Happy Sacred Sunday!
Do you have “a spot” in your home? A corner you use to do something specific like knitting, puzzling, or reading? A space that triggers peace, coziness, or joy signals in your brain?
I used to sit on a black rubber mat, under our squatting rack, in the corner of my garage to journal and meditate. It was random and not fancy at all, but it served me well until we remodeled our home in 2023. That’s when the floral chair and an acrylic end table near a lamp became my morning journaling and meditating spot. I have written many of these Sunday love letters to you from this spot in the last 3 years.
Well, I lost my spot for several weeks while we replaced the floors in my home, and boy did that make a difference in my mornings. There’s something really powerful about having a designated place where your brain is already primed for the activity it’s going to perform.
That’s why it was so exciting to have my home back in order and have my precious chair waiting for me this morning. I sat down with my journals. (I have more than one.) I opened my 5 year journal where I’m committed to writing one entry per day and I realized there were 15 blank pages between my last entry and today’s. It’s normal for me to have one or two blank pages in the middle of a week, but fifteen blank pages was significant for me.
It got me thinking about how easy it is to drift away from a habit when life interrupts your routines, or when you haven’t repeated a routine enough to build a habit. And how tempting it is to discard the practice altogether when you feel like you’re too inconsistent to maintain it. Sometimes we would rather not do something at all over doing it imperfectly.
But here’s the thing. There are some practices that are so important, it’s better that they be inconsistent over nonexistent. Reflection is one of those practices. Specifically success filing.
So this morning I opened my calendar and my camera roll and started slowing September down. I’m actually still in the middle of it. I stopped to write this email to you. But I did notice how in those fifteen days I’ve been a friend, a mom, a wife, a business owner, and a homemaker. Fifteen blank pages didn’t mean I was failing. It meant I had been living without recording it. And recording it is what turns a run on sentence into chapters.
This week on the podcast I’m explaining all things success filing, a practice I learned from Susan Ford Collins. I shared how my best friend Frances success filed for me this week. Opening my journal this morning helped me notice why I hadn’t been success filing for myself. I had drifted from my morning journaling practice.
If you have your own blank pages, go get them back. Open your calendar, open your camera roll, and slow September down before October gets here. And if you don’t have a spot where you do this, look around your house and notice what little space calls your soul. I’m going to finish mine as soon as I hit send.
[Listen to this week’s episode]
Sending you love today and always,
P.S. My chair was waiting for me this morning. That’s what a designated place does. It holds your seat until you come back. Wednesdays at The Well are that for the women inside it.