April Daily Practice Wrap Up: Do What You Want To Do

Ok, I’ll be honest here – I thought this practice would be a bit of fun, a doss, a laugh…and once again, as so often happens with these daily practices, it became quite a deep and profound learning experience. I was surprised at how difficult it is to just let myself do what I want to do! I thought I was quite good at doing what I wanted – I work for myself, I’ve no kids to take care of, I’m footloose and fancy-free…but still, I realised I have this internal ‘to-do list’ going on all the time. Yes, I might want to sit outside with the sun on my face, but first I’ll just do x, y and z (by which time the sun is gone – this is the UK in April!).

For some reason, I was reluctant to allow myself too much free rein – maybe I thought I would be naughty or irresponsible…but that wasn’t the case.

When I DID allow myself to do what I wanted to do, I was amazed at how much I got done! And how easy and flowing the days were. And how much fun I had. And how, because I kept checking in with myself, I stayed with the things I WANTED to do, and stopped doing things I didn’t want to do, so nothing started as fun and ended up stealing the whole day (as I wrote about in this blog post). Because I know I can easily waste a whole day reading or surfing the net or watching tv, on my “Do What I Want Days”, I put a time limit on every activity – and at that point, I checked in with myself again: Do I still want to be doing this, or do I want to be doing something else now?

Honestly, it was revelatory how much more I enjoyed the day when I was paying attention to what I wanted to do in any given moment. Some of the time, I wanted to be just staring out of the window, so I did.

The most profound thing of all though was that because I was paying attention to how I felt and what I wanted to do, I was aware of how junk food affected me. Normally, I’d just be watching tv or numbing out or distracting myself in some other way, but because I kept checking in with what I wanted to do next, I noticed that in the morning I was full of energy and life and ideas and enjoyment and fun…and after a very junky lunch, I was lethargic, tired, apathetic, inert and torpid. For hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stupid, I know junk food ain’t good, but I hadn’t realised quite how deep an effect it had on my energy levels and general motivation for life! It was an eye-opener.

So, did YOU manage to allow yourself to Do What You Wanted To Do? At least a little bit? For a day at the weekend? If you did, let me know how you got on with it. If you didn’t, what do you think stopped you, and can you book a day in the diary in May to just Do What You Want To Do? I highly recommend it – not just for fun, but to discover how much you trust yourself, how good it feels to go with your energy instead of against it, and to notice what effect your life choices have on you. Worth spending a day experimenting, eh?

Love

Donna.x