Today is the first day of my 30 day challenge without reading self-help or productivity type books or emails. I woke up this morning actually feeling a bit stressed. Like, what am I going to do today if I can't do any of that? It means that 90% of my emails will remain unread for the next month which is weird and it means that pretty much all the books I as currently reading, will have to wait until the end of October as well.
My brother questioned why I would do this challenge, and to be honest I'm not quite sure. I have a vague sense that it might be good for me, or it might at least help me figure out what content is helpful versus what might be just giving me a nagging sense that I'm not ever going to measure up. I am pretty selective in the content I choose to read so I find most of it very beneficial and I have definitely learned stuff in the last 30 days that will benefit me for the rest of my life so why stop. I made it through the first day but am definitely feeling less productive than usual as by now I would have consumed at least a couple hours of content to "better" myself.
Earlier this week, in the Christian Business community I joined the devotional leader challenged us to read the Bible more than any other book. I definitely DON'T do that at the moment. Although I do read my Bible, I don't consume it with the same enthusiasm as I do other books which I guess is indirectly saying that I don't think it will benefit me as much as reading about how to figure stuff out from another human's perspective. This is a bit silly when I think about it as I really do believe in God and trust that He does care and is able to lead and guide my life, so why don't I spend more time reading what He's got to say to the world. Perhaps the other voices I'm choosing to listen to are drowning out the most important one and by taking a break from the other voices, God will be able to get through to my brain with what He wants me to do rather than me taking a jumble of ideas from other people and trying to mash them all up together in some way and then swallow it all and try to make it come back out as me. Maybe I need to just hang out with God for these 30 days and slow my brain way down.
It's counter-intuitive to the way I think about the world and to what is important to me. Learning is super important to me. I actually think I started reading so prolifically because I have had jobs for the last 15 years that haven't required me to learn anything particularly new so, to fill that need to keep learning, I just read loads of books. I'm not so sure this is a bad thing and I may go back to it after the 30 days, but I don’t' suppose it will kill me to slow down for the next four weeks and just watch and see how my brain responds to that and what my emotions do as well.
Ironically I started a book yesterday on audible that I was really enjoying. It's called, Get Your Life Back by John Eldredge and he talks about slowing yourself way down and making time for beauty, nature and moments of silence. I'll finish it after the 30 days but it does seem there are a lot of signs pointing to the fact that this might be a good idea. My husband, Phil, also agrees and has hinted at this idea before--that it might be good for me to stop reading and just do something. I argue that it's the reading that helps me figure out what to do, but perhaps I would have got here faster if I had just prayed and meditated a bit more. Maybe it wouldn't have taken me 70 days to figure out what I wanted to do. Hard to know really but the fact that I'm feeling so lost and slightly panicky without the books is showing me something. I'm not entirely sure what yet but it will be interesting to see whether I have any grand and amazing breakthroughs over the next month.
My quote for today is wisdom from Amity, my 10 year old, "if you never try, you'll never know what might have happened."
My photo for today is me as an animated lost looking person, which is how I feel without my book friends.
Commentaires