All You Need Is a Little Nothing

A few weeks ago, when I was feeling quite overwhelmed, I took a break and sat in my living room and looked out the big picture window with its view of the valleys and mountains. I had bee
DOing so much that I felt I was losing a bit of the soul and the why of that doing.

So I sat in my living room.

And did nothing.

Honestly, I had to force myself to do nothing. Not to have a book. Not to have a journal. Not even to put on music.

I needed to just be.

My goal was to do nothing. To produce nothing. To have nothing be the result of my BEing time.

What I found was that - out of that nothing - came lots of ideas, inspiration, and re-upped motivation. A new video idea for my latest promotion. A new product idea. A blog post. An article.

And still I sat and did nothing. (Which was SO hard, but I had to trust that the nothing and the being were far more important than running to get paper and pen to make notes.)

It truly is out of the space created by doing NOTHING where ideas and creativity emerge.

Weird, huh? To get something, you have to have nothing!

Why is NOTHING important?

Nothing lets your brain relax. If you're overwhelmed, you can't create from that space. Being overwhelmed might be a sign that a project (or your life!) is too big... therefore, the overwhelm. Break things down into smaller steps and chunks.
Sometimes, Nothing allows us to see those individual pieces and the steps - that were all a jumbled mess before.
Creativity blossoms in quiet time and where there's space. Creativity NEEDS space. When our time and heads are crammed with an endless list of to-dos and manic rushing to do them all, there's no room for creativity. Nothing, by its very nature, gives us that space.
When there's Nothing, you are fully present. I've noticed that even when I'm teaching, because I'm so in the moment and fully there, I've had creative ideas. That's because, since I'm fully present, I'm not thinking of the 400 other things at the same time... that normally crowd out anything else.

As a regular practice, bring a little Nothing into your life. At first, just commit to sitting quietly for 10 minutes. Then, see if you can increase the time you just sit.

Truly hand over all desires to DO to Nothing. Don't read your book at the coffee shop. Don't bring your journal out to the beach. Just let yourself BE there.