I’m not sure if you know this but…
a vibrant, colorful, luscious life is already in existence, all around you, right now.
The feelings that seem so far out of reach: joy, excitement, hopefulness, relaxation…are available to you, floating around you, right where you’re at.
So many of us feel trapped in this dreary hamster wheel, thinking the only way to get a more exciting existence would be a massive, inaccessible change in your life (new jobs, new cities, new friends) or a huge makeover of yourself (new routines, new therapists, new brains that actually have some semblance of executive functioning).
Like we’ve either got to change everything that sucks around us or fix all that’s wrong within us before anything can get even slightly more fun.
Neither of those sound very doable (or very enjoyable). So we keep scrolling, living vicariously through influencers and celebrities, whispering “just gotta get through this week” to ourselves on Monday morning. Every Monday morning.
This feels normal. This is the best regular, non-millionaire humans like us can expect.
We’re here to present another option:
What if your attention, your focus, is the only thing that would have to shift for your experience of life to drastically change?
To be clear: Your triggers, hardships, and setbacks are real. They deserve processing and grieving, they impact your life in important ways. This is true.
And.
Woven within and throughout those exact same dark spots you’re so familiar with, there is so much light.
There is birdsong and beauty that you’ve been walking past without a single glance, every day. There are lovable, admirable things about you that have been going unnoticed (or discounted as unimportant) your whole life.
These things are also real and deserve to be a felt part of your life experience.
If they were part of the story you tell yourself about what the world looks like, how differently might you feel about yourself, about your life?
Learning to notice and appreciate what is good will shift your quality of life drastically - not by ignoring the hard shit, just by making sure that hard shit isn’t the only character that gets to have a voice.
We owe it to ourselves to tell a full, honest, and balanced story. To ensure that the fear we’ve learned to be hypervigilant towards and the ennui we’ve come to expect aren’t monologuing uninterrupted, but are having dialogue with the signs of safety and beauty that can ground and assist them.
But that shift isn’t just going to happen because you want it to or know it’s important. If that were the case, every one of us who’s ever pinned a Mary Oliver quote on Pinterest or liked a TikTok about romanticizing our life would have gotten there already!
Tuning into delight is a learned skill that needs practice.
Here is your chance to practice.
Over one week, we will put accessible, daily work into training our attention to notice beauty. Shifting our gaze, widening our focus to include more of life.
The joy we source in this practice is not a product of trying to fix ourselves or change our lives. The joy we source in this practice is the joy that was already happening all around us, waiting for us to let it in.
The specifics: One week of scavenger hunt prompts delivered to your email inbox every morning, bookended by two virtual workshops to learn the perspectives and tools needed to see the world around you in all its sparkly glory, and then create even more sparkly glory from what you find!
recordings for both workshops will be available for those who can’t join live
Workshop #1: Sunshine Hunting 101
Thursday, June 20th, at 8pm Eastern, via zoom
led by Frankie Simmons
learn about glimmers (the opposite of triggers), and why noticing the goodness around us is so healing for our brain!
create your personal glossary of delight - an encyclopedia of what the experience of life you’re craving actually looks like irl.
learn how to play scientist with your own life, building a willingness for experimentation and practice that makes all manner of new things possible!
Then, go out into the world for a full week, supported by daily emails full of prompts and clues, to practice the art of noticing! Do simple daily work (think like 5 minutes a day), to train your brain to look for beauty where it exists. Gather evidence and build a case for life’s goodness.
We’ll close things out with…
Workshop #2: Poetry as Time Capsule
Thursday, June 27th, at 8pm Eastern, via zoom
led by Giselle Buchanan
In this workshop, we will read poems inspired by the practice of wonder and write our own based on the adventures we have collected throughout the week.
We will explore using a poetry as a way to practice the art of noticing and to hold a magnifying glass to our moments of beauty, so we can keep record of what can at times be fleeting feelings.
Be prepared to listen, write and cultivate awe.
This week is for everyone who is:
tired of spending more time living vicariously through the people on their phone than they are living fully in their real world
desiring a reason to get outside more often
yearning to see themselves as a creative, knowing it’s been years since they had a single idea they were excited about
daunted and exhausted by the endless stream of “self improvement” hacks they scroll past, feeling like their lack of desire to devote hours a day to an elaborate morning routine disqualifies from having a life they enjoy
If that sounds like you, we would love to have you join us!
SCHOLARSHIP SLOTS AVAILABLE ~ EMAIL SUPPORT@GISELLEBUCHANAN.COM
PLEASE NOTE: The workshop is offered on a sliding scale to make it accessible to more people. We trust you to choose an appropriate price, based on what you can afford. Paying as much as you are truly able to allows us to offer this workshop for free to low-income participants sustainably.