Latest / Energy With Alex / 7. The Lost Art of Having Hobbies
Transcript
- Alex Williams: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Energy with Alex podcast. I'm Alex, your host, and this is your space to romanticize your life so that you can drop into the present moment and find magic in every single day. This is also a place you can always come to for honest truths and deep conversations and a lot of fun too. I am so excited to have you here. Let's get started. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode. I am hoping that you all had a beautiful week full of connections and opportunities and laughter. And I have had a wonderful week. I am continuing To train for my 10K. So in a couple weeks, my family and I, my in-laws and I, are going to go to Kansas City for the Garmin Marathon race, which is gonna be fantastic. We are cheering my sister-in-law on for her very first marathon. we all decided that we wanted to sign up for our own races as well and train for that. So this gets to be like a celebratory weekend where we all get to work on something. So My husband and me and my mother-in-law are doing a 10K and my father-in-law is doing a 5K. And so this gets to be a time where we just get to celebrate that we have all worked so hard towards one goal. And it could be different paces, different distances, different races, but we have all done our own individual work to train for something that is a challenge to us, that pushes us out of our comfort zone, and is something that we genuinely enjoy. And so I'm very excited for that. And it kind of is what I want to talk about on our episode today, which is the concept of starting a new hobby as an adult. I think that this is a lost art that so many adults lose as they get older. And it's very sad because As children, we are usually blessed with so much more time and so much more confidence and bravery, we're able to really explore whatever it is that we want to explore, whether it is music or sports or writing or reading or cooking, whatever it is, it's like we get to explore it when we are children and it's fun and it doesn't mean anything. And then as we get older, I think, well, first of all, it's hard to prioritize it when we have so many of our own responsibilities and so many things that seem so important. And they are. I mean, we all have bills to pay. We all have people and families to take care of. And while those are the most Important priorities, it doesn't mean that the priorities of the things that really bring us just pure joy should be pushed aside or forgotten. And so I want to use this episode as just a little initiation for everyone, a challenge to start to think about if there is something that you have wanted to start or Just something that you've been considering starting up as a hobby and actually going for it. And we talk about the things that we would love to learn, we'd love to try, the hobbies we'd love to take up if we just had more time or if it was less money or if it was this or that. And so I want to challenge you to actually sign up for something and start a hobby. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be expensive. In fact, I actually think it's really beautiful to do something Just very simple. It doesn't have to be like this big expensive class or course. And I actually think that that is one of the things that has gotten skewed with social media when it comes to hobbies, is in this age of social media, I think we're always trying to get the most out of everything and trying to get the most opportunity out of everything. And so when we do get a hobby, it's kind of like, well, I barely have time for it. So if I am gonna bring a hobby into my life. It needs to be like we need to max it out with as much opportunity as possible. How can this hobby get me more followers? Or how can I make money with this hobby right away? while those things are wonderful, and it's such a beautiful thing that we live in a day and age where we can actually. Post things online and make money from them and gain community. And I absolutely love that. I have personally learned breath work, and that has been an incredible tool for me to be able to build community and make money. But I also want us to start looking at hobbies a little bit differently, especially when we're starting something new. It doesn't always have to be like maxing it out for the most opportunity. Sometimes, a lot of times, we should be doing it just because it Brings us joy, doing it for the art of just being, for the art of being a human and being present. when we're children, most of the time we are blessed with so much time And we just we feel like we can do anything. And so if something is interesting to us, we get to actually try it and we get to actually do it. And I think it's a shame that as we get older, we don't actually continue those hobbies or start anything new. But if we take away the fact that it always has to be something that is going to make us money or we have to be good at it right away, then maybe we would actually start that sport that we want to start. Because it doesn't matter if you're starting it at 30 or 40 or 50 years old. You're not here to become a professional athlete. You're not here to do anything other than enjoy the sport that you're starting up. So start it. And then you get some movement in, then you get some community with your team. Team, and you just get to most importantly have time with yourself and do something for you. We all have so many things that we are responsible for, and Those should always be top priority. But I think right up there, we should be prioritizing our own happiness and the things that bring us joy simply because it's fun. Fun is so underrated. It is so important because when you are happy and when your cup is full, you really do have more time and more space to be able to give to others around you. And even though you may be like, well, when my cup is empty, I'm Still able to give to my family. I'm sure you are. But when you're able to give from a full cup, from your happiest, fullest version of yourself, the way that you give is so much better. There's no chance of resentment or emptiness or exhaustion, that deep feeling of exhaustion you get after a day of just doing and doing and doing for other people without ever having a moment's time for yourself and your own enjoyment. this kind of reminds me of a story of Years ago, I was really feeling down. I was going through a very hard season of depression and this lack of zest for life. I felt very purposeless. I've talked about it a little bit in previous episodes. And this might seem so silly, but something that genuinely helped me was I decided to sign up for singing lessons. I was first how this first happened is I was walking through some sort of outdoor mall and I walked into this music store and they had ukuleles and I've always been drawn to ukuleles because they seem like such they seemed like such a relatively easy instrument to learn and I've always thought they were very cute and they're much lower price than a lot of the other instruments. And so I was looking at all of them and I thought they were so beautiful. And I started talking to the salesperson and they convinced me to just give it a try. Just get a ukulele. So I ended up getting one and I was looking on YouTube videos of how to start playing it. And I thought, wouldn't this be fun if I could actually like sing along to it as well? Now I do think I have a nice singing voice. I have always enjoyed singing, but I was like, how fun would it be if I could just push myself out of my comfort zone and actually get singing lessons and just like pick it up as a hobby for a while. I don't have any intention of becoming a singer. I don't want to perform in front of different audiences. I don't really have any interest in having that be a career or the way that I make money online I simply wanted to do it for me and because it kind of scared me, it kind of almost embarrassed me because I'm like gosh, I don't know how I'm gonna be. And then I'm meeting with this singing instructor, and she's having me try these songs that are way out of my range, and kind of having me use my voice in a way I never have before in front of a person I didn't even know. And the spark that it started to bring back into my life was monumental. Because it was just something different that kind of shook things up. I think when we're stuck, oftentimes it's just easy to stay in our same routine and to just kind of assume that that's always how we're gonna be. And we have so many wonderful tools that are there for us to be able to try to move some of that stuck energy. But sometimes I feel like just going out and living your life in a different way for a moment, like doing something like that, really shakes things up and kind of brings you back and makes. You realize, like, my gosh, I've been asleep for the last year and I've really lost my love for life. And now I'm doing something completely different. And it could be something small. I mean, I met her up with her once a week for just a few months. while I was doing that, I learned the ukulele on the side. And now it's just like a fun little thing that I have. It's a hobby that I get to do when I feel like Picking up the ukulele and learning a new song. And I never actually did anything with the singing lessons, but it was just a fun experience that I did just for me. And so I want to challenge each and every one of you that is listening today to do something that you have always wanted to do simply for the fact that you think it'll be fun. If you think baking is something you've always wanted to give a try, but maybe you're nervous baking in front of other people and having them try everything. What if you just simply spent an evening to yourself or a morning to yourself whenever you had a little bit extra time and you worked really hard on a beautiful pie or muffins or cupcakes or cake? And you just did it just because you're not trying to, you don't even need to give it to anybody. You can enjoy that by yourself. You could bake a cake and if you like it, then share some or a muffin. If you like it, share some with your neighbors afterwards. But like there's no pressure. You don't need to sell these. You don't need to prove yourself to anybody. You get to do it simply because you're a human on this earth that wants to play around with food and flavor. And it's just a fun, wonderful experience. To be able to do that. maybe you played a sport when you were younger and now you feel like you're you're so much older, and I just don't know, try it again. Join a team, a local community team. It's just such a great opportunity to be able to do something for you. you've always loved art, or maybe even if you don't know if you're good at art, maybe you think you're bad at it. I personally have never thought I was good at like drawing or painting, but maybe I'll push myself out of my comfort zone one day and actually try a class or buy a few art supplies and learn how to just paint something very simple. Who knows? I think another obstacle with hobbies is we think that we have to be naturally good at it right away. But if the pressure is gone and if the only reason we're doing it is because it's fun, then it doesn't matter if it is the absolute worst thing you have ever done, if you're the worst in the class, or if you just every time you try it, you're like, that that's not that great, but it was so much fun, then do it and just see how it shakes up things in your life. I think it is such a wonderful opportunity to do things simply because it is fun and no other reason. You don't need to be a pro at it. You don't need to buy a bunch of expensive things for it. Now, if you start it and you realize you absolutely love it, like with me with running, when you start running, it's free. And I realized how much I loved the sport. And so I did start to invest a little bit in good running shoes, a running belt, and some races. And that has been a really cool experience. But I still don't know if I would consider myself good, and I put that in quotations. I mean, someone might think that I'm really slow, or someone might think that you know my endurance is still not where maybe other people's are, surely not, but I enjoy it. I think it's fun, and I feel good when I do it. Paying attention to the way that things make you feel when you're doing it is so important. Because when we are doing things that make us feel good, there is just this energy shift within us. And I think it's time that we start prioritizing our own personal energetic health. We make sure that we are taking care of ourselves physically every day, We make sure we shower and brush our teeth and take care of our skin and our hair. And that's a way that we tend to ourselves and then we make sure that we take care of ourselves with the foods that we eat and our movement and our exercise. And so let's start taking care of our energetic health. That is such a wonderful thing to make sure that you're tending to. So at the end of the day, just like you've made sure that you've showered and you've brushed your teeth and you've done your skincare, that's a way that you tend to your overall health. Health. And so taking care of our energetic health is so important. So at the end of the night, why don't you ask yourself, like, what did I do to enrich my own personal energy? Did I do something that I enjoyed? And it doesn't have to be this long, time-consuming thing. We don't all have a lot of time. But I do know that in the mornings when I drink my hot drink, I always usually have time to read. And reading is my favorite hobby in the absolute world. I love it so much, and I make sure to prioritize it the first thing and the last thing of the day. Now that doesn't mean that I'm always going to read 10 chapters. Sometimes I have time to read one page, five pages, one chapter. sometimes before bed, I'm so tired by the end of the day that I can't just tear through a whole nother part of the book. But I can read a few pages and just kind of Tune my body back into knowing that it's time to transition into sleeping time, and that is a beautiful way that I do that. And so as I am in bed, I can read just a couple pages, and it makes a difference because now I know I've done something for me that makes me feel good. So I just wanted to challenge each and every one of you to do a little something out of your comfort zone. This month, this season. We're in a new season. It's fall. And so maybe it is baking. the other day I made banana bread for the first time, this pumpkin banana bread, and it was good. It wasn't great. I think I beat the flour for a little bit too long. but it was just a fun thing to do. it kind of took up a little bit of my day, but I had some extra time. And if you think about it, a lot of times we Say we don't have enough time, and then we scroll on Instagram for 30 minutes or an hour. And so, why don't you brick your phone? And you will find that in the moments that you don't have time, you're probably picking up your phone and you are trying to open that app to scroll. And then there goes five minutes, there goes 10 minutes. That could have been time that you were spent doing something that actually energetically gives back rather than takes away, which I think there's a time and a place to enjoy a good scroll, but it is energetically draining. So we want to be careful that we're not doing it constantly throughout the day. And so that could have been, let's say I just have. 10 minutes of my day and I scrolled, that could have been time to read a chapter of my book or to write a little bit in my journal or to pull a card and practice tarot or maybe to look up a new recipe to try later, We have an opportunity here to bring fun back as adults. Do something out of your comfort zone. Do something not because you think you're naturally good at it, not because you think it's going to get you anything other than to give you more energy, more authenticity in yourself and confidence in the fact that you prioritize your own fun. Is so important. It is one of the most important things because we're only here for a short time and life is meant to be enjoyed and it can be really easy to get stuck. And so I just want to give you a little challenge to unstick yourself and see what happens when you take that singing lesson or you take a class on baking, or maybe you just look up a recipe on YouTube and you try to do it yourself. maybe you have had a book on your mind for a long time. Write that first chapter. There are so many hobbies that we get to do just simply for ourselves. And I want to bring that back a little bit in a time and age where we're trying to just max everything into the most opportunities. Because I think the greatest opportunity we are missing is to have a little bit of fun in our day and release a little bit of the stress and tension and over. overwhelm stuck energy is moved with breath, sound, and movement. And that can be somatically, that can be energetic practices, but it can also just be the movement of doing something different. Getting up and going for a beautiful walk or going and trying to run a mile for the first time in quite a while. moving your body by doing a new sport or moving the paintbrush. There are so many beautiful things that you can do and you can try. And I want you to do it simply for you. And that's it. All right. Let me know what you end up trying. I'm so excited to hear. And I'm right there with you reading my books and going on runs. And I'm excited to try some new things soon as well. All right. Talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Energy with Alex podcast. If you loved this conversation, it would mean so much if you could share it with your community and like, rate, and subscribe to the podcast so that I can continue having these incredible conversations every single week. I will see you next Thursday.