Quitting For The Love of Your Geysers
I believe that there are beautiful things always bubbling up inside of us, aching and oozing to come out, and the most precious of them more than likely feel unsure and unsafe. They are words without a sure place to land, passions without a clear way forward, or children inside that remember too well what happened last time they made themselves known. Maybe they’re not socially (or tribally) acceptable or the things we should say, the way we should behave. These oozing, bubbling things, attached to a grand and creative spirit so much bigger than ourselves, are the geysers erupting from the Yellowstone of our lives, promising little certainty, certainly no comfort, instead, a tremendous abundance of full life and wholeness.
Those things- the geysers in Yellowstone- the earth shifting, startling things inside demanding love and justice also demand tremendous time and care. When we commit to one of these, when we decide to take in the enormity of that geyser bursting from our earth and give it time to make itself known, we will need more than we know to give it now.
The dream we are actively pursuing hits a brick wall because of a pandemic.
We need more to do this than we thought.
The new job that makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt in a workplace is not making enough money to support myself or my family.
We need more to do this than we thought.
This worthwhile relationship is actually showing me some pretty dark and difficult parts of myself.
We need more to do this than we thought.
The right words to say aren’t coming for this important conversation or meeting.
We need more to do this than we thought.
My introduction to the practice of quitting that I now have came from Bob Goff’s recent book, Dream Big. Bob Goff spends a lot of time talking about the resources we’ll need to pursue our deepest passions, and in one chapter he introduces a practice that I have found can be used to make space for our geysers: Quit one thing every week. Pick a day of the week (he recommends Thursdays, and without putting a pin on precisely why, I second his recommendation) to quit the thing. Follow through. Keep quitting.
Since pursuing the Artist’s Way last year (and now, starting it again), I have found that for myself tiny, nearly invisible changes are more impactful in the long run than complete clearings, clean slates, and all-or-nothing type actions. In the quitting I’ve done over the last several weeks, I’ve tried to implement this tiny change mentality.
The first thing I quit was looking at social media first thing in the morning. This one was a quit that had sat in me waiting for action awhile, as constant comparison is such a difficult thing to get unstuck from first thing in the morning. I trusted that mornings with as much space to come into my own through morning pages or exercise were the BEST mornings. Plus, when I meant first thing in the morning I meant while still in bed, gaining consciousness or in the first 5-10 minutes of walking around in the world. This was not a monumental task. I kept the quit and I found that my respect for what might come in the early mornings continued to grow and that I now start the day with a clearer headspace, not missing the angst of scrolling first thing.
Today, I committed to quit hitting the snooze on my alarm. (The people I live with are likely going to read this and now hold me to it… whoops. If you’ve ever lived with me, bless you for bearing with my half hour plus of alarms every day.) This will be a tougher quit, but I know that this intentionality will force me to think about how much sleep I really need, how much time I want in the morning, etc. I discover through a series of quits, intentional morning time is nonnegotiable for me. Quitting empowers boundary building (In fact, quitting is a boundary!). Quitting empowers no’s, because we all have an incredible and loud and vibrant YES inside waiting so, so patiently for us. Quitting simply requires action.
Of course, quits can be bigger than a tiny change. They don’t have to be small. Many of Bob Goff’s quits weren’t. Quit a job, quit owning a vehicle, quit a half-assed commitment you didn’t really like having anyway. You can also quit things that are perfectly good, and perfectly wonderful, just not perfectly good or wonderful for you at this time. On a week when you’re afraid you’ve got nothing to quit, get curious about it. There’s something to let go of, we’ve all got things we could afford to quit. Through this practice, I am actively seeking to empower myself beyond quits needing to be all-or-nothing or done forever deals. Think of it as a loosening of the grip.
Ultimately, I want most to be brave, because geysers are a-waiting and oh my goodness, they’ll take our breath away. Just you wait and see… and share yours with us!
As I am diving in to this practice deeper myself, I invite you to think about quits as rolling away the stones on the surface blocking, as moving the lava in the depths of the earth so that the layers above have the chance to break and bend until the geyser erupts.
Remember that we need more to do *this* than we thought. That’s okay, in fact, it’s astoundingly wonderful, because it means we’re living full lives. Quitting clears the way, moves things around, gets us just scared enough, builds our nonattachment. Building the habit of quitting brings us back to the things we’ll hold to for dear life.
SO FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE YOU THAT’S TO COME, JUST QUIT IT ALREADY! <3