My Year of Not Doing A Thing

At the beginning of every calendar year, I pick up or create one or two new mindfulness related practices to integrate into my daily or weekly routine throughout the year. Then, at the end of the year, I discontinue them, in order to start back up with different practices for the next year. 

I’ve really enjoyed this annual tradition. It helps me to keep my practice fresh and allows me to be creative, which I find especially nourishing. I’ve dubbed my practice for 2023 as: the year of not doing something. (See OG post about this here.) This post serves as a status update about how things have been going. 

As a bit of background, some previous practices I’ve picked up at the beginning of the year include: eating all my meals with my non-dominant hand (I did this one last year in 2022 & I don’t mind telling you I was glad to be done with it at the end of December); staying in the bathroom whilst brushing my teeth, instead of wandering around the house trying to multi-task while brushing; 52-weeks of gratitude (I sent a thank you postcard via postal mail each week to someone, an organization, or a business I was grateful for; 2019); and a number of different driving based practices to help me tend to my frustration levels on the road. 

This year’s practice involved a bit more of a learning curve, as it is less straight forward than most of the other practices I’ve done over the years. So it took me a little while to get a feel for exactly what it would look like. Since the beginning of January, I’m averaging at least one small thing that I practice not doing each week. I’ve also been writing down the thing I don’t do each week, to help me keep track. Sometimes I do this practice twice a week. Now that it’s become more engrained into my routine, I’m to the point where I’m not always jotting down the things I’m not doing, which is just fine, as keeping track was simply a way to hold myself personally accountable for engaging with this new practice on a weekly basis and not forget.