
- When you run out of products, try new brands, don’t stay with the ones you’ve had for years.
- Walk or bike a different way to work.
- Change the order of how you usually do things at work.
- Chat to someone new in your workplace and ask them what they’re passionate about
- Once a week, do something you’ve never done before, try a hip hop dance class or woodworking or linocut printmaking!
- Buy a few toothpaste flavours so you can change it up every morning.
We get stuck in routines and patterns without even realising it.
When you realise how good it feels to change tiny things up, you’ll be flabbergasted.
Probably. I just wanted to use that word.
The areas of our lives that most excite us are always the areas in which we are growing.
You don’t see plants sitting around stagnating forever, they do it for a while in winter, then they suddenly start growing again.
I have a theory that when we as humans stop growing for too long (as we do when life gets too busy), we start to feel stunted, stuck and stifled. Ssssss. Like plants, we get all wilty and pissed off if we can’t grow.
All we need to freshen things up is a little bit of newness, a little bit of growth in perspective or skill.
If your weekends are always the same, choose something you’d love to learn and learn it. YouTube can teach you anything.
8 years ago it taught me how to pick a lock with a hair clip. I’ve been breaking into my neighbours’ houses ever since.*
*I haven’t.
When we do things a bit differently, we feel more alive. Change makes us become accidentally more mindful.
When you walk the same way to work everyday, your mind need not focus on your surroundings, your body walks on autopilot and your mind is free to wander off into the past or future. The past contains a lot of sadness and ‘should haves’ for most minds, and the future a lot of anxiety and worry and to do lists.
So when you change it up, your brain becomes focused intently what you’re doing, and you feel more awake, more aware, more alive.
This is why people love travel, meeting new people, going on adventures, exploring new cafes.
Don’t get stuck in the rut of habit for too long. Work out what you do mindlessly on autopilot and then shift it slightly.
