Satisfaction

Today I woke up around 5am, did a short meditation and started writing.

Well, I didn’t start writing immediately. Instead I surfed the internet for a while before I caught myself and got back on track.

I had three blog posts to write which I had been putting off for ages. I was crippled with anxiety and a desire to do it perfectly – the wrong ingredients on a menu for getting your writing done.

Finally, I forced myself to write, reminded by the wise words included in the brilliant chapter in Bird by Bird – Instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott, where she writes about the importance of writing those shitty first drafts.

Reminded and inspired at the same time I kept my fingers moving across the keyboard. Slowly my writing began to carve out a momentum of its own. Soon I was weaving threads of ideas together. One post generated the idea for another and before I realised it, I had the three drafts I needed. Not perfect, but working drafts that could be improved and revised.

My writing didn’t stop there. I only had one coaching client booked in for the day so the rest of the day was mine to use as I wished. With plenty of other projects and programmes to plan I simply kept on writing throughout my day.

When I next looked up it was 2pm. I had not raised my head for breakfast, for tea or for any food that I would normally be on the hunt for.

The reason being that writing had curbed me of my physical hunger. The act of writing and immersing myself in it had fed my creative appetite, which in turn dulled my physical desire to eat. I was full.

I had found what Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly called the flow. I had lost myself in a morning of words and creating. I had become so absorbed I had no idea where the time had disappeared to and had little desire to eat.

Above you’ll find an image of the juicy mango I eventually treated myself to once I managed to tear myself away from my laptop and head down to the kitchen for a late lunch. It was delicious and the icing on the cake for what turned out to be a perfect day.

When you do what you enjoy you increase the likelihood of losing track of time and becoming absorbed – a word that is becoming obsolete in our world of fast living.