Hello and great to see you again. This is funny because many of the people reading this also hear from me on Sunday, yet writing on a Wednesday morning has a completely different energy as we’re in the middle of the work week. I just got back from the gym, I’m finishing my coffee and ready to go…
I’ve been reading Meditation is Not What You Think by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the person credited with bringing meditation into the medical community under the umbrella of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). His books are good primers on mindfulness, making it digestible for a busy “Westernized” audience.
There was something in this book that caught my attention that I want to share with you today. It’s the idea of Scaffolding.
In the context of meditation, Kabat-Zinn refers to scaffolding as the rituals that we employ to get into a state of mindfulness. This includes cushions, essential oils, apps, timers, and possibly even signing up for workshops and retreats. They are tools that take the meditator inwards, because it’s much easier to go about your day and simply not spend time in meditation.
Yet these tools, or scaffolding, are not the point of the exercise. Even the seated meditation or yoga ritual are not the point of the exercise. The point is something much deeper, possibly the reconnection of yourself in context to the universe, or just simple awareness itself.
And so we don’t really need a monthly subscription to Headspace in order to experience mindfulness, yet many of us do need that tool to go inwards. Over time, maybe we won’t require the subscription as we become more mindful, but to start with, sometimes we just need a bit of a boost.
In your creative life, scaffolding includes the tools that you use to make your work happen. The training that you invest in to get better at your craft. And yes, the monthly subscriptions that pile up if we’re not careful.
There is also a form of scaffolding in terms of finding a ritual that works for you. For example, I can’t really write a newsletter until I journal into my Morning Pages system (it really has become a system at this point). With coffee. I can’t effectively do anything until I write in these journals to be honest. The coffee is important, but it feels like the writing part is what maintains my sanity.
Other people might burn essential oil, do meditation, go on Focusmate, go for walk or use whatever feels right in the moment.
Whatever you use to get you into the zone, it might be helpful to write some of these things out. They are the scaffolding of your Most Creative Work and they’re important tools to help you when you get lost and you need to find your way back home.
Exercise: Write out 5 things that help get you into the groove of Your Most Creative Work:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Thanks and see you next Wednesday,
Elliott
I love this imagery and idea — mostly because scaffolding is meant to be temporary and I naturally resist long-term rituals.