Endure Chapter 9: Create

Welcome to endure chapter nine chapter nine this is the weekly release of a small snippet from my book endure which you can find at getindoor dot com a guide to spiritual stamina so here we go chapter nine create i pride myself on getting things done heck people often congratulate and compliment me about how hard i hustle yep i'm productive i'm a doer i make shit happen so to speak i check off just about every box one would expect to have checked off as a metric of corporate corporate and professional success in life i'm like a friggin robot i wake i buffet my body i crush the day i digest a massive amount of information and i produce a ton of content not only that but i'm a man's man that's right i'm hardcore i'm macho and i'm muscular i can brag about a bio that champions me as a guy who has traveled the globe for decades proving my manhood and some of the most masochistic events known to humankind i can post flex shots to instagram that publicly portray my chiseled body in all its fleshly glory i swing heavy kettlebells sw icy cold water and defy aging heck in a display of skills that society deems highly noble and honorable i've shown that from bow hunting to spearfishing to barbecuing to lovemaking i can protect provide and procreate with the best of them oh yeah by all definitions of the word i'm yang baby yay me right you'd never have guessed that i grew up as a president of the chess club a violin virtuoso a watercolor painting enthusiast a devourer of every fantasy book i could get my hands on and a kid whose idea of a fantasy fantastic sunday afternoon was to get symphony tickets and go sit in the balcony with my eyes closed making up princess and dragon stories inside my head while smiling and tapping my feet to the reverberating orchestral tunes well screw that long ago in my teenage years i left all that tomfoolery behind after all artsy fartsy boys don't get the girls aren't hard to kill and bear no resemblance to the rocky balboa macho warrior i'd spend hours watching in my bedroom while pumping iron and flexing in the mirror all the while quietly convincing myself that's the hero the world needed wanted and expected me to be so yep i traded in my violin for the electric guitar my watercolor brushes for a barbell and all my fiction books for hardcore science manuals rigid rational logical unemotional productive take no prisoners mentality ruled the day and served to fuel my seemingly successful rise to the top that i described to you in gory detail in my book fit soul but along the way i lost something something very important and something that as i look around me at all the other successful men and women i think that others have lost too so in this chapter i'm going to tell you exactly what that is and how to become a more complete and happy human by rediscovering and reclaiming that missing element and let's start here when did you stop dreaming singing and dancing my friend and former podcast guest paul chat has a little song that he likes to sing to his patients when he's doing emotional healing work with them it goes like this i'm happy i'm healthy i am whole i take my love wherever i go the thing is as paul details and in an article that i'll link to on the resources webpage for this chapter at getindore dot com chapter nine that's get indoor dot com chapter nine when paul asks his clients to sing along many seem held back due to some kind of internal fear or blocking factor the three questions he then proceeds to ask them are when did you stop dreaming when did you stop singing and when did you stop dancing interestingly the time that a person stops dreaming and this could include elements like say reading fiction storytelling or even watching funny movies instead of all say nonfiction and documentaries singing including perhaps sacrificing podcasts and audiobook time to instead listen to a heartwarming or soul exciting new album from your favorite band or perhaps nostalgic songs from your youth and dancing which does not necessarily mean taking formal ballroom dance classes or playing dance dance revolution in the basement but could arguably involve everything from ecstatic raving to wild acts of lovemaking anyways the time that a person stops doing all that often correlates to a specific time and or event that disrupted that person's natural state of inner harmony and led to the injury or illness they're experiencing paul check says when we grow to the point that we finally realize that our body and relationships mirror our mind we can look back and typically we see that it was during stressful and often unresolved transition points in our lives that we lost our authentic harmony and creative impulse paul then encourages those of his clients who feel blocked in their ability to join in his little ditty because the voices in their head are judging or telling them how silly this is to be brave enough to give this harmless practice a try citing the old saying being happy may not make you sing but singing will make you happy and while i fully agree with paul at the absence of dreaming singing dancing and any other element of creative free artistic flow in one's life does not indeed often manifest in an overall unharmonious imbalance and eventually an injury or illness i'm not quite convinced there needs to be a single factor such such as an intense trauma a broken relationship or a horrific accident that sparks that loss of creativity i instead think that for many people including myself the fading away of youthful happy and carefree dancing and singing and dreaming can occur gradually over an extended period of time as we become more and more mindful fulfilling the basic survival elements of maslow's hierarchy of needs like find food make money start a family get a home and more and more obsessed with and satisfied with doing accomplishing and producing to the ultimate and sad sacrifice of being savoring and creating so in addition to our gradual tendency as we become full fledged grown ups to shove free artistic creative flow and elements such as dreaming singing and dancing to the side in our relentless pursuit to instead climb the mountain of success which as outlined so well in the book the second mountain we often tend to look down from to realize we weren't really climbing the most fulfilling mountain in the first place what else keeps us from dreaming singing and dancing well i would argue it is the hypnotic rhythm the what that's right the hypnotic rhythm although he's perhaps better known for his book think and grow rich american self help author napoleon hill also wrote a lesser known but in my opinion just as life changing a book titled outwitting the devil in that book hill describes what he calls the hypnotic rhythm which is a law of subconscious human nature that tends to slowly solidify our habits and make them a permanent part of our lives often without us noticing how powerful and addictive those habits may have become these rhythms are the things we do that we don't even tend to think about the daily automatic actions we take that are built into our very existence everything from brushing our teeth to checking our email to scrolling through a set number of social media feeds like the vicious loop of instagram to twitter to facebook to slack to the email inbox and then twenty minutes later back through again to even more time consuming ocd like tendencies i described in chapter two such as performing a set specific workout on a designated day of the week come hell or high water eating a specific way no matter what or becoming locked into a certain manner of living working or interacting with people that can indeed become long lasting habits that lend to the structure and order that can create success but these habits can also bring about misery and permanent failure unfulfillment particularly as we become resistant to any semblance of change or the ability to be able to embrace free creative flow that rips us out of that rhythm that we've grown to associate with control and safety and survival in other words it's the hypnotic rhythm that dictates you must listen to that thirty minute financial news podcast on your daily commute even though every shred of your soul is craving to crank up the radio with rock music like you did when you were a carefree teenager you must hit the weights at the gym even though all those guys and girls out playing noon ball look like they're having way more fun and that's what you would have done in college or you must be the responsible person at the party engaged in polite conversation in the corner instead of ripping moves on the dance floor like nobody's watching well hill describes how this hypnotic rhythm becomes a built in automated part of our lives via a three step process of one action two habit and three rhythm actions including our thoughts are the things that we do that we have complete control over we consciously decide whether or not these actions come into being when we repeat the actions long enough they become habits the things that we do to give us our daily momentum and help us feel safe and comfortable as we navigate life it's possible for us to stray from these habits but as they become more and more solidified in our lives we tend to repeatedly return to them if those habits are repeated long enough then they become you guessed it a hypnotic or rhythm this is when the habit becomes a part of what is called our phenomenological level in other words those habits become linked to our identity and how we define ourselves for example i simply am that person who gets up at six am to go on a morning jog versus god forbid occasionally staying in bed and making love to my spouse i am that person who drinks black coffee every morning so that i maintain my strict intermittent fasting protocol day in and day out though that matcha green tea with coconut oil and stevia recipe looks like a fun little change up i am that person who slips away after dinner to read a book in my office though my kids really want to go outside and stargaze these habits eventually get put on subconscious autopilot and at that point the actions associated with each habit require basically no willpower at all at this stage we may find that we have almost no control over those very actions whether they produce good or bad fruit in our lives related to hill's ideas of the development of a scarcity mindset and our tendency to be able to think and manifest what it is that we eventually become whether that be abundance or scarcity a concept hill explores and think and grow rich he says nature uses hypnotic rhythm to make one's dominating thoughts and one's thought habits permanent that is why poverty is disease nature makes it so by fixing permanently the thought habits of all who accept poverty as an unavoidable circumstance in this instance hill is referring to us being able to think our way into poverty by allowing thoughts of scarcity to become our dominant thought pattern however i would propose that in the same way that you can think yourself into being poor and again you can read the book think and grow rich to fully grasp this concept you can think yourself into an automatic habit loop this hypnotic rhythm of constantly doing instead of being and thus think yourself into a habit loop that gradually pulls you out of all the fun creative things you might have enjoyed to do as say a child such as dreaming singing and dancing in the book denial of death by ernest becker this type of controlled action that eventually becomes an automated habit is described as a way for us to escape the stressors of life for instance many people overwork during periods of anxiety and stress sound familiar at all well this habitual pattern of overworking not only distracts us from impending anxious thoughts but it can reinstill in us a lost sense of control functioning as a kind of safety net that not only protects us from fear of death but from fear of life as well to avoid the uncontrollable lows and the irreplaceable highs often experienced during creative free flow or stepping outside our controlled comfort zone we tend to stick to what we know burying ourselves in routine routine and complacency danish theologian and philosopher soren kierkegaard describes this type of person as an automatic cultural man someone who accepts the reality that culture provides seeking to actualize their identity within the carefully sketched lines of society what the world expects them to be rather than their true authentic self struck by the horror of creative freedom and its multitude of possibilities we can experience overwhelming anxiety and loss of control and thus suppress most semblances of freedom whatsoever eventually descending into you guessed it our predictable controllable hypnotic rhythm painting with watercolor is messy and sometimes unpredictable but reading science is predictable dancing is expressive flowing and also sometimes unpredictable but our daily visit to the gym involves a series of rote exercises fully within our predictive control dreaming fantasizing reading fiction singing learning new recipes and other forms of creative expression though often what we really want to do in the moment suddenly pull us out out of being able to control or experience predictable outcomes and it becomes so much less anxiety inducing or bothersome to instead bury ourselves in checklists of work flow versus function and now approaching forty years old at the time of this recording as i approach what could very well be the halfway point of my life i've realized that very point myself often stuck in a daily hypnotic rhythm of control and predictability operating as an automatic cultural man who is much like what the world expects me to be and indeed can grow congratulates me upon being some kind of functional hard charging hardcore high achiever and much less like what my internal soul at many times craves to be a flowing creative soft romantic lover of art fiction music i give you the full details on exactly how this gradual slide from creativity happened to me in chapter two but i'll add one additional thought here regarding the common formation of hypnotic rhythm because much of this process can be neurologically based as a guy who works consults advises and writes in the realms of health and fitness i'll give you an example from that specific world because i tend to see the pattern i'm going to describe to you repeatedly in clients i coach take the hypnotic rhythm of a daily exercise routine for example which is a somewhat laudable effort as we've already established the apostle paul says in first timothy that physical training is of some value but an effort that can nonetheless lead to selfishness sacrificing other more important activities for the holy workout or even ignoring a pull towards creative activities such as painting or playing a musical instrument because the gym must be hit at all costs often this rhythm begins with food i've found for many people this train to eat eat to train cycle can easily pull one into what from a neurological standpoint can be a highly hypnotic rhythm allow me to illustrate let's say that you the privileged modern human living in an environment surrounded by a calorie rich highly palatable abundance of food foods swings open the refrigerator in the evening and are struck with pangs of guilt over the cornucopia food that spilleth forth often in addition to the reams of energy bars and superfood powders filling the nearby pantry or superfood health store so you gorge yourself on a fantastic tasty nourishing calorie and nutrient dense rich dinner after all it's not like it's fried chicken pizza and ice cream for crying out loud just a bunch of wild caught fish sweet potato fries and dark chocolate and then perhaps you make yourself a nighttime post dinner treat of some kind of a ketogenic fat bomb recipe recipe comprised of coconut milk and chocolate collagen and maybe some raw honey or some kind of other healthy hippie dessert and before you know it you've stuffed yourself with over a thousand calories but that's okay because you have a grand soul punishing body buffeting workout planned for the next morning in addition from a neurological standpoint this feel good meal has charged you up with a massive hit of dopamine and serotonin so you get up the next morning perhaps briefly but ever so briefly because your workout awaits glance at some kind of a devotional or spiritually uplifting book jot for a few minutes in some kind of a gratitude journal then head out to do what you really want to do burn all those calories that are fresh on your mind from the night before and pat yourself on the back for making your body stronger fitter and harder to kill after all we've already established that the world deems that type of yang way to start the morning to be a quite noble and laudable way to launch wednesday off to a good start so off you rush to the health club or home gym to throw down your daily workout which fills you with another big surge of dopamine and serotonin not only for having checked something off your to do list for the day but also because exercise in and of itself is a positively addicting effort and as my friend and neuroscientist doctor andrew huberman teaches any type of physical forward movement or progress can serve as a potent remedy for fear stress anxiety depression etcetera instantly this is why one of the more common forms of exercise for people who are trying to excessively control their lives or escape pain or both control their lives and escape pain tend to love things like treadmills or jogging stationary or real bicycles frequent walking swimming or or any other forms of chronic repetitive motion doctor huberman explains that this is because when you face adversity forward progress suppresses the amygdala and you subsequently secrete dopamine as a response to making steps forward but of course gosh darn it you must now again eat to refuel so you rush back to the kitchen or cafeteria to prepare yourself an eight hundred calorie superfood smoothie which satisfies two burning one to make a dent in all that food you bought that you don't want to go to waste and two to top up your body's energy stores in preparation for the next day's or afternoon's dopamine surging workout then it's off to work where you can escape for a while make some money check off your checklist and do a whole lot more doing the next day and the next and the next you do the same thing after all god forbid you miss your streak of physical activity you've kept up so well the past several months or allow your scarcity mindset to allow you to take a break from work do do do work out eat work work out eat work workout eat work there's a lot of people who do that in the world that i operate in train to eat eat to train make money it's great right you're staying healthy paying the bills and simultaneously enjoying noodles of lovely calorie dense highly palatable food that in any other circumstance would probably make you well fat problem is by relying upon food and exercise and work as your three primary modes of sparking up those rewarding neurotransmitters you're essentially keeping your brain satisfied within a relatively narrow band of the full spectral experience of life in this case that narrow band being eating exercising and checking off your checklist while making money in your business or place of employment in between all the eating and exercise now don't get me wrong neither eating nor exercising nor making money are inherently bad nor should you feel guilty about those activities but i've repeatedly witnessed in myself and in others particularly within the health and fitness industry the tendency to become so myopically obsessed with these three activities that very little character growth or neurotransmitter sparking occurs outside the context of eating exercise and business folks seem to get so consumed with nutrition and fitness and work that there's simply little or no time remaining for painting acting music singing dancing dreaming or just lying around reading a thrilling fiction book it's a hard cycle to break too after all even if you do say sacrifice some or all of your planned afternoon workout to instead paint a butterfly based on your hypnotic rhythm you still probably swing open the refrigerator an hour later and consume your massive workout fueling dinner which again makes you feel guilty and or fat and or lazy and or unhealthy immediately after and so you plan for the next afternoon to skip this painting nonsense and go crush the gym instead of bed that or you stay up late at night catching up on all that extra work you missed to instead paint or you do both the exercise punishment and the work to make up for the lost time spent in creativity and that can create a quite yang hardcore do do do scenario that continually pulls you away from anything that can produce a pleasurable response besides eating and exercising but nobody lies on their deathbed with the satisfying feeling that they were a good exerciser or managed to eat quite a few calories in their lifetime the more rewarding deathbed moments come from reflecting upon activities such as meaningful friendships and relationships good acts done for the world meaningful experiences often enjoyed with others or masterful works of art or music one may have created perhaps the example i just gave doesn't resonate with you perhaps it's a completely foreign concept for you to imagine a person who enjoys eating weird foods and exercising a lot but your hypnotic rhythm might be something else it might be that endless cycle of social media feed checking or online online news website monitoring that you find yourself sucked into each and every day unable to break your streak of check ins it may be a constant consumption of nonfiction podcasts and audiobooks with absolutely no room allowed for music or fiction it may be the slot machines or the poker table it may be the full hour you spend every morning on beauty and self care it may be golfing it may simply be slipping away to work and getting things off your checklist whenever you have a free moment even in the wee hours of the evening as a matter of fact you get the same rewarding neurotransmitter release from any of the activities of the just mention as you do from a vicious cycle of excessively eating and exercising or overworking and if any of these items are near automatic built in subconscious rote activities that require very little creativity loss of control challenge discomfort or even the perception of danger and if they also do not result in some meaningful act of beautiful creative creation that requires conscious thought applied to mindfulness beauty or the more delicate elements of yin that it's very likely you have found yourself caught up in a hypnotic rhythm that's keeping you from dreaming singing and dancing in a way that would ultimately bring more happiness happiness and fulfillment to your life for me personally being a very yang hardcore hard charging high achiever who works hard exercises hard eats hard and does hard then rinses washes and repeats daily has created a very yang scenario that has pulled me away from these alternate activities that can spark a similar pleasurable neurotransmitter response and these alternate activities can also result in highly meaningful acts of creation a more mindful enjoyment of beauty or allowing myself to simply engage with the being this includes activities like painting making music lying on the the living room floor playing games with my kids more time in nature and even engaging in right brained creative flow to pen the type of slightly dangerous writing you're listening to right now instead of focusing on pure left brained hard science or biohacking i know deep down inside that these types of activities that pull me out of my hypnotic rhythm are highly rewarding and personally fulfilling but it hasn't been until really quite lately that i've made a concerted attempt to get out of that rhythm and engage more of my yin side and i'll admit it's been somewhat difficult primarily because i've been defined and have defined myself by functional hardcore doing macho esque fitness and competitive exercise for so long that it's taking some time to shake that off and release as my friend lewis howes writes about in his book the mask of masculinity the athlete mask to instead enter into a more flowing relaxed approach to life in general particularly one that embraces creativity creation truly i believe that it's that very active embracing creativity that can serve as a potent tactic to pull us out of the hypnosis rhythm of constantly doing free expression of art and creativity especially in a spirit that loves others and loves god by both creating things ourselves while simultaneously embracing and celebrating his creation is something we not only derive a great deal of pleasure and fulfillment from but something that we are actually called to do and something that god having designed us in the image of himself the creator takes great pleasure in indeed our unique human impulse to create reflects the fact that we were created in the image of a creator god as francis schaeffer says in his book art and the bible the lordship of christ should include an interest in the arts a christian should use these arts to the glory of god not just as tracts mind you but as things of beauty to the praise of god the christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars as i read that quote and i'm inspired to allow my own imagination to fly beyond the stars i'm also reminded of reformer and theologian john calvin who despite being a man one might not think of as an ecologist has a general philosophy on environmentalism the goodness of labor creation care and the duties of cultivating the earth that really resonates with me particularly this section in the quote i'll give you just a moment from his commentary on genesis two fifteen in which he advocates stewardship of the planet as something we are called to engage in rather than simply consuming life in eating drinking and sleeping calvin explains and the lord god took the man moses now adds that the earth was given to man with this condition that he should occupy himself in its cultivation once it follows that men were created to employ themselves in some work and not to lie down in inactivity and idleness this labor truly was pleasant and full of delight entirely exempt from all trouble and weariness since however god ordained that man should be exercised in the culture of the ground he condemned in his person all indolent repose wherefore nothing is more contrary to the order of nature than to consume life in eating drinking and sleeping while in the meantime we propose nothing to ourselves to do do moses adds that the custody of the garden was given in charge to adam to show that we possess the things which god has committed to our hands on the condition that being content with a frugal and moderate use of them we should take care of what shall remain let him who possesses a field so partake of its yearly fruits that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by his negligence but let him endeavor to hand it down to posterity as he received it or even better cultivated let him so feed on its fruits that he neither dissipates it by luxury nor permits it to be marred or ruined by neglect moreover that this economy and this diligence with respect to those good things which god has given us to enjoy may flourish among us let everyone regard himself as the steward of god in all things which he possesses then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely nor corrupt by abuse those things which god requires to be preserved now how about you are you consuming life by eating drinking and sleeping only or perhaps you could throw into that self obsessed mix a bit of over exercising and overworking working or are you tilling the field of a garden or a musical instrument or an art canvas in an act of creation and stewardship that brings a smile to god's face and makes this world a better place well if you're a man who's listening to this who has already read chapter seven in my book fit soul then you know that being a good father husband or contributor to society does indeed incorporate hardcore elements that allow us men to provide and protect i respect guys who can work hard lift heavy weights and withstand physical discomfort comfort at the risk of sounding sexist which i define as merely recognizing that males and females are different both anatomically and psychologically i would propose that many women seem to in my subjective opinion do a little bit better job embracing their artistic creative inside but i also think that if you're a woman who's listening to me particularly if you're a woman caught up in the fitness craze of training to eat and eating to train or only engaged in business and making money or denying and suppressing any creative urges that you may have that you too would benefit from more creation after all what would it feel like to have more flow instead of function to have more being instead of doing i often ask myself who i want my twin sons to be both now and when they grow up perhaps they can hunt a deer with grit and precision but also sit in the forest and decide to simply paint or photograph that deer too perhaps they can carry a heavy sandbag up the driveway and swing a kettlebell but also sit quietly at the top of the driveway in prayer and meditation perhaps they can run their fledgling cooking podcast business and create an income for themselves but also lounge in the musical room for hours playing with their piano guitar and drums without a thought of business or money i don't know about you but those are the type of kids i want to raise and that's the type of human being i want to be don't you think the world needs more men and women who can wake up exercise eat and put in a hard day of work but also spend time in the evening painting or strumming a ukulele don't we need more parents who can spontaneously erupt into initiating a pre dinner dance party with the family i doubt you'd deny that our world is enriched by the hopeless romantics the art artists the stargazers and the dreamers but don't you have just a little bit of that inside yourself right now just waiting to be allowed to spring forth isn't part of being a fully functioning human also being a fully flowing human who sings dances dreams and creates art and beauty well at this point you might be asking yourself but isn't sitting at my desk computer programming or writing a science paper or engaged in an engineering project in active creation isn't making my morning smoothie or or even perhaps sculpting my body also an act of creation isn't posting a beautiful photo to instagram an act of creation well yeah perhaps to a small extent but i'd argue that in most cases for most people these activities can be rote repetitive automated subconscious and rhythmic as opposed to what i am encouraging you to do which is to engage in acts of creation and spontaneous free and flowing singing dancing and dreaming that actually feels different non rhythmic embarrassing uncomfortable or even dangerous dangerous these are the kind of acts that engage entirely different neural pathways than those you are triggering with activities that have become subconscious hypnotically rhythmic components of your routine day to day activity for the watercolor artist this may very well be woodworking for the violinist reading science for the writer gardening or for the crossfitter learning the violin most of the time you'll know when you're breaking the rhythm or just making an excuse to yourself that you're being creative or creating art and beauty or scene singing or dancing or dreaming when you're really not love god and love people finally remember to love others with your acts of creation as i told you in my article about how to find your purpose in life in my book fit soul a key component of finding your purpose in life is not just creating a single succinct purpose statement for your life but also going forth and executing that purpose statement in a fully mindful spirit of loving god and loving others which are the two greatest commandments in the bible why is this loving others caveat to creation important because creation doesn't simply have to be about painting a watercolor portrait or writing a song creation can also involve arguably more complex and potentially world changing or life altering activities like inventing new freeway systems building jet planes programming complex software or designing vaccines and thus if your ability to create also incorporates an ability to be able to drastically affect the world around you for better or worse you must have some sort of filter to decide whether or not your act of creating creation is good or harmful in other words is the watercolor portrait a nude female objectification painting that may cause a young boy to lustfully ogle as he sees it in a museum is the song you've written chock full of lyrics that are rhyming and entertaining but also rife with violence or worldly angst does the new freeway cut through fields of three different hundred year old farms and disrupt the income of multiple small farmers does the jet plane pollute the atmosphere due to a poorly thought out fueling system does the song software enable millions worldwide to be able to spy on each other access confidential information that violates privacy does the vaccine have the potential to cause more harm than good or perhaps require abortion of babies or violation of personal freedom rights to produce and administer you probably see where i'm going with this don't just launch into an act of creation without considering the consequences instead ask yourself if through your act of creation you're fully loving god and loving others sure the same software that runs a small church charitable giving platform might also be used to host transactions for a porn website or an air filtration system you've designed might be used to keep the air clean for greater customer comfort in a casino or a brothel but that's more of an issue of others twisting your creation for potentially sinful activities and not necessarily your fault in the same way it's not god's fault that some people enjoy a nice bordeaux made from the grape that he has created with their family dinner while others get sloshed and engage in domestic violence after drinking two full bottles bottles of the stuff ultimately if as you create you foresee potential for your creation to cause harm then my advice to you is to assess your motives for creating it if your motive in creating is to love god and love others and not to make money make your creation as popular as possible gain power and prestige from your creation get someone to like you because of your creation etcetera then i say go forth and create and sing and dance and dream then thank god for creating you in his image with the ability to create to savor life to the fullest and for giving you the grace to be able to leave the entire burden of your hypnotic rhythms at the foot of christ's cross summary last night our family prepared and ate a holiday dinner together then gathered for our annual christmas tradition of puff painting christmas shirts we then snuggled on the couch for an hour and a half to watch a cartoon about elves afterwards we went up to the boys bedroom and i read the family a christmas story called a boy called christmas which is actually one of the best modern holiday tales i've read in quite some time i played guitar my wife and i made love over the course of those five hours i did quite a fair bit of being and it felt wonderful i commented to my wife as we were falling asleep that for me to devote that much time to simply chillaxing is something that would have driven me batshit crazy as much as a few months ago after all i wasn't producing i wasn't helping all the people i wasn't getting stuff done in hardcore high achieving mode i wasn't producing helping make the world turn or doing doing doing but you know what else i told her i'm learning to be to simply save her life to release the reins on control and production to embrace more free artistic creativity to go on a walk and listen to music instead of a podcast or audiobook or listen to nothing at all but god's music of birdsong and wind it's a slow process and i'm still working on it but it feels so so good anyways when i told her that jessa smiled kissed me on the forehead and we fell asleep in a low lover's embrace i'm pretty sure an evening like that one i just described is the way god intended for us to spend many evenings and i personally plan on plenty more evenings like that in my life going forward along with more time devoted to fasting and fiction meditation and music and prayer and painting even if it does mean those kettlebells out in the cold garage occasionally get neglected now how about you are you learning to be and not just to do when did you stop dreaming singing and dancing more importantly when are you going to start again perhaps you can start simple like a pre dinner family dance party to your children's favorite song or going to a music store to treat yourself to that random instrument you've always wanted to play or teaching yourself to draw a cartoon dog or simply turning off the podcast or audiobook on your next commute and instead singing along with a radio at the top of your lungs just try it try creating try being it's transformative and i have a strong hunch that it makes our creator smile and will make you smile a bit more too imagine how you'll do it in the personal reflection section that i will give you in the physical or the digital version of this book which you can get at getindoor dot com in the meantime i'll be off to strum the guitar and for resources references links and additional reading and listening material for this chapter you can visit getindore dot com chapter nine.