Developing a practice gives you grounding, a stable foundation from which to move forward every day. But what if you’re not drawn to the more traditional practices, like meditation or martial arts?

Create a practice out of anything that you love.

In The Way of Aikido, George Leonard talks about the marriage of practice and play. And he points out that anything that you do “for the sheer love of it, as an essential expression of one’s soul” can become a long-term practice.

From this perspective, then, there are so many opportunities to begin, today, in this very moment, to create a practice, to commit to it and develop it into something that sustains you long-term:

The same thing is true in many aspects of life: exercising, doing your finances, working around the house. On a visit, Marshall McLuhan insisted on washing the dishes after dinner. “It’s my meditation”, he told us.

Perhaps more important, what we call our work can be recontextualized as a paractice. The key question again is whether you are doing it primarily for its own sake or primarily for its extrinsic rewards. This isn’t always possible, but in more cases than you might imagine, it’s a choice you can make.