Last week, while listening to my favorite podcast (Dean Dwyer’s Making Shift Happen) I realized that I had a practice that I had in place that empowered me and I wasn’t doing that anymore.  I’m not sure why I stopped doing it…but I had.  Every day I learned something new or heard something really cool I’d put it on a post-it note and put it on this piece of art I have in my office.  I’ve had this piece of art for over 10 years.  It’s not really art…it probably has no value to anyone other than me.  It’s a lithograph of Picasso’s The Joy of Living.  It’s old and faded and has chips in the frame and scratches from being moved around over the years.  Again, it probably has no value to anyone other than me because I’ve had it for so long.  I just like having something called The Joy of Living around me.  It inspires me to know that’s what it is…so I’ve kept it.

Some time two years ago, I started to hang post it notes along the frame of the picture to remind me of cool things I’d learned.  It worked.  I’d look at this every day.  And I’d read something I needed to read for that very day.  It was my own personal inspiration board.  And people would come into my office to look at the board.  They would see the quotes I had posted and they’d get something from it too.  So it worked for everyone!  It was my inspiration.

At the end of the year I’d take all the post it notes off the board and wipe it clean for the new year.  I put all the post-it notes in a file folder for the year so I could look back on them if needed.  So I have two folders from the past two years filled with notes and inspirations and good stuff.  I love it.

But this year…I’ve left the board blank.  It’s not that I’ve not been inspired or haven’t heard anything motivating or positive.  It’s just, for whatever reason, I stopped sharing.  I stopped taking a moment and putting it on a post-it note and putting it on the artwork.  And you know what?  I forgot.  I forgot I used to do it and I forgot to start it back up.  Something that worked so well for me and that I loved to do, I stopped doing it.  Why I stopped isn’t important.  But today I remembered.

Sometimes we stop doing what works because we think we don’t need to continue it or because we’ve grown out of it.  When I was trying to lose a bunch of weight recently I wrote down everything I ate.  It wasn’t hard.  It only took a moment.  And my trainer and I could look at what I had eaten and determine if I needed to make any changes.  It really worked so well.  I recorded my exercise.  I did it on my iPhone and that seemed to work really well.  Then one day, I stopped doing it.  Maybe I got bored.  Maybe I just got busy.  Maybe a little of both.  But I stopped doing something that worked for me.  Today I started back up.

Today I put up a couple of post-it notes.  One of them was something I’d learned a very long time ago…that no matter where you are…you have to start right there.  If you used to do something that worked for you, but for whatever reason you stopped doing it, you can start doing it today…right now.  You have to start right where you are.  There’s no other place to start really!

The pictures below are my board from last year.  The first picture is my new board for this year.  You can click on the images below to see some of the notes close up.  There’s no better time than right now to start back up!  It really is doing what works!

What can you start back up that you haven’t been doing or practicing?