Follow the Juice
There are times in our lives when we feel stuck, bored, or uninspired. We know we want something different but don’t know how to get it. We spend lots of time hanging out in our minds trying to figure out either what’s causing the dis-ease or the fastest way to be relieved of it. It isn’t useful to wait around for a nice, inspiring epiphany to fall into your lap. The issue is we’re not feeling any life force in our current state. It feels like the same old, same old and it’s dull as dirt.
My go-to practice when I find myself in this place is to “follow the juice”. The juice is, well, juicy. It sparks the imagination, ignites the senses, and invites curiosity. Rarely a linear progression, the road can feel random and unfamiliar.
Begin by noticing what has juice for you. If you’ve been flat lining for a while, it may be only a flicker of interest. Choose one thing, anything, that captures your attention. It could be a new hobby or art form, a person who intrigues you, a place off the beaten path, a subject you want to learn more about or a workshop that looks fun. Explore it, learn about it and when a new thread makes itself known, follow that. Trust your intuition and stay on its track wherever it leads you.
If you hit a dead end, course correct and pick up a new thread. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense to others. This is your journey and it will be uniquely, beautifully yours. Let’s be clear that endless looping on the Internet, social media obsessions and channel surfing do NOT constitute following the juice.
This is an intentional, conscious exploration into what has heart and meaning for you. It requires listening to yourself instead of the voices around you. It also requires patience while the new form takes shape. In some cases I’ve followed the juice for a couple of years. I never know when it will all come together in a coherent way but it always does.
You can rely on the inner critic(s) popping up at various stages like whack-a-mole to tell you this practice is a stupid idea, waste of time, too risky, not productive. Ignore them. Trust your own process and enjoy the synchronicity where everything feels connected, perfect and just right for you. It will happen in the right and perfect time and in the right and perfect way.
Use your heart as the compass, staying open and curious. Be on the lookout for patterns, connections and a new synthesis of ideas. This is where the magic is, synchronicity at its finest. The life force will return along with new ideas, directions, and perspectives. Your job is to keep paying attention and do your own work…and enjoy the process.
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I am a speaker, teacher, writer, and artist working at the convergence of self-care, spirituality, and self-expression.
A Creative Conspirator - an inciter of whatever makes you come alive, an excavator of buried gifts and talents, a fresh breeze that fans the smoldering embers of abandoned creativity. Read More>
This is absolutely beautiful. Thank you. It is so applicable, and helpful, to what I’m going through right now. I keep it on my desktop to help me through!