heyo b
eauties!
This is a shout out from the road, or, more accurately, The Emerald Coast. It really is emerald. And manatees really are as fun to swim with as I thought they might be. Wow.
The Travel by Yes mission, now in it’s 11th month, is bringing us deeper than ever into some new fascinating insights about how Flow State & playfulness want to samba with each other and make life easier and way way way more fun and flowy. It’s thrilling. We’re joy guinnea pigs most days.
Which means this guinnea pig has had to learn how to do a lot more Buoying. those little, on purpose play moments that keep the momentum of joy rolling and easy to access. Sometimes I slip into them on accident. They help me not get mired or slip under the Blanket of Seriousness and Forgetting.
And that’s where a dare comes in …
Recently, one of my teammates issued a dare to the world, to try your hand at a 100 Gratitude list, where you get yourself into a kind of appreciative frenzy. It takes some finagling to really pull this off, and in order to do it right, you have to keep tuning in.
At the point with others jump off the ship, you steer harder into the turn, find a deeper joy, a stronger whiff of glee. When she gave the dare, I shied away from it. I have done these. Old hat. It’s for others.
The next day, I found myself alone at a park, in a state I’ve never been, tired and a bit sick. Everyone was playing and I was half-heartedly twiddling with a piece of sidewalk chalk, bored, tuned out. And then I remembered the dare.
And I remembered the bigger bit about JOY and how freaking important it is. And so, I began.
It was so much harder than I thought. Writing that much with sidewalk chalk over rough terrain is surprisingly arduous. After I began, I leaned into it, which means, I actively marshalled my focus into the task at hand, what is good in my life? What makes my heart glad? How can I steer into the fun of this dare? Where is the center of my joy?
About halfway through, some of the team appeared, and jumped in. By that time, I was deep in flow state, locked into the rhythm of the gladness, and the writing, locked into the happy task, the bigness of it, the glory of it, how impossible and fantastic it was.
When the team, and my PRECIOUS AMAZING CHILDREN started helping me, so that we were sharing this amazing goal, and
playing deeply together in what we love,
I nearly cried, no, I totally did, but then the joy went deeper, and I felt myself shifting into that poetic, ethereal shared flow state where we were all moving and laughing and appreciating in harmony, like a murmuration of absolute joy.
I just wanted to share this with you, the sweetness of it, and the usefulness of it. I hope your heart is blooming, dear friend, and that you find yourself stumbling into more and more moments of genuine play and ease and fun every day.
All my love,
Natalie