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{Felt box from the manusmade shop}

This is a guest post by Tania Wojciechowski.

I’m traveling for my day job this week. My meetings ended early, so I returned to my hotel room to do some work. In my head, I had a rambling to-do list that had been talking to me all day. I hadn’t written any of it down, but knew each item intimately from all the internal chatter: write a post, set up skype interview, email S and D, edit the interview I did on Sunday, respond to the person who wants to put my goods in their shop, start preparing questions for a different interview, follow up with H. And so on.

Returning to my hotel room, I set up my laptop to get to work. I didn’t have time to transition from my meetings to my “other” work – building my new part-time business, organizing the retreat that I’m hosting, following up on the other handmaking business I run. I grabbed a nutrition bar and sat down.

My hands hung over the keyboard without doing anything.

If I was honest with myself, I didn’t have the energy to write that post. I didn’t have the words to connect with the people I wanted to. I had felt like crap for a couple of days. If I was honest with myself, all I wanted was a warm bath.

So, I got honest with myself, and I had a bath. My shoulders came down, and my breath deepened. Much better. I got out, wrapped myself in a robe, and promptly fell asleep for an hour. I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself to take a nap.

I awoke refreshed, and happy that I had listened to my real needs. Not the to-do list, not the stress of not getting things done. But the real need for rest, for pause, for ease.

Ease as self-care

I picked Ease as my word for 2013 for a reason. Because as much as every time I say that word aloud it comes out in one long breath (Eeeeeaaaaaasseeee), I also come to Ease kicking and screaming. Ease is lazy. Foreign. Non-productive.

But what if Ease was, well, easy? What if I incorporated Ease into my life?

What would that look like?

  • I’d hear my body when it’s telling me it’s tired.
  • I’d work when I felt most productive, and not work when I my energy levels were lower.
  • I’d tap into what truly makes me ME and let that guide me.

Well, it would really start to look like honest-to-goodness self care.

Tapping into your Ease, your self care, your truest self, can be as simple as listening, identifying your most unique qualities, and letting them to guide your life.For example:

  • For example, do you love playing with strangers, like Dyana Valentine?

  • Write a TED Talk and work a big crowd.

  • Are you an art-maker who also loves experimental music?

  • Find a band to work with and create the most amazing sound and light show ever produced at your local community centre.

Ease. Alignment. Happiness. Hard work filled with passion and flow. It’s finally starting to sound really quite productive to me.

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TaniaI’m Tania Wojciechowski, and I’m a creativity coach-in-training, a maker of handmade goods, and a wellness aficionado. Oh yes, I also have a day job. All these activities are a reflection of the thing that I’m most passionate about, which is finding ways to become my best and most joyfully authentic self. I use humour, creativity, and an inordinate amount of daily dance-breaks to really explore this in myself. Even my day job – which, to be honest, is not quite my dream job – is an opportunity for me to test out being my best self in a bureaucratic setting. As a creativity coach, I’ll be guiding women, who may have forgotten the deep connection to their creativity and wellness, back to a place that makes them feel whole again.

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