As a working mom, blogger, etsy shop owner, wife, home owner – I’ve become really aware of how mindfulness plays into my day. My ability to focus, being intentional, doing this without rushing and not multi-tasking. I know mindfulness is important to me because it’s helped me have a greater enthusiasm for life and higher self esteem. Read on to learn some activities I’ve started incorporating mindfulness to help me observe my thoughts & practice the art of leisure.
Mindful art / art therapy
I’m still guilty of multi tasking. But I’ve found when I’m making art (painting, mixed media, photography) I don’t actually multi task! Making art is a great way to express myself beyond words. It encourages us to be present in the moment & experiences, through noticing the sensations we are experiencing as well as how our art (the way the paint moves or how the picture I just captured looks on my digital display) responds to our input.
Listening to solfeggio music:
Ever step into a spa and feel immediately relaxed? Spas help you relax because of their environment. And part of that environment is the music! I recently found solfeggio music and how the different tones can help you promote benefits to different parts of the mind and body. The use of tones and frequencies music dates back to ancient Sanskrit chants (read: Om) but the modern science is fascinating. Apparently DNA become more healthy (ie show increased UV absorption) when they were exposed to different tones (such as the Sanskrit chants). Further research confirmed that the certain frequencies of the Earth’s ionosphere matched that of the human brain wave patterns! (Notably the frequency that encourages cell regeneration & healing) Most musical instruments were tuned to match the earth’s vibrational frequency so by default listening to solfeggio music (specifically designed to recreate the earth’s & human brainwaves) can help you feel at ease and change the your DNA!
Deleting social apps
Mindless scrolling is the most obvious of activities to remove from your day. I delete social media apps which immediately stops the scrolling for no reason. This then improved productivity because I am more focused!
Anytime gratitude & visualization as often as I can
Being able to take control of your self talk/the voices in your head is an important way to be mindful. Not letting negative self talk run a muck in your mind can be prevent by training yourself to see the good (have gratitude) and be positive (visualize something that would be help you think the opposite of the negative self talk).
So ….what is a running streak anyway? Essentially it’s a certain amount of time where a runner commits to running with no days off. Running more than anything is a mind game. It’s not about how fast or how far you can run…it’s always about taking the first stride, then the next and the next. It it’s about constantly reminding yourself about you why and finding the discipline to keep going.
Before I get into some of what I learned, I wanted to share a little about my steak.
I ran everyday, no days off
I ran a minimum of 2km, most days 3.33km and at least 1 5km run
I ran outside and on my treadmill
I live by my Nike Run Club app – I love that I can track everything there, I love that it captures my run details, cheers and guides me through different runs ++ I can see all the cool accomplishments I make happen!
Okay so here are the top 5 things I learned:
New habits should be approachable on a daily basis This means, your daily “to-do” run should be something you can do without thinking. Granted running requires different kinds of training (long runs, sprints/farlek, hills, cross training & recovery) but for a running streak you need be ready to go without having to think too much about it.
Learn to list to your body I am intuitive by nature, but my body gave me stronger messages when I ran consistently. I think thats a very important skill (tool?) to develop. It also made me become more aware of functional fitness and exercises that weren’t heavy but helped to developed the way my body moved.
Do the hard thing first When I got my run done in the morning, the rest of the day seemed to go much smoother and my mind was able to focus. The same happens when you have a personal morning routine (wake up early, meditate, journal, sunlight etc). Getting up (late) to only check email and hustle just doesn’t make sense.
You always do things twice, once in your head and then in real life Same goes for running. You literally see yourself doing it in your minds eye before you actually do it. For me it was seeing the trails or sideways I knew I’d run before getting out there.
Somethings can be multi tasked (but not everything) For me it was running an errand. LITERALLY! Being able to run to the store to pick up something and then running back home with that something was such a delight!
I’ve known from a very young age that I wanted to prioritize leisure over everything. I just didn’t know what to call it. And it’s not that I lacked ambition, but rather the opposite. I’ve always wanted to maintain intentional balance in my life: from family to pursing heights in education, to career and fitness. The art of leisure gives you the opportunity to excel in everything without feel like you are missing something.
So what exact is the art of leisure? Well I guess we have to start with what is leisure. Leisure should be considered the main activity (and not a sedentary one). Leisure is the functional engagement in pursuits that create a sense of contemplation, silence & introspection. Leisure is pursued for its own benefit instead of some higher goal. In our current society, work is prioritized over leisure and almost everything has been converted into a side hustle. But the art of leisure is about doing things that make you feel good without necessarily delivering value to anyone else or provide you with monetary gain.
The art of leisure is a definitely a practice and sometimes a good quote can get you in the right mindset to begin you practice. Be sure to save these to Pinterest or better yet print them and put them around your workspace as a reminder to let your idle time be leisure time for yourself!
I’ll just have to start with, I really did not like this book. #UnpopularOpinion
So much so, I was tempted to abandon it. But I continued on…well because #2023ReadingChallenge.
And I’ll also say, the only reason I decided to read this book was because the internet made me do it. My preferred reading genre is scifi but I thought it Verity was good, maybe this would be do. I was wrong!
The characters were unrelatable and seemed too extra. The story line was so unnecessary. And the 2 leading men were so odd (eyebrows and adonis?! – like why?). The backstory about their mom was cute but the rest of the story was kind of a waste.
I’d give it a 2 out of 5 ⭐️s. And the 2 stars are because the quotes were so good that I annotated like crazy!
Quotes about being a woman, having a career, fashion, running,lifting up other women and owning your joy. It’s the quotes that kept me reading this book.
“One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
Adding some of my favourite quotes from the book here. They inspired me and I’m sure they’ll inspire others.
Career
One never really forgets the first time a colleague drove her to extreme unprofessionalism
That’s manageable, It’s fixable. List-able
Hidden there, under my rigidity manufactured sense of control and my checklists and my steel exterior, there is always fear.
I really do f—— love a checklist
C’est la vie
The ones [books] that speak to me are the ones whose final pages admit that there is no going back. That every good thing must end. That every thing does end. That everything does.
What is the right course of action when the planet’s been punted off its axis?
Maybe this is why people take trips, for that feeling of your real life liquefying around, like nothing you do will tug on any other strand of your carefully built world.
It’s just that, when hilariously bad things happen, I leave my body. I watch them happen from outside myself and think …Really? This is what the universe has chosen to do?
Most things, are a solvable puzzle
The more you tell a person about yourself, the more power you hand over.\
Is there anything better than an iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day?
Fitspo
I put the thought away and lost myself in the delicious burn of my muscles, the thudding of my feet against the pine-needles-dusted earth. The only two ways I’ve ever managed to get out of my head are through reading and rigorous exercise. With either, I can slip out of my mind and drift in this bodiless dark.
Womanhood
I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never had.
There is still no happy ending for a woman who wants it all. the kind who lies awake aching with furious hunger, unspent ambition making her bones rattle in her body.
That’s the thing about being an adult…time collapses and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.
Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds away to surprise you.
My mind has become one of those FBI cork boards with zigzagging red string between every pushpin it can find, trying to make things add up, to make all of it fit into one uninterrupted pattern, proof that this can work, that I can have this, that its not too good to be true.
I can see the scene playing out like it’s happening to someone else. Like I’m reading it, and in the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking. This doesn’t happen.
It’s a strange reversal, seeing the things my baby sister has mastered that I never got around to. It makes me proud, but also sort of sad. Maybe this is how parents feel when their kids grow up, like some piece of them has become fundamentally unknowable.
I have an intense nighttime skincare routine. I don’t like to miss it and it doesn’t all fit into a handbag. My mom used to say you can’t stop the passage of time, but you can soften it’s blow
Not every decision a woman makes is some grand indictment on other women’s lives
She definitely notices that my heels keep puncturing the grass and spiking me into place
Mom’s theory was that youthful skin would make a woman more money, good underwear would make her more confident and good books would make her more happy.
New York
New York is a great place to have no money. There is so much free art and beauty, so much incredible, cheap food. But having money in New York – now that would be magical.|
Once in college, a group of my transplant friends had unanimously agreed that “they could never raise kids in the city”, and I was shocked. It isn’t just that I loved growing up in the city – it’s that every time I see kids sleepily shuffling along en masse at the Met, or setting their boom box down on the train to break dance for tips, or standing in awe in front of the world-class violinist playing beneath Rockefeller Center, I think – How amazing it is to be part of this, to get to share this place with all these people.
But you cant eat, drink or sleep on top of dreams. I landed the next best thing. Everyone has to give up on their dreams eventually
I once saw a bike courier get hit by a car, get up and scream I become God. He tested this limits of his own mortality and found they didn’t exist.
Stayed for the next eleven years (in Alphabet city), working my a– off. Sold some paintings, applied for shows constantly. Worked for three or four different artists and spent every night trying to network in galleries.
New York is like a bookstore, all these trillion of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city’s beating heart, saying I make no promises but I offer many doors.
New York is exhausting, yes there is millions of people all swimming upstream but you’re also in it together
I want to carve out a piece of the city and its magic, just of us. But carving turns your into a knife: cold, hard, sharp at least on the outside.
Would love to hear your book recommendations! Or check out my book reviews here!
I am writing this Saturday night because I wanted to get this out there on time!
And this was actually quite easy for me share because I always end up doing majority of the activities every Sunday. It feels great because it’s a natural progression to the end of my week (which I love)!
To me, the “Sunday resets” however they look (read: sped up tik tok video or otherwise!) are meant to bring the art of leisure back into our lives and set us up to build routines for our ideal lifestyle.
Hopefully these are some things you can add to your Sunday!
Sleep in a little longer!
Swap out your workout for a walk in nature, pilates or yoga
To do lists are the micro levels of my big dreams. Big dreams are astronomical, may take months or years to achieve them, require persistence and consistency. Consistency is where our daily to do lists come in.
I do want to preface this post by saying the following:
we shouldn’t be slaves to our to do lists
to do lists don’t own us
to do lists are meant to serve us
So if your daily to do list, post it or weekly planner spread is making you feel bad about yourself – throw it out, take a beat and start over again when you are ready!
We shouldn’t feel productivity debt (feeling like you always need to be doing something and rest is not deserved unless your to do list is completed) from not completing everything on our to do list & there is nothing you NEED to do to earn your existence.
But when you are ready to schedule the day you want to make it amazing – read on!
Side note: I’m writing this as I was feeling overwhelm trying to use notion. Notion is meant to be a tool to keep your life organized but there was too much scope creep in their product – for me at least. The idea that it might also need to look aesthetic, link to a Spotify playlist and my Pinterest mood board was a little too much. So I realized I need to step back and figured others might need to too.
So how do we make our to do lists work for us?
Figure out your big dreams, goals, priorities and projects. But also think about the habits you want to build and routines you want to have.
Pick a medium that works for you. Could be paper or digital, simple or complex. You’ll also want to choose a template: Is it just 1 sticky note for the day, or multiple colour coded ones, is it a weekly spread planner or an hour-by-hour list of tasks. This can obviously change but it’s a great idea to try something out.
Fill your list with your daily living + tasks that will help you got to your big goals. Example are meetings, but also your workouts (goal: to focus on fitness). It could be having lunch with someone and blocking 2 hours in the morning for writing (goal: to write a book).
Pick something to fail at. Not everything has to be checked off and not everything has to be done well. So knowing what can be moved to another day vs a non-negotiable will help you stay intentional and not feel like you aren’t moving forward.
Remember – it’s all about getting to outcomes (not getting things done). Your to do list should be on your side helping you build intentional habits and keep you 1 step closer to your goals!
