The miracle morning routine

Neera

I waited for a month before sharing this with you because I wanted to see its full effect before making any recommendations.

More than a month ago I came across a morning routine based on Hal Elrod’s book ‘The Miracle Morning’ which truly is a miracle.

Prior to following this routine, I would get up in the morning and straight away turn-on my laptop and start working. I will have to pull myself away to have breakfast and shower and take a short break for lunch. Needless to say, I was working harder than working at a job and yet my output was less than what it used to be when I was working full time and blogging part-time. On top of that, I was always tired, anxious and was behind in finishing daily tasks I had set up for myself.

Since I started this routine, my days start at a slower pace but I still get much more done. Besides I am attracting all the right things in my life.

The routine consists of six elements:

  • Meditation 10 minutes
  • Visualization 5 minutes
  • Affirmations 5 minutes
  • Journal writing 10 minutes
  • Reading 10 minutes
  • Exercise 20 minutes

The Miracle Morning routine is meant to take about an hour which means you will have to wake up an hour early each day. The first few days are harder but then you get so much benefit that you start looking forward to the morning and do wake up early each day.

The time next to each element is just an indication, you can add or remove time from an element if you think it would be more beneficial to you. Even if you change the times, I still recommend keeping all the elements as they each serve a unique purpose.

Meditation: Meditation helps to clear and center your mind and you start your day without feeling overwhelmed or emotional. You can meditate in pure silence or you can use a recording for a guided meditation. There are several ten-minutes meditations available online. On the days I have a bit more time I like to use the following one.

Visualization: There are so many studies on the power of visualization. With little practice it is easy to master this technique. You can visualize completing your daily goals or achieving your bigger goals. Try to engage your five senses while visualizing them happening.

Affirmations: Affirmations are the positive things that we tell ourselves. They help develop a positive mindset and grow self-confidence and eventually turn up into self-fulfilling prophecies. Each morning I write my affirmation in a small diary. Then I go back and read the previous days’ affirmations. By the time five minutes are over, I am smiling both outside and inside.

Journaling: Writing down your thoughts is incredibly powerful. I write a page a day in my journal. Sometimes it is about what I am feeling, other times about what is happening around me or what I am planning to do. There other choices too. You can write down things you’re grateful for or lessons you learned during the previous day and any new goals or ideas that came to you since.

Reading: Reading something good each morning allows our minds to move in new directions. I keep a good book handy by my bedside to read a few pages each morning.

Exercise: Other than giving you health benefits exercise improves your mood, clears your head, and makes you feel happier. It is great if you can fit exercise in your morning. I do my exercise in the evening.

There you have it, the morning routine I have been following for a month now. Hal Elrod encourages to try it for at least 30 days to see the benefits. I can assure you, that you will start seeing the benefits after the first week.

Getting started might be hard, but once started I am sure you will not break the routine. It is that good.

Mixing words with images

Neera 4 Comments

For some time I have been trying to figure out a way to blend my two passions – writing and drawing. I found the above picture in my papers today and was taken over by its beauty.

I don’t remember where I got it from so can’t give credit to the original creator. But they say imitation is the best compliment you can give to an artist, so I tried to recreate it. Twice, in fact, changing the words each time.

The image is nowhere near as good as the original but I am happy with the first attempt.

I thought the writing around would be hard but it was super easy. I just needed to keep rotating the notebook.

I enjoyed the process so much that I went for the third one, this time finding another figure and word to match her pose.

I can say today has been super productive.

Art that is burned daily…

Neera

I happened to be at the National Gallery of Australia yesterday when I noticed this statue in the main hall and was immediately struck by the concept.

The statue is set in a continuous cycle of melting and recasting representing life and impending death and possible resurrection.

It is made of wax and was burned like a candle, inside the gallery, for six months.

It is made by a Swiss artist Urs Fischer who uses wax a lot as material. Fischer has been described by the arts and culture magazine Vault as “internationally celebrated” and one of the most significant contemporary artists working today. He has been displaying his work all over the world since the mid-1990s.

National Gallery of Australia acquired this statue for one million dollars and it has been on display since mid-March 2019. It had been ignited every day till mid-August. Its head had fallen off as one piece and lay on the platform. Miraculously, the arm carrying the smartphone has escaped the flame.

Mostly the works of art are made to be permanent. Sometimes they are ephemeral. But this, new acquisition of the gallery both. Its debris will be sent to Zurich to be re-casted from its mold and installed again in the gallery and the process of burning and melting will start again.

What made me stand there in amazement is the shift in the art in the 21st-century. It is not static, it is alive and always changing, reflecting the world in which we live.

The statue is the depiction of the lauded Italian art curator Francesco Bonami, a friend of Urs Urs Fischer who is sanding on top of an open refrigerator stacked with fruit and vegetables all made of wax. The figure is holding a mobile phone, in a pose so typical of our era.

You can watch the burning of the sculpture by clicking this link.

Through disappointment comes clarity…

Neera

I think the exact quote is:

The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality. 

Conan O’Brien

It took me six months and hundreds of dollars worth of courses to get this piece of clarity which I am happy to share with you for free.

An artist’s blog is her sketchbook, diary, scrapbook, studio, and gallery. It is a place to put her work out there in the universe without restraint or judgment.

Gone are the days when artists would share just the finished work while carefully hiding the messy process of creation. Today’s audience wants to know about the actual process of making art. They want to see raw work, the artist’s hands smeared with paint, her floor covered with crumpled paper.

This is what I will be sharing with you from now on.

The other clarity was about productivity.

How would I know my day has been productive?

I have finally figured out if I have something to share on the blog (whether it is a paragraph, a quote, a sketch, anything) I have been productive.

Daily dispatch is the only way to make sure that I have not wasted the day. I am accountable to my audience.

If I live by this rule, then I will be working on something that will go on the blog from the start of the day. I am free to do whatever I want to do each day. Whether I want to write an article or a story or even a poem or whether I feel like sketching, painting, or making a travel journal. Or it might just be my thoughts about a book I am reading… they all count. The rest, so-called ‘work,’ is just noise.

The above canvases are this weekend’s work; this post is today’s.

Future Library

Neera

In the north of Oslo, a forest is being planted which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in 100 years in 2114.

Planted in 2014, this forest is the brainchild of a Scottish artist Katie Paterson, who wanted to create an original library of 100 manuscripts from established authors, to be printed 100 years in the future.

In an interview to CNN she said:

I was on a train doodling and drawing tree rings and I just made a very fast connection between the rings and chapters in a book, and the idea of trees becoming books in the future and growing over time.

[…]

And so I imagined this forest, that embodied time and the authors’ words, growing over a century. And each author’s voice became like a chapter inside the growing rings of the trees. That was many years ago, but I never thought that it was actually going to happen.

Between 2014 and 2114, one writer every year will contribute a text, which will be held in trust, unread and unpublished, until the year 2114. The manuscripts will be stored in a specially designed room in the new public library, Oslo.

Five years ago, Margaret Atwood, became the first writer to participate in the project. Her book is titled ‘Scribbler moon,’ and she believes that readers in 2114 may require a ‘paleo-anthropologist’ to decode some of it, because of how the language would have evolved over the course of a century.

Atwood was not allowed to show her book to anyone. She flew with it to Norway and tied it with a blue ribbon, hoping that she wouldn’t be arrested if a Customs Officer asked her to open the box and she refused.

The Wall Street Journal

Other contributing writers to date include David Mitchell (2015), Sjón (2016), Elif Shafak (2017), and Han Kang (2018).

For the full story go to CNN.

To me, the whole project is a tribute to the written words. Written words are the only thing that stays long beyond its creator.

That is one reason to make art.

Another thought; aren’t forests like libraries, and each tree a book.

Routine vs Spontaneity

Neera 1 Comment

I have just come back from a four-day trip to Melbourne. Prior to the trip, I spent days doing things for the blog to run smoothly. Before I left, I spent the morning packing my laptop and the whole kit and caboodle to be fully productive during the short break.

I did nothing of the sort.

Instead, I caught up with friends, ate lavish meals and talked non-stop.

The occasion was a friend’s 70th birthday. All of our friends were there and we had a ball celebrating life. Even rain and terrible winds didn’t stop us from merrymaking.

On Saturday morning, we went for a walk to the Organ Pipes (a million-year-old rock formation on the north-west of Melbourne formed by cooling and cracking volcanic lava).

On Sunday we did absolutely nothing other than eating, talking and viewing holiday photographs.

Organ Pipes at Organ Pipes National Park

After months of being a prisoner of self-imposed routine as a blogger, I had so much fun that the rebel in me said, “That’s it. No more schedules. Just do what you feel like. Be spontaneous rather than regimented.”

Believe me when I say I was tempted.

Lying in the bed in the half-asleep-half-awake state I was ready to throw out of the window, the routines and rituals, which took me months to establish and cement when the first routine kicked in.

For the past few weeks, I have been following a morning routine which has made my mornings extra special. As per this routine, the first thing I do as soon as I wake up is – meditation.

So I decided to ponder on it during the meditation.

Routine or spontaneity, that is the question.

Routines are excellent if you want to do something on a consistent basis, one of the best ways to manage day-to-day stress. A daily routine creates comfort and provides a mindless and stress-free way to conquer daily tasks with as little energy and effort as possible. A routine allows you to: accomplish more, have better mental health, help better manage time, break bad habits, choose how your day progresses and stop procrastination.

Spontaneity, on the other hand, is like romance, unpredictable but exciting. It adds pizzaz to life, making it interesting. It helps you think outside the box, find new connections and unique solutions.

There seem to be people who enjoy and thrive on routines and others who prefer to be spontaneous. I am like a pendulum who swings from one end to another.

I like routines and I am quite disciplined to follow them but the lure of spontaneity is too much for me to resist. After some time every routine becomes too monotonous for me and I become restless. I feel like an animal trapped in a cage and want to break free. On these days, no amount of security created by routine soothes my spirit; an escape is the only thing that will work.

That may be the case with all creative souls. After all, they say:

So the answer that revealed itself during the meditation was – build spontaneity in your routine, and when the spontaneity calls don’t worry about breaking the routines. Because it means I am on the verge of a breakthrough.

Did you notice the change on my site display? It is in response to one such call of spontaneity.

I will leave that story for another day.