How I Create A Soul Stroll

A few weeks ago, someone suggested I create a Soul Stroll all about Gratitude. 

For those of you who are new here, a Soul Stroll is an energizing audio soundtrack packed with music, mantras and motivation from me, that you can take on a walk, run, bike ride or use it to dance around your home. 

So after sitting on it for a little bit, I decided to get to work on Soul Stroll that would help you drop into a state of gratitude and appreciation for your life. After all, when we are feeling thankful from deep within our hearts, life flows pretty well. 

However, while making this Soul Stroll, I got completely stuck. 

Here’s what my process usually looks like:

1. I do a bunch of journaling on the theme and what it means to me. From here, I come up with the mantras. 
2. Then, I start to search for a playlist of music that has the right vibe. This takes a good amount of time. It’s probably the bulk of where I spend my energy.
3. After I have a playlist I like, I get really familiar with the music by going out for a Stroll and “teaching”. Yes, that’s right, I imagine all of you walking with me and I start to talk through the mantras and the lessons. I do this all while I am walking, obviously. 
4. Usually, right after that Stroll, I come right home and record it. 
5. I edit it and then upload it!

But the process of making this Soul Stroll was clunky and off. It didn’t flow like it normally does. 

In fact, every walk I went on, I couldn’t even say the mantras to myself!

Yes, that’s the truth. I couldn’t even say them, because I just wasn’t believing them. At all.

I couldn’t find the connection to my own feelings of gratitude. 

How interesting, right?

What I realized was that I was trying to get to the good stuff, by skipping over and not acknowledging what I was TRULY feeling. 

The truth was that I have been tired as hell from trying to squeeze in work in 30-minute increments ever since this quarantine started. The truth was that I was feeling resentful about some of the changes we are making in our lives as a result of the pandemic. The truth was that I was angry at so many of the racial atrocities going on today, and I felt like I was late to waking up to them. My mind and heart were consumed with learning and thinking about how I was going to be part of the change. 

So, you could say I had a lot on my mind and my heart. And I needed to really sit with those big, uncomfortable and somewhat unpleasant feelings. (Which, if you know me by now, I ALWAYS encourage you to do that!)

So instead, I tried something different. 

I added a song into the playlist before we got to the gratitude part, that would allow me (and us!), to first feel, experience, acknowledge, call forth and hopefully WORK WITH these bigger, maybe ‘uglier’ feelings. 

Rather than just moving right into the positive, we must tell the truth about whatever is happening at the moment. 

We must be willing to call out these other feelings. 

After I took this new approach, things started flowing much better! And the new Gratitude Soul Stroll was born.