My whole life I have been seeking a silver bullet: one that will make all my problems go away, answer all of my hardest questions, and bring me everlasting peace and joy. Popular self-help culture promises these things in a variety of packages, and rarely delivers. That's not because there is no silver bullet, it's because the silver bullet is so simple that our human brains want to complicate it. We build empires around these complications because we think that if it's expensive it's valuable. If it's difficult, it's worthwhile. This isn't true, but it makes sense to us. The silver bullet couldn't possibly be free. The silver bullet couldn't possibly be easy.
But it is. The silver bullet is meditation. Free and easy.
I'm not "good" at meditating. Sometimes I just sit and think for 20 minutes. Sometimes I fall asleep--neither of which are transcendental experiences. But sometimes (rarely) a thing happens: I connect to God. I call it God because language is insufficient to describe an indescribable thing. I understand that God is not out there somewhere in the sky or in the universe or outside of me. I feel God inside me. It makes me cry, it's so beautiful. As a person who doesn't even really believe in God, let me tell you, it's a game changer. I realize that the act of meditating--the act of sitting still and quieting my mind--is a performance, my audience is eternity, and eternity is within me. I show up to my own deeper wisdom, and my problems have gone away, my hardest questions are answered, and I have everlasting peace and joy.
The problem is that when I am not in this deep meditation, these things don't always feel true. There's a physical world that can not help but interfere with my bliss. I begin making excuses to not meditate. I begin to look outside of myself for answers, for comfort, for validation. So the real work becomes less about the meditation, and more about all of the other choices I make throughout my day, and whether they support me to create the time and space that I need to sit with my eyes closed for 20 minutes.
As an artist/designer/maker, I need to constantly remind myself that the most important things I make are choices. It's true for everyone, but especially for those of us who are concerned with the quantity and quality of our own creative output. So how does one make a choice? And more importantly, how does one make a good choice? I put together a few ideas to help me make better choices--and put it into a little pocket sized book so that I can peek in and access my own inner wisdom every time I am paralyzed or overwhelmed by choice. I made a few extra copies, because I think it might be handy for you too.