a consistent witness
howdy,
This letter was originally published to the witness list on Dec 20, 2022, 4:17 PM , as the Sun moved into Capricorn. Here, I commiserate with how freaking hard it is to create stable routines and, despite that, offer some reflections and permissions slips towards the cultivation of consistency.
☊ ☋
I know I’m not the only one currently grappling with the struggle and benefit of ROUTINE.
Today I'm going to talk about the magic of having regular practices to ground into.
I hope my words can be helpful and inspiring without shaming anyone for not feeling a sense of grounding or regularity right now.
(I feel like I don’t have to explain how or why it’s SO hard to focus these days, right? *cough* endless social media feeds and information streams widely circulating doom narratives, social isolation, mental illness, capitalist corruption stripping people of their basic rights/needs and mishandling resources, etc. *cough*)
I get really avoidant of tasks that ask me to be disingenuous. Which is to say—if my routine doesn’t have space for my existential spirals, my waxing & waning hormonal cycles, or my spontaneous curiosity . . . well then, it’s either not going to work, or I’m going to have to shrink myself to fit it, and then feel really resentful.
The biggest thing that has helped me get closer to living the life I want to live has been training myself to practice consistency over perfectionism.
I am proud of the fact that this is my 40th newsletter. I’ve sent one to the witness list every single month for the last 3.33 years!!! The only way that’s been possible has been how flexible I’ve let this container be. Some months I send you a paragraph and sometimes I write a novel. Sometimes I share personal stuff, some months I don’t.
I could send y’all a SINGLE image without ANY words in one month and it would still fulfill my desire to be connecting with my community and practice being witnessed.
I am here for celebrating by doing the bare minimum because it means we showed up. It means we are putting energy into what matters to us.
The key is to prioritize routines that are flexible enough to meet you in any state of being. We can do this by keeping a broad value-based container in a place that can encompass multiple activities to be tweaked or adjusted based on your fluctuating needs. (And then we have to be honest with ourselves about what is or isn’t working so we can adjust our variables as needed.*)
What does this look like?
EX 1: Let’s say you value your art practice, but you have been feeling down about not creating much lately. You want to create a routine to produce work more regularly.
CONTAINER: You will make space to create something every weekend.
FLEXIBILITY: This can be any medium, anywhere, with anyone, any weekend day.
CONSISTENCY: The commitment is making art every weekend. No matter what.
VARIABLE: If you’re traveling - maybe it’s a doodle on a napkin, if you’re baby-sitting maybe it’s a play-dough creature, if you actually have lots of spaciousness - maybe it’s the massive acrylic painting you’ve been envisioning all month that you’ve created enough momentum towards finally.
EX 2: Let’s say you value self-reflection, but you have been avoiding honestly being with yourself. You want to create a routine to talk to yourself more regularly.
CONTAINER: You will make space to talk to yourself without distraction every day.
FLEXIBILITY: This can look like journaling, recording an audio note, laying down and listening to music and letting your mind wander, ANYTHING that connects you to yourself.
CONSISTENCY: The commitment is every single day. Maybe you want to deepen the commitment to be more specific, like before noon every day. Whatever feels do-able and helpful for you.
VARIABLE: The activities shift, but the time commitment doesn’t.
*PIVOT: Let’s say you try this on and start to realize that you get distracted when you try the listening to music or audio note approach because you start doing other activities on your phone. You start to realize that what really works for you to do self-reflection is journaling. So you shift to make *that* a consistent part of the container while still keeping flexibility to shift around if you do that for 1 minute or 30 minutes, the key commitment being that you put pen to paper at least once a day.
I wrote about this process of committing to meeting yourself where you are ACTUALLY while still moving towards your ambitions in a previous letter, a practicing witness (ii). Also, in a playful witness, I introduced the stop-light self-care method which is a way to visually organize routines geared towards neurodivergent people that might be useful for anyone feeling excitement/curiosity reading this right now and wanting support implementing it!
We can have big hopes and dreams, and even set tangible goals around them, but if we don’t know how to break those visions down into their smaller components and implement them, they are a lot harder to move towards.
Consistency is what builds self-trust, not perfection.
Consistency is what transforms us. Whether we are consciously choosing these activities or not, what we return to again & again shapes us and becomes us.
What overarching containers can you create that ACTUALLY meet you where you are at rather than taunting and shaming you about the space between here/now and where you want to be?
We are at the turning point of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are at Winter Solstice, where from here on out the days get lighter and longer. And in the Southern Hemisphere, It’s the Summer Solstice, where the days begin to shrink again.
Despite the many factors pulling us away from presence with ourselves, I believe wholeheartedly in the power of every single one of you reading this right now to find realistic strategies that work to come back (again & again) into connection.
As your days begin to expand or contract at this time, what do you want or need to shift in your schedule? Your commitments? Your resources?
What do you want to commit to returning to?
here with you,
with flux & in consistency, G