The Wooden Spoon Trick

Is there something that you have been wanting to learn? To do? To try just once to see what the experience would feel like?

Is the Fear of Failure holding you back? Does it feel like a lack of resources is underwhelming your life? Do you suffer from a poverty mindset? Is there someone in your life who is always telling you that you procrastinate too much and you never finish anything?

Is there a voice in your head that always gives you bad advice? Don't start. You have so much to do around the house. You have to get up early in the morning.

You haven't done laundry for a week. There are blocks of cheese molding in the fridge. The garage is a disaster. You use your stairs as a filing system for work and grad school. Do you feel like you simply do not have enough time to even think about trying something new?

Making the Choice

Well, like so many situations in life, there's the bad news and the good news. The bad news: You don't have enough time. The good news: You do have enough time. You choose which news you want to hear. You choose.

I kept delivering "the bad news" to my heart, my mind, my hands, my spirit, while forestalling the good news for an unspecific time in the mythical future when "I had more time."

I was living in a steady hum of constancy that seemed to focus solely on everything that was swamping my life:

• playing an elaborate shell game with finances
• juggling too many jobs with a delicate, convoluted schedule
• grad school and homework always nudging the back of my mind
• barely keeping up with household chores
• caring for my three dogs and two cats and
• feeling like my life had all the fun sucked out of it by some cosmic vacuum cleaner.

All of this MindSpeak was proving to be so exhausting to my Inner Spirit that I simply stopped trying to inject newness or creativity into my day.

It felt like I was buried by life's stuff.

I wasn't merely stuck. I was buried. I would find myself paying bills online while listening to a homework-assigned podcast while petting the dog while folding the laundry while feeding the cat. I was all over the place. All of this multi-tasking madness. . . until I thought to add a new personal challenge to the day's mayhem: Try something new every single day.

In the beginning . . .

In the beginning, this challenge verified the bad news . . . taking on one more “thing to do” felt like an added extra that was overwhelmingly huge and impossible. My MindSpeak went into hyper-mode:

When am I going to have the time to try something new every single day?! My days already feel like pasta in a pot of water, on constant boil and threatening to spill over onto the clean stove top at any given second.

The Wooden Spoon Trick

But I was so craving Different in my life. Better. More centered and mindful and fun and enriching. I remembered reading a kitchen hack that if you lay a wooden spoon across a pot of boiling pasta that it won't over-boil. The pasta can boil merrily away with no more messy stove to clean up. So simple and easy . . . and it works! I verified it.

This Wooden Spoon trick reminded me that life need not be so overly complicated.

Just try . . . and do . . . and lay the spoon across the pot.

And try again. It is absolutely possible to turn a moment of my day into a gesture of mindfulness. I can make it happen. I will make it happen. I scrawled across the top of the wall-mounted white board in my office with a blue marker:

You've got this! Try Something New! Today! I mean it! Do it!

It has proven to be a bit of an experiment to see how it all works.

I originally intended on focusing on one singular "something new" to try every day for the 30 days, thinking I would create a positive new habit. My thought: this way I could develop some consistency and build some sense of discipline by adding only one single thing for a set period of time.

Like one of those scary-clown jack-in-the-boxes, all sorts of ideas came popping up out of my mind's Procrastination Department. Play piano every single day. Save on gas and ride my scooter to work every single day. Eat a healthy breakfast every single day. Work out every single day. Sort through one box in the garage and get rid of stuff every single day. Do one the same one new thing every single day for 30 days.

What did these things have in common?

But I found that having to sort through these ideas wasn't working – and they weren't very inspiring either. And besides, everything that I was thinking of for this challenge involved fulfilling some obligatory should in my life: be healthier, practice music, save the environment, clean the garage. All of which are very lovely ideas, but still . . . this challenge was supposed to be fun and invigorating and inspiring, not a list of items to be checked off a list.

As I was casting about for the best way to implement my challenge, I discovered that what was working was trying something different, unique, and unexpected every single day. Examples?

• I started piano lessons and have been pretty disciplined regarding playing several times a week.
• I went dancing at a casino and some great stories came out of this adventure.
• I broke out the new orange-and-white kitchen towels that had been preserved in their pristine state in my kitchen drawer. I am proud to say that they are now stained with the hues of red wine, carrot juice, and tomato sauce.
• I introduced myself to a stranger and we have since become acquaintances.

You get the idea. I called an old friend just to say hi. I bought Swiss chard at the vegetable stand. I wrote a long overdue letter. I told someone about my current writing project. I had dinner at a restaurant that I had been wanting to check out.

I took a picture of a lost singular sock in the parking lot of Trader Joe's and sent it to my friend who likes random stuff with no explanation. I added kale to my morning smoothie. I had fun with some color and painted on canvas.

And another new thing for me? I set aside judgment of "what is good" when I was done painting. I simply valued the experience and the time spent swirling color around.

I started reading my horoscope. I subscribed to a new-word-of-the-day website. I started blogging. I bought three tiny wooden tops, which are proving to create a really relaxing "stop point" during work and study time at my desk. I spin the tops and, while they are spinning, I do absolutely nothing. I learned that an absence of activity can feel pretty good.

Some of My Results

My Try Something New Challenge has proven to be that magical wooden spoon on the pasta pot. I not only have enough time to Try Something New, I have plenty of time. Life's harried pace has reduced its boil a bit. Not completely, but a bit, nonetheless. And while I am exploring, nothing is boiling over and making a spilly mess that I have to clean up.

It feels like I have affected change. Like the motion of the little tops, the vibrational ripples have been spreading. There have been some fun and surprising and happy results from being willing to shake things up.

I don't understand the way that time has expanded, but it has. What I learned about this personal challenge: The hardest part was starting. The easiest part is enjoying the expansive feelings of reward and appreciation.

Would you like to share in this challenge with me?

Is there something new that you have been really wanting to try? Life is a lively event. Try something new, spin some tops, and affect the ripples of happifying change. Lay the wooden spoon on top of that boiling cauldron of life's overwhelm. What's stopping you?