Storyline Journal: Finding your "Why?"

     I'll admit it, I was lost.  In 2013, within a few months, my youngest son went off to college and I lost my office to a remodeling project.  All the labels I applied to myself- mother, teacher, healer- didn't apply in the same way.  It was so disorienting.

     Finding my "why?" was simple

when my boys were young.  Creating a family and raising future productive adults was easy to measure and very rewarding.  Now that they are those productive adults it became harder to see the worth of my days.  I could see it in the reflection of the boys lives, (as they were moving into new apartments and new jobs, they kept saying how they wished they had a wife to do the things that I do), but really, creating self worth from watering the plants and scooping the cat box was beyond me.

     Then along came the Storyline Planner.  It is a system of looking at your daily life that reveals the bigger picture.  In his book,
Art Before Breakfast: A Zillion Ways to be More Creative No Matter How Busy You Are, Danny Gregory put it perfectly:

"We all live in chaos. It’s the natural state of things. Physicists call it entropy—everything is always changing and unraveling and ultimately turning into cosmic mush. That’s why your desk gets cluttered and your calendar gets filled. It’s physics.
Creativity is the act of shaping the mush of the world around us into something—of creating your own order. I’m not talking about going crazy and compulsive with a label maker and color-coded files. I’m talking about having a vision of what you want things to be like and moving toward it."

    The Storyline planner shapes the mush of your life by letting you step outside and look at it as an observer.  In yoga we call it vairagya, non-attachment.  I can hear you saying, but how?  We'll take a quick look at the left hand page of the planner...

      You'll see there is room for three projects and a to- do list.  Now these projects are the big ones in your life, the ones that take six months to a year.  By filling this in for the past four months I discovered that many of the things I considered "my" projects were beyond my control.  Remember that office I mentioned in the beginning?  Clearly this is not withing my control.  Air hammers are so not my thing.

         My other big project is doing a handstand in the middle of the room.  Headstands have always been easy for me, but handstanding seems to be the project of a lifetime.   As I wrote this down each day it became clear that I wasn't really going for the handstand so much as I was looking for a feeling... the feeling of vigor, purity, focus, strength.  Who wouldn't want that?

     Here is my video with a bit more information about how to create your own order out of the cosmic mush using the storyline planner...

   

Habit RPG Review: Free Willpower in an App

     When everyone you greet says "long time no see"  you know that you have not been keeping up with things.  That is how I feel about my blog and YouTube channel.  I have not been keeping up with my friends.
      The long drought is ending because I found it!  The never ending source of free willpower, Habit RPG.  You may wonder, what is a 48 year old reiki master and yoga teacher doing with a role playing game (RPG)? Finding the fountain of youth, of course. Instant motivation and willpower galore.

drill instructor or Habit rpg, you decide

        I have had so many life changes over the past year and a half, I was wondering if I needed to hire my own private drill instructor to whip my life into shape.  While I was doing lots of good things or necessary things, it never really added up into something that I could see, taste, touch or measure.  In the quest to find new purpose, I stumbled upon lifehacker Patrick Allen's How We Work post    I love these posts. They are a great way to expose myself to the many different ways that people get work done.
           When Patrick said "I really dig HabitRPG for tracking how awesome (or lame) I am"   I knew I had to give it a try.

         I started with a few habits, a few dailies, a few to-dos.  You know, the things you should do, but don't.  Floss, clean the cat box, exercise, meditate.  Then it expanded.  Monday, water the plants. Tuesday, vacuum high traffic areas in the house.  Wednesday, polish shoes.  It goes on...
 

     I think I have become addicted to fake gold.   I may need an intervention.  It lets me buy healing diadems and armor for my 8 bit avatar.  When I'm good for a while, the game drops eggs and hatching potions so I can collect all 90 pets.
      Now I have challenged myself to a video and blog post a week, taking orders and sewing zafus (meditation cushions), cleaning the house top to bottom.  It is great!

      Though I posted on willpower back in 2012, I never realized how much the boring mundane life tasks used up my energy.  With more willpower in my back pocket, life is really looking up.  I think you should give it a try.  If you have any questions or want to share your success, please leave a comment below.  Not only do comments make my whole day, but if you put it as a task in Habit RPG, you can get gold for it!