Treats! The non-food kind

I’ve not been posting very frequently because I kind of got into the pattern of writing about pretty intense stuff on my blog and I need to realize that --it’s just a blog and it can be about day to day non-earth shattering realizations once in a while.

So here we are, it’s Friday, August 28th and it’s raining here in NY.
Kind of a drag that’s it’s raining but in a way I’m relieved. Since I don’t have a lap top I’m often confined to my home office in front of my mac staring out the window wondering when I can be done with it so that I can just get out and feel the sun and the air and smell the flowers. So on nice days, I feel a lot of pressure to get finished with my work so that I can get outside. I was supposed to go for training to build my new website today and the class was cancelled which left me with a big block of unscheduled time and I couldn’t be happier.

In my Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body workshops one of the exercises we do is to make a treat list--things that just thinking about doing them makes you smile. The purpose of this is to identify and/or get back in touch with the things that we used to do for fun and the things we’d like to do to relax if we only had the time. We’re all so busy running around all day that we forget to do nice things for ourselves. It’s such a great way to decompress and just bring some joy into your life--especially when you’re under a lot of stress. The function of this exercise is to achieve some balance. Because if you’re doing one nice thing to take care of yourself each day, you’re a lot less likely to come home from work and plow through a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or drink 5 glasses of wine at dinner and pass out on the couch at 9:00. When we give ourselves the things we really want, we don’t have to “settle for what we can get.” Doing one treat per day for yourself keeps you from getting seriously depleted.


The one item that shows up on my treat list over and over is having a day that is completely unscheduled without a to-do list. It turns out that because of the turn of events, today ended up being one of those days for me--what a gift! I do only what I feel inspired to do and I do it when I want to do it. Can I say that when I take these days I am often way more productive than I am on my “get down to work” days. just the idea that I have 8 or 10 hours to do things in the order that I want to do them and that if I don’t want to continue with something I can just put it away and start on something else is extremely energizing to me. I don’t have to be anywhere and if I get a spontaneous call from a friend to meet for coffee or take a walk I can say yes because I’m deadline free that day. This is the ultimately luxury for me. I have a deep need to create my life minute to minute and something about being on a non-schedule puts me in touch with my deepest creativity and my most powerful thinking.

So dear readers, what’s on your treat list? Here’s a little soul-feeding exercise from Feed Your Soul workshop: Make a list of 10 things that just thinking about doing them makes you smile--they don’t have to be extravagant or cost any money at all. And then do one every day! Keep in mind some of the things on the list can be repeated and some won’t be things you can do very often but it’s good to have a mix. Some of mine are:
taking a jasmine scented bubble bath
instead of the usual lunch break - fire up my favorite play list on my ipod and take a 30 minute walk to a favorite place
Go out for cappuccino and get lost in the latest issue of O Magazine for an hour
call a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time
Go to a Saturday matinee
Take a drive with my friend Julie in her convertible to no where in particular with the radio blasting.
Go to a fancy hotel bar and have a fancy cocktail after work

I’d love to hear yours!