Recalibrate your Barometer to ‘Easy Breezy’

You are not your possessions.

You are not your car.

You’re not your house.

You’re not your job, your clothes, your tattoos, your family, the colour of your hair or any of the other signals you present to the world.

You are your joy.

You are your sorrow.

You are your ambitions.

You are your regrets, fears, loves and losses.

You are how you FEEL.

Dark and stormy or easy breezy, your feelings are the barometer of your soul; the part of you that’s buried under layers of carefully curated signifiers. The part of you that big data knows better than your best friend. Google’s bespoke algorithms are your personal black mirror reflecting back at you all the things you care about and secretly worry about.

How you FEEL is who you are.

Q: So how do you want to feel today?

A: I’d like to feel happy.

Of course you do! Why would you want to feel anything else?

But shall we just try a few different options and see if you like how they feel too?

• How does contented feel?
• How does grounded feel?
• Abundant?
• Grateful?
• Loved?
• Peaceful.
• Satisfied.
• Inspired.
• Enthusiastic.
• Optimistic…….

There’s a whole spectrum of other positive feelings you can explore when you think beyond the obvious bucket list of emotional dead ends.

Perhaps if we stopped searching for the special switch that turns us on and lights us up; if we stopped grinding and grasping, striving and struggling we could give ourselves a break and open up some quiet spaces in which to explore our full emotional potential.

In my own work I know something’s a good idea when it feels right, and it feels easy. Not super easy or easy peasy, not so easy a child could do it – but like second nature. Something that feels so natural it’s more like a calling.

In Greek mythology daemons are spirits that inhabit us, part God, part mortal. They guide us towards our destiny and when I hear my daemon whispering in my ear I know she’s got my back and is showing me the way forward.

I think with any design concept there’s an element of wrestling with an idea but it should feel more like play fighting than enduring sudden death after 12 rounds with John Cena.

When things don’t take shape without a fair bit of bashing or when you feel like you’re flogging a dead horse you may only see two options – keep bashing and pummeling in the hope that brute force will prevail, or throw in the towel.

But there is a third way; slow down, take it easy, sleep on it, listen out for the whispers of your daemon and let her show you the way.

It’s not always easy to stop. Taking it easy can be mistaken for lazy, and lazy is not an aspirational quality, after all – no pain no gain.

I was raised with a strong work ethic; frugality and productivity were the unquestionable guiding principles, doing nothing was never an option. I was taught to soldier on, to see things through to the bitter end and the easy option never felt like the right one.

Helen Keller pretty much summed up my early lessons in life:

“Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.” 

OK, thanks Helen, maybe I just won’t bother then…..

It’s taken me a lifetime to learn that it doesn’t have to be so painful – now I’ve passed the theory test I just need to put it into practice.

Nobody told me that boredom could be an incubator for the best ideas.

Daydreaming doesn’t feel like a passive activity to me, especially when I’m wrestling with multiple design concepts in my head and each one is exciting and filled with potential.  But it can look passive to anyone wondering why I haven’t blinked for 30 seconds, or why I appear to be staring right through them (and yes I do suffer with dry eye syndrome and wonder if this is a common problem within the daydreaming community – can I suggest a research paper on this please?)

Quiet and Still are not just an antidote to our busy stressful lives, they’re the gateways to new ideas and creative problem solving.

The answers don’t lie in the 10 different opinions and multiple options you’re shuffling around in your head. The answer can only reveal itself when you stop violently interrogating your daemon, give her some space and start listening to her quiet wisdom.

De-cluttering isn’t just about emptying our junk drawers and driving everything to landfill so it can become someone else’s problem. It’s about clearing our minds of the junk we carelessly hoard there.

But wait, isn’t technology with it’s cloud storage, servers and external hard drives designed to store information so we don’t have to?

Well, yes…in the same way that it was supposed to cut down on paper usage, and we know how that story goes.

It’s not that we need to remember more stuff, it’s just that we’re accumulating more and more junk ‘knowledge’. It’s the build up of fragments and traces left by images, memes, quotes, ads, ear worms, newscasts, voice messages,  notifications and other digital detritus in our brains and there’s no quick way to clear the cache to free up space.

But, there are things we can do to declutter our monkey minds so we can hear the whispers that are there to guide us.

I recently attended a wonderful forest bathing event run by Ashlyn Gibson: @ashlyn_stylist founder of @blessstories. Ashlyn is a trained forest bathing guide, (trained with the Forest Bathing Institute) and she’d invited 10 people to join her at Albion Nights – which is an absolute oasis of calm in South Norfolk.

Ashlyn Gibson. Photo credit: Jules Rogers

Albion Nights. Photo credit: Left: Sophie Harvey. Right: Kay Prestney

Ashlyn led a guided walk through the woods, stopping along the way for short, mindful sensory experiences, with time for some conscious breath-work and meditation.

 In Ashlyns words:

“Forest bathing is so much more than a walk in the woods, it’s a gentle, sensory invitation to pause and to come home to yourself.

The science is compelling! Spending time among trees lowers stress hormones like cortisol, calms the nervous system, and even gives your immune system a boost by increasing natural killer cells. It can ease anxiety, lift your mood, and help you feel more balanced.

But the real magic is how deeply moving and humbling it feels.  The symbols, the mood, and the feelings we find in nature provide endless metaphors for life — for letting go, standing strong, finding stillness, and beginning again.

Every session is a soft reminder that we’re part of nature too, connected, alive, and gently held.” Ashlyn Gibson

Whether you join an organised event, or you simply choose to slow down, be quiet and be more intentional in your favourite green spaces, the benefits of being in nature are proven and profound.

Just a few minutes of forest bathing could help clear some clutter and recalibrate your emotional barometer.

Tessellation Nation blankets  at Albion Nights. Image Credits: Sophie Harvey

If you love the idea of spending time in nature you might like to join Helen Doherty, founder of Albion Nights and Ashlyn Gibson, founder of Bless Stories for The Well Meadow weekend retreat designed to soothe your nervous system and restore your inner calm.