Frameworks and practices to help you navigate the stories you’re carrying, embody practices that help you feel present, and begin to move into action. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning.
A Simple Practice for When You’re Moving Way Too Fast: The Wednesday 1-2-3
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Hey Reader, This week, I’m passing along a practice from one of my colleagues, Taj M. Smith. Taj shared this in a recent newsletter and I love how he speaks about time. I often find myself going way too fast, so while practices like this can sometimes seem silly, they can also be really helpful in re-setting myself. If you feel yourself tempted to skim it, hit “archive,” and move on – especially if you’re reading this early in the morning – I invite you to try it literally right now with something small and easy. From Taj: Our world moves fast and values productivity under capitalism. We know this. We are reminded of it each time we feel antsy after a long stretch of being “unproductive.” Obsessing over time is another way capitalism has its hooks in us, even though time itself is value-neutral. How we spend our time is neither good nor bad, but we’ve learned to associate negative feelings with long periods spent on activities that don’t produce tangible results. This week’s practice invites you into intentional slowness. Choose one thing you usually do during your day and do it sloooowwwwly. For example, you could decide to take hours to eat your favorite meal of the day or to double the length of your shower (water consumption permitting). The goal is to revel in the act itself instead of worrying about how much time you spend on it. Focus on how doing the activity makes you feel. Stop when you feel satisfied or, if satisfaction doesn’t come, ready to move on to the next thing. After you try this out, no matter how big or small the activity was, take some time to reflect on the practice using the questions below. ❓ Questions
🧰 Resources
👉 An Invitation to Temper our BodiesIn a similar-yet-different way, the past two months have felt a bit like 2020 to me. Every day, the news has pingpong-balled back and forth between catastrophes and I’ve worked to settle and re-settle my nervous system while figuring out a way forward – in my relationships, my activism, my communities, and so on. This is one of the reasons I’m really excited for the Inner Work Cohort. During the month of October, in the direct lead-up to Election Day, a group of us will be building our capacity for resilience and presence in workshops like Developing Practices for Times of Crisis and Navigating Conflict + Change with our guest facilitator Abi Robins. If you’re feeling the stress of this moment, or if you’ve noticed you’re running on autopilot in the midst of it, I hope you’ll consider joining.
Hope all is well-enough with you, P.S. If you live in the Seattle-Tacoma area, I'll be hosting a poetry event with James A. Pearson this weekend! RSVP here and come on by! |
The Wednesday 1-2-3
Frameworks and practices to help you navigate the stories you’re carrying, embody practices that help you feel present, and begin to move into action. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning.
Hey Reader, A quick request: as we come to the close of the year, I have a reader survey for you! It’ll only take a couple minutes and will help inform what The Wednesday 1-2-3 looks like going forward. 📝 Please complete this short 2024 Reader Survey (And in case it helps: there's a cute tardigrade gif at the end of the survey 😂) Last week I was talking with a friend about burnout – specifically “activist burnout.” He mentioned how folks who engage in activism often go full-speed ahead until...
Hey Reader, At the bottom of today’s email is a free 25-minute mini-workshop I recorded for you. It’s all about how we hold the charge of this moment – the heaviness, fear, unease, and discomfort of it all – in a gentle and intentional way. Just wanted to make sure you saw it 🙂 Alright – onward to today’s prompt: A couple weeks ago, I wrote that we are collectively living in the midst of a disillusioning moment. I defined this experience as: A moment when the illusion of “how the world works”...
Hey Reader, With Thanksgiving Day tomorrow for those of us in the United States, I thought it would be a good time to bring back the Consent/Closeness Matrix, which I first shared about a year ago. Designed by my colleague Catherine Quiring, the Consent/Closeness Matrix is a tool for helping us understand the stories we carry within us and their origins. (If you can't see the image above, you can view it here.) As you look at the matrix, you’ll notice two axes: Low consent - high consent...