023: Daily Mindful Lettering

The practice of daily mindful lettering can have an enormous impact on your life. That’s why I created a daily workbook that is geared toward mindful lettering and in this episode, I talked about the benefits this practice can have on your mental health!
I share about what mindfulness is and how you can incorporate more mindful activities into your life. I also talk about the benefits that you can get from combining a mindful practice with creativity.
You’ll hear why you should incorporate this into your daily life for a little extra magic in your day.
What you’ll find in this episode:
What mindfulness is
Examples of things you can do mindfully or mindlessly
Why you should prioritize mindful moments in your day
What happens when you combine mindfulness and creativity
What I love about mindful lettering
Why you should make this a daily practice
Read the transcript of the episode below:
 Episode 23 - Daily Mindful Lettering

If there's anything you've heard me talk about on this podcast, it's probably the benefits of mindful lettering, but you may be wondering how to make it a regular practice in your life. This is episode 23: Daily Mindful Lettering.

Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here as we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives.

I am so glad that you're here.

Hello. Hi, and welcome back. This is episode 23 and we are going to be talking about daily mindful lettering. This episode is in conjunction with the release of a new product this Thursday. So in two days on November 19th, 2020, we will be releasing a new lettering workbook called Daily Mindful Lettering: 30 Days of Lettering Affirmations to Live with Love. I have poured my heart and soul, I was going to say blood, sweat, and tears, but I really truly have poured my heart and soul into this book.

I have heard from so many of you that you have learned the basics of lettering. You enjoy doing it even if you don't think it looks perfect. You enjoy the process of it. And you want to do more of it. Many of you told me that you've gone through the other workbooks that we have multiple times, because you just want to keep practicing and you love the mindful process of it. And you just wanted more, you wanted more ways to be able to make it a daily practice.

And that is how this new book, Daily Mindful Lettering, was born. I really wanted to create something for you that can bring a little bit of peace, a little bit of calm in just a few minutes a day. I know that most of us are busy. We have lots of people in our lives that we're trying to take care of and pour into, and it can be hard to take a lot of time and energy for ourselves to have this really nice creative time. And so I just wanted a book that made that really easy that had bite sized pieces that you could focus on and just enjoy a little moment of mindful lettering every day. And so today I'm going to talk a little bit more about daily mindful lettering.

Now, what I'm talking about today definitely will apply with this new workbook that's coming out. But even if you are just doing lettering on your own, these benefits will apply to everyone. And this really comes from mindfulness. So the definition of mindfulness, the meaning of it is just this basic human ability to be fully present aware of our bodies, our thoughts and our feelings.

I would really just put the emphasis on this awareness, this consciousness that you have in being present in the experience that you're having. So of course this means that you can do a lot of things mindfully, and you can do a lot of things mindlessly. So I wanted to give some examples of things that we can do mindfully or mindlessly.

And the first one is eating. Now, when I was first learning about mindfulness, that was back in gosh, 2006, probably one of the examples that the instructor gave was eating and they challenged us to take one meal and purposefully eat mindfully. So they talked about how you would not be also reading the news or watching something or thinking about something else.

Not that there's anything wrong with doing those things, but for the purpose of this activity, we wanted to do mindful eating. And so they talked about paying attention to your five senses and noticing what was happening, being aware of our bodies. And our emotions and our sensations. And I remember doing this, and first of all, I was just really used to maybe reading a book or doing something while I was eating.

So to be totally present while I was eating was different. It felt a little bit weird at first, because I was just so used to having other stimulation things to think about for my brain to be processed. So I started to pay attention to the food, the aroma, the texture, the taste. And also I was focusing on being aware of my body and what I was doing.

And this might sound kind of silly, but I remember paying attention to what happened when I would, you know, take a bite of food and then what would happen in my mouth and how, you know, my tongue would take that food and my tongue would push the food to the side, to my back teeth so that I could chew up the food.

And this, I know the sound might sound really silly, but I didn't really ever know that that's what was happening. I didn't really ever pay attention to how the mechanics worked when I ate and chewed food and just how my tongue would move the food around. I'm not sure that I realized just how important my tongue was in eating food.

And again, I know this might seem like a silly example, but for me it was so easy to eat on autopilot. I didn't have to think about it at all. My body has done this so many times that it's really easy for me to just eat and not be mindful or aware or conscious of the process and there's something that happens, a little bit of a relaxation that happens when I'm not trying to do five other things while I'm also eating.

Now, do I sit there and mindfully eat every single meal? No, I definitely don't and that's not necessarily my goal, but the practice, this little experiment was kind of interesting for me to not only pay attention to the mechanics of my body, but also really just enjoying the experience and, and paying attention to the other sensations in my body.

Like, what does it feel like in my stomach? Am I actually feeling satisfied or am I not paying attention until I feel really full and maybe uncomfortably full? Taking that time to be aware and conscious of the process was really eye opening for me. And like I've talked about before, the goal in my life is not to do every single thing mindfully, where I'm only paying attention to the present moment.

And I'm never thinking about the past and I'm never thinking about the future. That's absolutely not the goal. I don't know that it's possible. However, I do think that the goal can be to have a certain amount of time every day, where we are mindful, maybe it's even one time a day. I know that in the past, I've also talked about maybe choosing a time, like when you're washing your hands, where you're going to just focus on turning on the faucet and the feeling of the water going over your hands and your fingers, grabbing the soap and just all of the sensations that you're experiencing and feeling during that time. And one thing that can be helpful when you want to have a mindful moment in your day is to start by narrating it because your brain is going to want to wander and think about other things instead of being present in the moment. You can say to yourself, even out loud, I'm turning on the faucet. My fingers are, you know, my palm is pushing down on the soap and you know, now I'm lathering my hands, whatever it is that helps you to stay present. Yeah. I'm telling you guys, this is the podcast where you come to hear all the cheesy things, but they actually work.

I know that you and I are kind of like soul sisters or kind of connected in that we both are overthinkers and our brains, like to think all the time and overthink and worry. And so have you. Sometimes during the day when we are really present and allowing our brains to take a break and feeling what it feels like to be inside of our bodies can be really grounding and bringing some more peace and calm to our lives.

Now, I also believe that creativity is invigorating and nourishing. And so what happens when we combine mindfulness a mindful moment in our day with creativity. I believe it's magic, which is why I really encourage people to try mindful lettering.

And of course you have to make sure that you are in it for the process, that you're in it for the experience and not trying to prove that you are going to get it perfectly the first time that it's going to look like an expert did it. That is a recipe for disaster. If we are expecting to be perfect, which, I'm just giving you a little spoiler alert, I know that sometimes you struggle with that because you're not the only one, but if we want to experience this mindfulness and enjoy it, we have to start letting that go. And I know it's hard at first to let things be shaky and messy and not look perfect, but this is not for the world to see.

This is not to go up on a museum wall. This is for you. This is a moment for you to enjoy putting your pen to paper, using your hands to create something. So one of the aspects of mindfulness is to be very aware of your body and your thoughts and your feelings and your sensations in the present moment.

And so one reason why lettering can be really great for this is because it can take a lot of our attention to focus on the feeling to focus on holding the pen correctly, to focus on how we want to place our arm on the table, how much pressure we want to put down how we want the letters to connect to each other.

It requires our full attention. To do this creative process. So our mind isn't able to think about 500 million other things we have on our to-do list or that we're worried might happen, or that we're worried about that did happen. We can only focus on how we need to be putting the pressure on that brush pen so that we can get the right thickness on that downstroke.

It takes that awareness and that consciousness that helps us to be mindful that helps us to be present. So once you become really skilled at something, it's easy to not think about it, like eating. Or walking, for example, if you want to do a mindful walk, you can start paying attention to what it feels like to press your foot into the ground, noticing how the mechanics of your body work, feeling the feeling of the texture when you're stepping on the crunchy leaves, listening for the sounds that you hear, looking at the beautiful views, smelling the aromas, really focusing on your senses and what it feels like to be out on a walk when it would be very easy to go on autopilot because, most likely, you know how to do that. So whatever it is that you are used to doing a lot in your life, it's easy to go on autopilot. If it's something that's new, it often takes a lot of your attention, which can be a really wonderful thing because then your brain kind of has to focus and not stress out about all the other things.

So that is one thing I love about mindful lettering is that you just take the attention of your mind and you focus it, and it really brings your stress level down. I find that I just feel so much more relaxed and calm after I've spent some time lettering.

The other reason why mindful lettering can be so helpful is because of the power of positive words.

And. I've talked before about how our thoughts create our experience. The story that we tell ourselves affects how we feel, how we act, how we see the world. And so the way that we talk inside of our head matters, and I started noticing after I began my lettering journey, that I just felt so much better when I would be going through something hard.

And I would look for positive words that I could letter and I would write them and rewrite them. I noticed that I started feeling better because I was rewiring my brain to believe in these positive words. And so I feel like mindful lettering has this added benefit of focusing on positive mantras and affirmations.

So in meditation, you sometimes will repeat a mantra as part of the meditation, and you might be sitting still and repeating this and just kind of allowing it to soak in and with the mindful lettering you aren't necessarily sitting still, but you can still have a mindful practice and focus on mantras.

And instead of repeating them aloud, you are writing and rewriting them. But I believe that it still has a really positive effect. So a lot of us, maybe we've tried meditation, maybe we haven't, maybe we've had a lot of success with it or not. Maybe it's a little tricky to sit still for that long. Maybe it's hard to find a quiet place, but I think that lettering can have a lot of the same benefits.

And when we're writing and rewriting these affirmations and mantras, we can still have the benefit of focusing on these positive words.

And the last thing that I want to talk about today is making it a daily practice. It's really easy to try it out, have some fun with it, put it away and kind of forget about it.

And I totally know how that goes. And that is exactly why I wanted to create this new book daily mindful lettering, because I wanted to create bite size pieces, just two pages every day, where you get to practice a five different lettering styles.

So I'm going to be including two pens together with the workbook. One is a fine liner pen. And with that pen you'll practice print as well as mono-line script and faux calligraphy. And then I'm also including a brush pen where you'll practice simple brush calligraphy, as well as a flourished design. And so there will be one affirmation that you will practice with five different lettering styles, and then there's some space for you to practice it on your own or to journal or doodle or draw whatever you want to do with that extra space.

It is not overwhelming. It's not a whole book that you're going to feel the need to go through all in one day. It's just two pages a day where you can trace and practice.

Now, some people will say. Yeah. What is the deal with tracing? Is it really important? Does it really help? And I gotta tell ya, it really does tracing hopes your hand to develop muscle memory. Your hand might be shaky at first. You may not be used to writing much. A lot of us are mostly typing and some of us are doing most of the time with our thumbs on our phones. And so we really aren't using those muscles and our hands as much. So doing a lot of tracing can really help our hands to develop the muscle, first of all, as well as the muscle memory of how to create the letter shape.

And in this new workbook, there are going to be five different styles. So your hand can remember how to do the faux calligraphy, how to do the print, how to do the brush pen and the flourished design, all the while, focusing on affirmations that are going to rewire your brain for happiness.

Even if you think you're terrible at letters. Just tracing alone is beneficial. You know how adult coloring books have become a big trend. It's because it's really nice to take a moment to focus on something that you're doing with your hands and to give your brain a break. So even if it's just tracing, it still is helpful.

Now of course, I believe that doing the tracing will help you to learn the muscle memory and how to create that lettering yourself. And it's going to be so fun for you to be able to use that in all different ways, but even if all you did was just take a moment in the morning, in the evening during nap time after you got home from work, whatever time of day works for you, you can just pull your book out, turn to that day and spend a few minutes lettering. It's not overwhelming. I walk you through every step of the way, because I know that we don't have hours and hours to spend on our own self care, taking care of ourselves and enjoying our creative hobby. But I do believe they're important and I am certified as a life coach.

I know that our thoughts matter and that by learning and using these mantras, we can change the narrative that we're telling ourselves. We can change the story that's happening in our brains. It's one of the fastest ways that we can change our inner dialogue.

So in addition for each day, of the daily mindful lettering, I have included a little bit of encouragement. I share a little bit of encouragement that goes along with that day's affirmation and this first volume of daily mindful lettering, the affirmations are all about love and compassion. Compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. Because again, I know you friend, I know that sometimes you are really good at beating yourself up and maybe not being as kind to yourself with that inner dialogue, as you want to be, as you know, will actually be helpful for you, and that will serve you and those around you better. And so this book includes a little bit of both.

And I just can't wait for you to experience a little bit of daily mindful lettering every day. This is going to include the book. It's going to include the two pens that you need to use it. And I'm going to have a little video tutorial walking you through all of it.

So I hope that you will be on the lookout for it. It's going to be released, like I said, in two days on Thursday, November 19th. Also be releasing our new spiral bound lettering notebooks. There's going to be dot grid on one side of the pages and blank on the other side, they have the top spiral binding and I had them do that coil, that top spiral, big enough to be able to slide a pen in there. Because hello, we all know that we want to be able to stick our pens in there. And then I also had them put a nice, sturdy chipboard on the back so that you can easily sit if you're sitting on the couch or somewhere that doesn't have a solid surface for you to letter on, that you can have that nice backing. The covers are two covers that I had you guys vote on on Instagram, and I love them so much. They're so beautiful. I also cannot wait to show you the cover of this new book daily mindful lettering. I think that all of these products would be an amazing Christmas gift.

And so I highly encourage you to head over on Thursday to get those. If you don't already get our emails, you can head over to hand lettered design.com/join. Or you can just scroll to the bottom of our website to input your email, to sign up for our list because we will definitely be emailing as soon as they're available. So you can get first dibs.

All of the products that I create are with you in mind, your mental health matters to me, your creativity matters. I hope that it matters to you. I know that you might not have time to spend an hour at therapy every week, or to do a bunch of yoga or meditation, but you can invest a little bit into doing daily mindful lettering. It is so. Worth it. You are not just going to have those few minutes of Zen and calm, but it really is going to help you start changing some of that narrative and just bringing some of that peace and calm throughout your day.

This would also be a really great gift for that person in your life that may just be in need of a little bit of a creative outlet or a stress reliever. Maybe a friend, a sister, a mom, a mother-in-law a neighbor, a daughter, a niece, a teenager that, you know, it could be someone who might be struggling a little bit or someone that is doing great, but just would love to have a little fun hobby.

I can't believe it's just two more days and you're going to be able to order these new products, both the daily mindful lettering and the blank spiral notebooks, I say blank, but it's dot grid and blank paper. It's that nice, thick, amazing, smooth paper that you will love.

Thank you so much for being here with me today. I hope by now you're convinced to give daily mindful lettering a try. If you want to get some sneak, peeks and behind the scenes, you can head over to Instagram. I am at hand lettered design over there, and of course you can always head to our website, hand lettered design.com to check out all of our lettering goodies. Thanks for being here with me today, and I'll talk to you again next time.
Links:
See inside the Daily Mindful Lettering Book: 30 Days of Affirmations to Live with Love
See our whole Daily Mindful Lettering Collection
Ready for a fun activity to feel less stress? Come get our FREE Guide - 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy while it's still available!
I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.
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023: Daily Mindful Lettering

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