I had one of those random thoughts the other day that I couldn’t let go of. I realized that I am practicing my life. Not just planning it or preparing for it, but practicing it.
The more I thought about that, the more I realized we all are. Whether we notice it or not, every day we are rehearsing how we live. We repeat the same thoughts, the same reactions, the same routines, until they become so familiar that we stop seeing them at all. Eventually they no longer feel like choices. They just feel like who we are.
That made me look at my own mornings. A while back I noticed I had drifted into reaching for my phone almost as soon as I finished my coffee. I would tell myself I was only checking one thing. A few emails, a quick search, one notification. And before I knew it, the quiet morning I loved had disappeared. The journaling, the thinking, the slow start to the day, all of it had been replaced by reacting. I was not making that choice each morning. I had done it so many times that my brain simply assumed it was what came next.
So, I made one tiny change. At night, I started tying up the kitchen garbage and leaving it by the door instead of taking it out. The next morning, before I could reach for my phone, I had to pick up the bag and carry it to the can. And the moment I stepped outside, everything changed. The morning air. The sun on my face. Looking for the cat. Walking through the garden to see what was different overnight. Ten or fifteen minutes would pass before I ever thought about my phone, and by then I wanted my coffee, my journal, and the quiet that had been missing.
The garbage was not the solution. It simply interrupted the pattern I had been practicing. And that made me wonder how many other parts of my life were running on rehearsal instead of intention.
I think the same thing happens to a lot of us. We don’t wake up and decide to practice feeling overwhelmed. We don’t decide to practice rushing through every conversation, or saying yes to everyone except ourselves, or checking our phones in every quiet moment. We certainly do not choose to practice living with clutter in our homes or minds. But we repeat those things often enough that they become our normal, and then one day we wonder why life feels so exhausting.
I think it is because we confuse our intentions with our practice. Our intentions sound wonderful. We want to be calm, present, healthy, focused, patient. But our daily practice is often something else entirely. We practice multitasking. We practice rushing. We practice filling every empty space on the calendar. We practice putting ourselves last. We practice reacting instead of choosing. We practice overwhelm, and then we wonder why overwhelm feels so natural.
One of the reasons I care so much about creating space is that space interrupts the rehearsal. When our homes are crowded, and our calendars are crowded, and our minds are crowded, we spend most of the day reacting, moving from one thing to the next almost automatically. Creating space gives us the chance to pause, and that pause is where awareness begins. It is where we notice what we have been practicing. It is where we realize we have another choice.
Real change rarely begins with a dramatic decision. It begins with a small interruption in an old pattern. A pause before reaching for the phone. A walk instead of another email. Five quiet minutes before the rest of the house wakes up. One drawer instead of the whole house. One honest and meaningful conversation instead of another day of avoiding it. Those moments seem insignificant. They are not. They are rehearsals for the life that is becoming. Every repeated choice teaches your brain something, and the question is simply what it is teaching.
This week, don’t worry about changing your whole life. Just get curious. Watch yourself for a day, with interest. What are you practicing without realizing it? Which habits are leading you toward the life you want, and which ones are leading you somewhere else? In other words, what are you rehearsing every day?
Because here is the encouraging part. If you practiced your way into today’s patterns, you could practice your way into new ones. Sometimes the smallest change is enough to begin creating space for a whole new way of living. Just like putting my garbage out in the morning.
After all, we are all practicing something. The question is whether we are practicing the life we truly want.
I’ll talk to you next Monday, Meryl.
