“Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”
Indian Proverb
This resonated with me when I first read it a few months ago. I like thinking in terms of physical space as a helpful way to pay attention to aspects of life that I might overlook, and I found it interesting to consider the way these aspects are incorporated in my life.
I invite you to step into the rooms of your house and do this little exercise with me:
Take a piece of paper, divide it into four quadrants, and label them physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Now, think about the way you spend your time – at work, at home, hobbies, interests, etc., and write down your activities in the appropriate “room”. If something fits into more than one room, go ahead, and put it into multiple rooms.
This exercise started simply for me, but it didn’t take long before I realized that some, if not many, of my daily activities fit into multiple rooms. And in fact, there were very few parts of my life that were limited to just one room. I wrote down movement in my physical room right away, but I soon realized that it also fit into emotional (dancing in the kitchen to my favourite songs), mental (being curious about how my body moves and bringing that to the work of teaching and therapy), and even at times spiritual (walking in the woods on a favourite trail).
As I continued the exercise, I noticed that some rooms filled more quickly than others, and that some activities only showed up in one room. I’m curious about that room that is a little emptier, where I spend less time. Maybe I need to do more than just go in and air it out. Maybe I need to pause when I open the window, noticing my discomfort and getting curious about the ways I make the other rooms more attractive or important, noticing the excuses I make to avoid being in that room.
Looking for all the ways we mess up in life and trying to fix ourselves isn’t the point of this exercise. It’s about growing awareness and being more intentional about the opportunities and choices that exist to bring more balance, meaning and purpose into life.
Instead of scolding myself for the patterns that I’ve noticed, I’m going to ask myself how to support myself to spend more time in that room. Maybe just becoming more aware of my discomfort without needing to push it away is my first step. As I get more comfortable with spending time in that room, maybe I’ll choose to spend more time there. I wonder how spending more time in this room will shift my experiences of my other rooms….
Where do you tend to spend more time? What room(s) do you avoid? What makes you uncomfortable? What strategies have you developed to avoid discomfort? What’s the difference between being uncomfortable and being in danger? What’s one thing you can do in the coming week to get just a bit more comfortable with being uncomfortable?
