Practice: Gathering A Day

The second practice – Gathering A Day, is an exercise in supporting action.

Somewhere at or near the start of your day, selsect something, or some general attribute — we’ll call it One Big Thing — that you know will help you through your day. For example, mine, today, is simply the word ‘Yes’. Write this either physically or on a sticky note in your heart — and be sure to put it somewhere you will run into it.

If you’re using the .pdf – this attribute goes in the centre of the large circe-winthin-a-circle.

After you’ve done that, take a little looksie at your day. You may have a thousand-million things in it, but I want you to distil or reduce thouse thousand-million things into just three areas. For example, my three areas for today are: “Gathering Space” (because I plan to launch my website and podcast today), “Apartment” (because I plan to grout the tile I just laid in the bathroom), and “Parenting” (because I get to pick my kids up at the end of the day and immerse myself in their exhuberence and rhythms).

As the day goes on, pause for awareness…

and ask yourself: What am I feeling? How is my lifeforce? What of this is vital? How is this connected to my three areas? How is this in relation to my One Big Thing?

After becoming aware, take a moment to evaluate…

Is anything in need of calibration so I can feel more aligned? Do I have any needs (food, water, rest, activity) that I can take a moment to meet right now? Does something in either my actions, my thoughts, my stories, my selected areas need to shift? Is my One Big Thing bringing me ease or harm?

For example…

My One Big Thing today is meant to ease my intended actions and reduce the hold resistence has upon me. But if, as I am evaluating at some moment in the dat I observe a lot of resistence — then I notice I am trying to use my One Big Thing to boss myself around, rather than to support my activities for the day.

Likewise with the activities. If, rather than “apartment” I keep turning toward “astrology” — not just listening to astro podcasts as I grout the tile, but focusing on other people’s charts — basically, stopping “apartment” to “astrology”, then maybe I need to accept that apartment is not happening today and astrology is.

To offer guidance here, I recommend the wisdom of Opposite Action.

Opposite Action comes to me from years as a pathologized subject in therapeutic settings. I am not a licensed psychologist, nor am I formally studied in this modality, just experienced as a practitioner — as in: this is how it works for me, in my understanding. As in: if you consider yourself an expert, or have a different perspective, please offer it in the comments section for this episode (“Ready or not…”). As in: if you are considering this practice, know your edges and limits and do what is right for you. This practice is not medical advice.

Anyway, back to the example where I set “apartment” as one of my three areas but found myself pulled to “astrology” instead. I can look a little at the how I am in the world and apply Opposite Action to see if it adds to my sense of vitality and wellbeing or draws away from those things.

If I am a bit of a magpie… 

Shiny objects can catch my attention and draw me towards them — I have lots of practice saying yes to this, and this, and this, and that, such that at the end of my day it feels like nothing I intended was accomplished. So, Opposite Action in this case would be to keep bringing myself back to the needs of my apartment rather than forth toward my compelling curiosity in astrology.

If I am a bit of a mountain goat…

I can be really head-down, to work on a task, placing one foot in front of the other, to the exclusion of all else — often to my exhaustion. In this case, Opposite Action might suggest I break out of this rhythm of attending my apartment in favour of entertaining a renewal of my engagement with astrology.

Like all practices, Gathering A Day takes some experimentation.

The thing you think for sure will work, may not; and a way of working it that seems boring and irritating may surprise you. Who knows. Either way, I would love to hear about your experience on the Gathering Space Podcast Instagram or Facebook accounts.