Day 211/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
Living our best life in our home. Could there be a better time to consider this than now as we see the second wave of COVID come through our lives and communities?
Who would have thought that you could consider your home a hobby?
When life is a challenge, and remains that way for long periods of time, I find that practicality suits me well enough. My home is the place for some respite. I can do what I have to do, sleep, eat, attend to my hygiene.
Sarah's suggestion today is to make my home my hobby. To fix, fiddle, rearrange and correct dreadful wrongs that get in the way of living my best life at home.
For about 6 years I lived in my home with little regard for my best life. It was survival mode on steroids after moving from another country, buying land, building a home and settling in.
Then I began to feel that there was something missing. All the prints, photos, sculptures, wall pieces and other ephemera that delight me and brighten up my space were still wrapped in newspaper in boxes in storage.
What fun to bring my home to life with choosing the right location for each of them, and also leaving large expanses of walls with nothing at all to interrupt them.
It would be an achievement to turn the chores of cleaning windows and decks into a hobby however I'm not quite there as yet.
I've become used to having my wardrobe open and all my clothes and accessories visible. It's tidy. Yet it would feel quite peaceful to have that space tucked secretly behind tall closed doors.
The rugs that cover the larger area of floor in the living room are lovely but don't quite suit this home as well as they did the last. An upgrade might be in order.
A garden seat and pot plant outside my clinic room to welcome visitors would be a wonderful addition to that space.
A couple of funky bean bags in my clinic room would bring more comfort.
Living our best life at home makes a lot of sense. We spend a lot of time there, especially right now where social distancing and isolating ourselves unless we need to leave home makes a lot of sense. Many of use are working from home as well.
It's where we retreat to at the end of each day. We're able to let down our guard, be less inhibited, more ourselves. Why not create a space that brings the best out of us?
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.