Here’s another stillness method, this one from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. Simply sit and smile for a few minutes a day. That’s it. I tried it today, and want to report that it is a gem for building joy, as well as a great stillness exercise. Give it a try!
I examined my desire about wanting to get all of the wisdom of my books into me, without spending the time to read them. This idea didn’t inspire or excite me. In fact, it exhausted me. It was based on a (false) story that I don’t know enough, so I need to read more, train more, take more classes, etc. It feels good to scratch this one off my desire list.
Next, I explored my yearning to spend more time on artistic, creative endeavors. When I imagine sitting with a brush in my hand, totally absorbed in the colors of paint going onto paper, I feel excited, joyful, alive. I’m onto something with this one!
In fact, the more I imagine myself painting, with a brush full of vibrant, jewel-toned colors, the more certain I am that I want this in my life, and that it is going to happen for me. I’ll open to possibilities, messages, and straightforward as well as unusual methods of having more artistic expression into my life. This feels good, and I am smiling as I write this.
So give it a try. Sit (or walk) and smile for a while. Notice how the simple act of smiling makes you feel. Do you feel a shift inside? Now find something from your list of desires that makes you smile even more. What is it?
0 responses so far ↓
1 Dawn // Oct 20, 2008 at 9:46 am
hi Terry.
I paint. I do many things in my life but I now know that there’s a part of me that lives to paint. Why? I have come to realize that I calmly, quietly disappear into the process of painting. I use vivid, rich layer upon layer of watercolor. Because I am self taught I just use them…not too many rules in my studio, mostly boisterous confusion. I touch the loaded brush to paper and SHAZAM! the lost is found…I watch with pure joy and amazement as the colors run into each other, circle round each other, flow over each other absolutely perfect in their known pathway. I love the physics of watercolor…it is completely free , magic, random and yet completely known. It took me a long time to give myself permission to return to painting…I must work, I must earn my keep, I must make money, I must be there for all…BULL! I paint, I live, I learn, I am. The intriguing thing is the way in which my art has come more easily to me, seeming to rise up into my field of view from a blank page since I’ve started listening to MP3 downloads from MBI training while I’m painting. I have no idea why it works for me but I am happy as a clam in my small, cozy studio, listening to your words or that of other coaches while allowing my art to tell me my story. I’m smiling as I write this too…my fingers can not keep up with my mellow yellow good vibes.
Dawn
P.S. I just found your Feast on your Life posting. Incredible. Beauty in words. Thank you for posting it to this site.
2 Terry DeMeo // Oct 20, 2008 at 10:03 am
Wow, Dawn. This is a perfect description of what the Tao te Ching calls wu wei, doing without doing. Your actions and your attention merge. Thanks for this great description of joy in action!
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