New Voices In Your Head - A Genius Dinner Party

How would your life and your life’s work be impacted if you mastered understanding of your greatest sources of inspirations, and sought counsel from them?

Who are your muses, living and dead? Who are the artist, leaders, master in your field, explorers, social changers, business icons, performers, innovators, musicians, and philosophers who are dynamic, compelling, and inspiring to you?

Your muse can also be a piece of art, a poem, a country, a constellation, a myth or story, a historical time period, and beyond. When you think of your muse, you feel alive. Your soul is sparked. Your intellect is bursting. You feel empowered. You feel positively transformed. Your thinking, being, and feelings expand. You shift your perspective. You feel a deeper connection to yourself and what matters to you.

Here’s the fun part.

Write a list of 7 muses, and the qualities of each that inspire you. This might take a while, and that’s ok. You get to comb your life and consider what really matters to you.

Here’s my list for today, and a super brief explanation of why they inspire me:

Antonia’s character in the Dutch film, Antonia’s Line - she’s fierce
Starhawk, author of The Fifth Sacred Thing - she fights for a better world
Khalil Gibran, author of The Prophet - he is wise and beautiful
Krista Tippet, Creator of the podcast On Being - she goes deep and listens well
The Book of Poetry by Sam Taylor (it’s a poem) - unfurling hilarity of difference
James Cordon (I love carpool karaoke) - so fun and down to earth and touchable
Rhinoceros, a play by Ionesco - absurdity and a message to be yourself (or turn into a rhinoceros)

Now you try it. Write a list of your muses, and the qualities about them that you greatly admire.

Ask yourself:

How does each muse show me areas within myself, my life, and my work that I would like to further deepen and cultivate?

Next, invite these muses to hang out with you. You can do this a myriad of ways. One way, which I’ve done several times with great fun, is to invite 7 friends to my apartment for dinner. I assign each of them a muse to study before the dinner, and then they show up to dinner as a hybrid of themselves and their assigned muse.

From there, I run ideas, projects, and personal conundrums by my team, and they advise me in the voices of my muses. It’s enlightening for all, we get to know each other through our creative and philosophical interests, and it’s joyous,

Another option is to have imaginary conversations with your muses in your head or as you journal. Take them in. Listen to their voices. Sense their energy of wisdom, protection, strength, and other qualities specific to them. See what comes up.

This method of talking to your muses can apply to so many creations and decision.

Want to launch a project? What would Gloria Steinem, Warren Buffet, Joan Baez, Nicola Tesla, ambergris, and Aphrodite say to you about your project?

Showing up to a tough conversation or meeting? How would Ghandi, Michelle Obama, Amelia Earhart, Mick Jagger, Shakespeare, Robyn Davidson, and Tim Ferriss advise you?

The possibilities are limitless.

We can all listen to the voices in our head. Sometimes the voice is our vibrant wonderful self, and that voice is really what matters. To get creative and shift your perspective, welcome new voices to the conversation.

But sometimes the voices in your head represent your inner critic. You know, that voice that says you’re not enough and you don’t deserve the chocolate, the time off, the accolades, the dream, the money, the person, the peaceful resolution. That voice can feel so real. Your 7 muses offer you an alternative to your inner critic - inspiration, elevated thought, refuge and safety.

See what happens when you curate the voices in your head with your purpose, values, and inspiration. Of course, the voice that I want you to ultimately listen to is your own.

What 9 Days of Floating Taught Me

I am already a regular floater. Twice a month I enter a dark room filled with salt water, close the door, and block out all light and sound. Floating in salt water at the exact temperature of my skin, I don’t know where I begin and end.

When I float, I let go of everything. I am peaceful. I surrender. I let go of everyone else’s voice or expectation. I let go of my own expectations, to do list, relationship dynamics, my age, and what’s for dinner. I am with myself. I am in my body. I can hear my heart beat. I feel the rhythm of my blood moving beneath my skin. My breath is loud in my ears. I go inside.

I thought I’d try 9 days of floating in a row, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur - to reflect on my year, let go of what was no longer serving me, and have more clarity about the year to come. I wanted to contemplate how to write myself in the book of life, not leaving it to the almighty out there, but give it to the almighty within.

For me, part of feeling fully alive means facing and preparing for death. Accepting endings. Remaining myself during uncertainty and disappointment.

Floating has become one of the ways to release my ego and self-interest. I strip down and question the things that I think will protect me, but actually siphon my energy and deprive me of real freedom.

Would I feel vastly and deeply held by 9 days of floating?

Sometimes floating was like the equivalent of rushing to a yoga class. I have such full days (so yes, I am vibrantly alive) that it was challenging to devote about 3 hours per day to resting in a pool of water, plus the travel and hair blowdrying, and tea drinking involved. Sometimes I started out frenzied and then the experience became luscious.

By day 5, though, I was wondering - why am I doing this? Is this completely necessary?

No, not necessary. But good. I did this because that is me. I experiment. I contemplate. I do new things to see what will affect me. I also like the affect of floating. My mind becomes more clear and settled. I love working or relaxing after I float. I am clear headed and words and ideas tend to flow out of me without feeling rushed.

9 days of floating also helped me appreciate how to hold opposites at once. I slow down and I speed up. I think deeply and I eat turkey burgers. I can let myself be held by water, and I also work hard.

We sometimes believe that we need solid ground and permanence to feel steady. We need a certain dollar amount, a certain number of likes, approval from someone we think we need it from. But impermanence and liminal space is actually a very friendly place. It’s a lot more kind than building our lives on a false foundation of belief that everything is secure and will stay the same. It will not.

Floating reminds me of impermanence, of weaving in and out fast and slow, sacred and profane, your voices and my voices, of floating and standing. I feel safe in quiet and unsteadiness.

So, how can I write myself in the book of life when I know that the people I experience will change, the light coming into my kitchen window will change, the weather will change from Fall to Winter to Spring to Summer, my emotions will change, my body will change, the character on my face will deepen, and all the other invariable fluctuations?

The answer, as the hippies have said, is be here now. I want to face death, the book of life, the experience of aliveness. So I float to let go, to listen to myself, to remind myself of my animal ways, to practice receding from the world.

While there are twinges of sadness with time passing, I feel comforted that endings always lead to new beginnings.

Creating anew often means dropping something old - old behaviors, old frames, old relationships, old habits. It’s scary. We cannot know the future. But the more we can sit with impermanence, the more we can create on this day.