stop making excuses
/GET OFF OF FACEBOOK AND START DANCING.
If you just took the time to read that sentence, you can take that same amount of time to dance. Let me be more specific:
At this very moment, stand up from your chair, or stay seated, either works, and move your body RIGHT NOW for 10 seconds.
It doesn’t have to be lovely or dancerly or witty or smart.
You can be as slow or as fast as feels right to you at this moment.
Just move.
And if you are in a public place, do it anyway, ‘cause in the end, who cares?
I’ll count so you don’t have to:
1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi 3 Mississippi 4 Mississippi 5 Mississippi 6 Mississippi 7 Mississippi 8 Mississippi 9 Mississippi 10 Mississippi
Excellent!!!!
I am hearing too many excuses lately about why you aren’t dancing enough.
Something needs to change.
You only live once.
Or depending on what you believe, maybe 2, 3, 4, or 1,000 times.
(I don’t know if I believe in past lives or not, but I had this super strong image the first time I met Glen. I was in a toga walking down a cobbled stone street in ancient Rome. I stopped by an open air shop, and saw a man with a long beard, also in a toga, in the process of inventing the wheel. He caught my eye, smiled, said he needed a break from inventing the wheel, and would I like to join him for some figs. The rest is/was history.)
For this exercise, let’s keep it simple and say:
BECAUSE YOU — IN THIS PARTICULAR HUMAN CONFIGURATION — WILL ONLY BE ON THIS PLANET ONCE.
Ask yourself this:
Are you dancing enough?
When you are on your deathbed:
Will you be filled with contentment, peace, and ease remembering your feet in contact with the earth, feeling your breath as you spin?
or
Will you be wondering why you spent so much time on Facebook rather than tripping the light fantastic. (I just found that phrase in the thesaurus when I was looking up other words for dancing…isn’t it great?)
Difficult question to think about, I know, but super duper important in the larger scheme of things.
And this whole dancing thing?
It isn’t just about you:
Dancing is different than anything else we do in our daily lives in terms of movement.
- It isn’t like going to the gym.
- It isn’t like taking a hike.
- It isn’t like stepping outside for a run or a walk or a snowshoe or a bicycle ride.
- Now don’t get me wrong, I love doing all of these things, and I am not giving them up so I can dance.
Dancing is it’s own thing, and happens in its own time.
It has no beginning and no ending.
It is not about being fast or strong or pretty or graceful or clever or good.
It is circular, which means it is about the truth of what is happening at this very moment and following THAT rather than following the clock or the finish line or the mirror.
When I don’t dance, and I am just doing my hiking and swimming, I am not tapping into the circular part of who I am, which means I am not giving myself fully and generously to the people around me.
But when I am dancing and engaging myself creatively, my focus and curiosity about the wider world grows.
I have more space, time, and desire to give and remain present with my community, my family, and my friends.
I become bountiful.
And when I am bountiful, I begin to engage and partake in making the world a better place.
So let’s figure this out:
Do you want to be dancing more?
____ YES
____ NO
If you answered NO, than thank the high high heavens, and I will see you next week.
If you answered YES, then here is one super simple thing you can do right now to get yourself dancing:
GET OFF OF FACBOOK.
Now, I am not bashing Facebook. I secretly love scrolling through my newsfeed after a long day and seeing what’s up
(OMG did you see the video about the dog skateboarding? Soooooooo cute: https://youtu.be/NtYSuKIljKE ).
Just start to spend a little less time on it.
If you spend roughly one hour a day on Facebook, choose to spend 50 minutes on it instead, and use that extra 10 minutes to dance.
One reason to spend less time on Facebook (and computers in general) is because of the manner in which we focus when we are engaged with technology.
As I am writing this blog, my focus is extremely narrow. I am looking at, and concentrating on, a very narrow piece of the world around me.
And I need to do that right now.
That narrow focus is helpful and beneficial to the task at hand.
However, if I am spending too much time in that narrow focus space, I begin to loose my concentration, my efficiency, my delight, my ease, and my sense of overall well-being.
I can feel it viscerally when I have spent to much time on the computer.
- I start to tighten up.
- My breath gets a little more shallow.
- I start to rush through my work.
- My heart starts beating a little bit faster.
- My creativity, spontaneity, and problem-solving abilities begin to falter.
- Most importantly, it stops being fun, engaging, interesting, and, beneficial. Instead, I am just going through the motions as fast as I can.
- Right after I send this to you, I am going to dance for 10 minutes to widen my focus again before getting back on the computer to answer emails.
Your dance mission for the week is to log out of Facebook 10 minutes sooner than you normally would, put on some amazing music, and dance.
Here are the songs I would recommend (I can’t figure out how to put a link to the actual song here and just send you directly to it….do you know how to do that? If so, can you tell me so I can do it next time?)
1. Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars (I just danced to this before starting to work on this blog….it was soooo fun. Once I press send I am going to dance to it again).
2. Var by Sigur Rós
3. Singing Bridge by Rachel’s
Do this for 3 days in a row, and then post your comment here.
Once you have posted your commented (and you know how much I love it when you post a comment) share this on Facebook or Pinterest or whatever, HA HA HA, but make sure to give yourself at least 10 minutes once you have completed your social media tasks,
TO DANCE.
With Warmth and Jivey Vibes, Joanna of Joanna and The Agitators sweetly agitating/persistently upending