I need a break! I know, you do too! We all need a break from, well, almost everything really. A break from the craziness of this world, the lack of civility of some people, the pressure we are always under. I have been trying to give myself more space by switching off a lot of things and having more silence in my life and it is definitely making a difference, but I am just wondering how far I could go in turning down the pressure.

How far could you go in turning down the pressure? What obligations could you lighten? What could you simplify? What could you ignore? Who could you ignore? Then think again. How many more things could you put on pause for a while?

When I ask the question, “How far could you go in turning down the pressure?”, I mean go really deep with this question and push even further. I have no idea how far I can go so I am going to experiment which means, I am sorry to say, that I will make this letter part of the experiment. What if I don’t write for a while? What if I don’t write anything publicly for a while? 

What about you? What would it look like for you? We often talk about giving ourselves permission to do what we really want to do, but what about going a bit beyond and actually giving ourselves the courage to do what we want to do? 

Here’s the thing, dear one. You do have the courage, it’s all in there, within. How many times have you surmounted difficult moments in your life? I mean even a happy event like giving birth requires courage! You have courage, that’s a no-brainer. What are you going to do with it? That’s the question.

I was doing my morning pages this morning when I started asking myself a lot of questions like these, “What if I stopped doing this?”, “What if I took the pressure off that way?”, “What if I did more things just for the fun of it?”. It is quite a good exercise to do. I intend to go back to it and see how far the questions take me. One of the questions I asked myself was, “What if I didn’t write my newsletter for three months? For six months?”. All the questions are good to ask, but you have to then decide if that is what you want to do. 

I long for expanse in time and space and the idea of living with less pressure for a while. However, I have tried to take a break from writing my letters to you and it never lasted because this is one of my favourites things to do. So here is what I am declaring:

I really don’t know what is going to happen so I am going to avoid committing to anything. My next letter might be in a month time, or it might be next week. I really don’t know. I like the idea of trying on “I don’t know” for size for a little while. 

I need to go out on my favourite walks again. I need to let the need for writing take me where it wants to take me, including in my private notebooks. 

I wonder what you would do if you gave yourself permission and courage to do what you want to do, and yes, there is a certain amount of “I don’t know” in all this, but isn’t that intriguing? Can you let yourself be curious? As ever, I welcome your thoughts on this and you can just hit reply and carry on the conversation with me. I’m always here for you, you know that and I would never try to sell you anything, for sure. We’re just here to be friends.

Valerie 

http://valeriemarsh.com