Inner work frameworks, practices, and questions – all in a five-minute read. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning before you even wake up. Written and curated by Andrew Lang.
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
Inner work frameworks, practices, and questions – all in a five-minute read. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning before you even wake up. Written and curated by Andrew Lang.
Hey Reader, This past week, I dedicated some time to re-reading Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak. It was a book that had a large impact on me back in my college years and I wanted to revisit some of my underlinings and notes. About halfway through, smashed in between my scribbles and my collages of blue and yellow highlighter, was a completely un-marked paragraph. And it struck me in a way it clearly hadn’t before: We have places of fear inside of us, but we have other places as well —...
Hey Reader, A quick reminder to start us off 👇 Tomorrow night, Kimberly Novosel and I will be hosting our first “sweatshirt session!” If you’re feeling a bit exhausted by the world and want a few new practices for self-connection and staying soft, yet fierce, I hope you’ll consider joining us. Today's focus is on a concept used in family systems therapy known as the “transitional character.” This is someone who becomes a change-maker in their family lineage by refusing to pass down...
Hey Reader, I recently received an email from one of our Wednesday 1-2-3 readers sharing this super relatable challenge: “setting goals I can stay with over time.” Woof – me too! In my day job, I train teachers in a style of education known as project-based learning. And one of the things I talk most with teachers about is how we can emphasize “process over product” in our classrooms. (You can probably guess: I have a lot of critical things to say about standardized testing.) In other words,...