Welcome to SHAKE IT UP.
Are you ready to transform your day?
Let’s get started.
Day 1 – Draw yourself
- Step 1: Get a notecard and a sharpie
- Step 2: Set the timer for two minutes
- Step 3: Draw a self portrait
Don’t worry if you’ve never drawn anything. This isn’t about how it looks. This is about connecting your hand to your brain to your subconscious. This is about putting your dream mind onto the page so you can see what’s going on under the surface. Draw and see what comes out.
Then look at what you drew and, if you want, freewrite what you see there.
This exercise is insired by the wonderful work of Lynda Barry. Learn more here: The Incredible Legacy of Lynda Barry and Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor
I write more about drawing and using it for magical creative purposes here:
Boundaries, Vulnerability and Magic
When your flaws are your superpowers
Day 2 – Make your shower a holy temple
Whenever you’re going to take a shower or a bath, add two minutes to clear a space in your bathroom, set out beautiful objects, light some candles, draw a tarot card. Look at that! You’ve got an altar. If you want, you can invoke a deity – maybe you are reaching out to Venus (an excellent deity to help you learn to love yourself) or Jupiter (who helps us grow and expand and summon confidence) – or calling in the spirit of an ancestor. Or maybe you want to honor a fictional hero or a mythical figure that calls you to greatness.
Set up your bathroom altar. Light the candles, ask your question, draw your cards. Then turn on the shower and get in.
That’s the two minute shower ritual! If you want, read about the first time I developed this exercise here.
Day 3 – Charm your trolls
Trolls = recurring critical thoughts
Troll charming spell:
- Acknowledge the troll
- Ask yourself if you agree with those trolls (aka those thoughts)
- While you’re asking if you agree, ask other questions.
- Find opposite statements that are also true.
More things I’ve written about trolls:
Urgency trolls and creative transformation
When you encounter a troll in the shower
Day 4 – Imagination Walk
Ask yourself a question. Then go on a walk and look for five things over the course of your walk that answer your question. Five objects or animals or people or situations that catch your eye, that strike you as an answer. You don’t have to know how they answer your question. You can just let things catch your attention and trust that the answer is there somewhere. And as you walk, you can consider how they are an answer. In what ways do these things answer my question? How are they connected?
I wrote two and a half years ago about going on an imagination walk with my kid right before his brother was born, if you want to read about it in action. The beautiful thing about doing this exercise with kids is that they get it right away, and approach it with great seriousness as a fun game. If you’ve got kids, bring them along. If not, ask your inner child to come on the walk with you.
Day 5 – Dance to the random song in your head
Have you ever had a song pop into your head randomly and you have no idea why?
We might laugh or think of it as a fluke, or we might get annoyed when we can’t get it out of our head. What if it’s not a fluke, what if it’s not random? What if it’s a message from your subconscious? What if it’s a message from the universe?
The great thing about this exercise is even if you think this is a TOTALLY RIDICULOUS idea, which I kind of do, you can still try it. It still works!
I’m not saying every song that pops into your brain is a message from the universe. I’m saying, WHAT IF it were a message from the universe? What would it be telling you?
Here is the exercise: whatever the song that has popped into your head is, turn your active attention to it. Remember the title, look it up, and sing or dance along to it. This is key: because when you actively ENGAGE with the song, you hear what it is telling you in a different way than when you’re half aware of it in your head.
If you don’t have a song in your brain, clear your head, ask for a song to aear and open up to a message from the universe,
Warning: the song that appears will probably be very cheesy and obvious. Either that or it will be obscure and make no sense at all. That is okay. This is how your subconscious works.
The song I sing and dance to in the video is Blue Skies.
If you want to see me demonstrate this elsewhere, go here and here.
Thank you for spending this time with me. These are some of my favorite exercises and I’ve been so glad to share them with you. I hope they have opened up doors for you, that its nothing but blue skies from now on.
Faith Helma: Creative Guide 