Practical Magic | 5 Habits That Made 2021 Magical

Written By Megan Weber
A-year-of-magical-living-podcast-with-imogen-roy

Looking back on nearly one year of Magical Living, I share the top 5 habits that made 2021 feel extra magical for me.

5 Habits That Made 2021 Magical

Almost a year ago, I started this podcast and the idea for it came to me in an afternoon. We were facing another year of the pandemic and I wanted to prove to myself that one could live a very expansive, productive, and meaningful life trapped in the confines of one's own home.

This podcast was an experiment and a ritualized practice for myself to make sure I didn't lose touch with everything I knew about how to create more magic in everyday life, and I wanted to share the tools that I use and rely on for the benefit of others.

I’m recording this episode in January 2022, and as a recap of this journey, I want to celebrate and share five habits that made my life feel more magical in 2021. Over the last year on the podcast, I’ve shared a lot of really great practices that I use regularly – how to turn the mundane into magic, how to elevate everyday movements, how to find ecstasy, pleasure, joy, and compassion for ourselves in moments of struggle – but there are five things that truly anchored, sourced me, and contributed massively to my well-being in 2021 so I wanted to share them with you.

I would love to hear from my loyal listeners if there are any particular practices or tools that have made you feel more magical in the past year.

1. Prioritizing Rest

2021 was the year that I became really disciplined about rest. I learned that rest is much more than sleep, and the next episode will be about seven different kinds of rest. I spent a lot of time in 2021 getting to know those different types of rest and being replenished and sourced by them.

I focused on sleep.

In addition to lockdowns, we had a curfew here in France from December to June and had to be home by 6 pm or 7 pm. It was a great year to invest in rest so I got serious about sleep.

I committed to drinking only one caffeinated drink per day.

My rule was one cup of coffee or caffeinated tea first thing in the morning and then not again for the rest of the day thanks to Michael Pollan’s fantastic book, This Is Your Mind On Plants. Caffeine has a powerful quarter-life of about 12 hours. After drinking or eating caffeine, it'll still be in your system 12 hours later. If I wanted to be ready for bed at 9 pm or 10 pm, I had to stop drinking caffeine in the morning. It felt hard. I had to cultivate a relationship with decaffeinated tea, but I can report that my sleep is much better.

I committed to working 25 hours per week, maximum.

The summer after launching my Align + Flow program, I decided that I wanted to enjoy my summer and be outside as much as possible. I set myself a rule of 25 hours of focused work per week max. That worked so well for me I ended up keeping it up until December. I found that I was just as productive, I got everything done that I needed to, and my overall wellness and well-being improved.

I took a month-long holiday in August.

I also committed to taking a whole month's holiday in August. I was very active and did a lot of rock climbing and hiking; it wasn't necessarily passive rest but it was restful. My husband and I drove many miles across Europe.

I track my time religiously when I work and I'm happy to report that I worked over 200 hours less in 2021 than I did in 2020 and it really contributed to my well-being.

Getting more disciplined about rest was truly magical for me and I saw the impact in many other areas of my of my life. These are the actions that changed things for me. There are plenty of people who want to spend more time focusing on doing what they love, getting things done, or they live lifestyles that don't allow these types of actions to be possible. I've learned that I need a ton of high-quality rest, and I cannot deny that any longer.

2. Living Into the Word Sacred

If you've listened to Episode 28, Choose 3 Words to Guide Your Year, you might have heard that one of my words to guide me in 2021 was the word sacred. Sacred was such a magical word for me and affected many areas of my life.

I made everyday moments sacred.

I decided to elevate the everyday moments of my life. My life became very small because of restrictions and lockdown, s0 I decided to make everyday moments more reverential and sacred than they'd ever been.

My husband and I put a lot of effort into our date nights. When we could go outside, we seized those opportunities. When we couldn't, I made an effort to elevate those moments – to choose a recipe and make a meal with care and love, to open a high-quality bottle of wine, to set a stunning table, light the candles, tidy up the room, dress beautifully. We poured a lot of love and care into those simple moments.

I invested in making my workspace feel sacred; it is now a combination of a library, an artist’s studio, and a temple. When I was planning or making big decisions in my life, I would elevate the process by pulling tarot cards or lighting candles or incense. I gave myself open spaces of time to do that work.

I elevated my everyday routines. If I did a stretching practice or workout, I cleared the space, lit candles, dimmed the lights. These chores suddenly felt like something to look forward to.

I studied secret teachings and practices from wisdom traditions.

I spent time studying secret teachings and practices from different wisdom traditions. I bought books with really weird titles and experimented with some of the practices. If I was trapped in my house in the lonely depths of winter, then what better use of my time than to invest in meditation and body-based practices to cultivate different sources of power?

I turned casual meetings into sacred experiences.

Even when I was able to get out and about, I infused this concept of sacredness into my normal life. Whenever I met someone new, I wanted to create a special experience.

When I met up with some local women that I got in touch with on a Facebook group here in Bordeaux, I invited them to join me for a stunning picnic where I prepared lots of food and laid out a beautiful spread for them. It turned what could have been a casual meeting into something that felt almost spiritual.

That energy started to change the way that other people related to me. Another local woman invited me to meet her for the first time. Instead of saying, ‘Let's go for coffee,’ she asked if I would join her at a Michelin-starred restaurant for lunch. We were there for about four hours eating the most delicious food I had had in years. It felt so sacred and special, and unsurprisingly, we are dear friends now.

Choosing to live by the word sacred was such a magical habit of 2021. Although sacred is no longer one of my words for this year, I will continue to keep that habit in my life.

 

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3. A Regular Journaling Practice

I'm chuffed to report that this is the fourth continuous year I have kept a regular journaling practice. Now when I do my Year in Review, I have three notebooks to look through for victories, lessons, and what I'm harvesting. My journaling practice really up-leveled in 2021 because it serves a different purpose.

I documented everyday magical noticings.

I no longer just documented my exciting adventures, escapades, and people I met, because that life wasn't really happening. It was my space to engage with synchronicity. From January to mid-March, I documented my magical noticings every single day. I share more about this practice in Episode 1, How to Keep a Magical Journal if it’s something you’re interested in. I share how you can start a journaling practice for yourself.

I documented synchronicities.

I picked a tarot card for the day, engaged with the theme, and wrote down my dreams. In the evening I reflected on whether those themes came up in my day, along with any other synchronicities I noticed. In the depths of winter, this practice created a different relationship for me with time and my environment. I felt held, supported, and seen. As if I was being guided; there was magic at work in the world if I chose to see it.

Journaling has always given me a lot of value. In 2021, I was able to notice and celebrate everyday things that I used to take for granted before they were taken away by Covid and the lockdowns. My journaling practice was a great habit in 2021 and I will continue it into 2022.

4. Ending Stress Cycles

Another Year of Magical living practice that you can hear more about on this podcast is my discharging stress practice. This was so useful this year.

Our body's stress mechanism – how the hormones get released, how we feel, the way we get into tunnel vision when we feel threatened – is an ancient primal response that existed before we had a prefrontal cortex and had the capacity for language. You cannot tell yourself to not be stressed; you cannot convince yourself with your mind to make the stress go away. The only way to end a stress cycle is to use body language to get it out of your system physically.

I used movement practices.

I did this a lot this year through movement practices like The Class by Taryn Toomey, a quick shaking session, or using my voice to express myself. Some of the tools I suggest to clients are things like screaming into a pillow, punching a cushion, or having a toddler tantrum on the floor. In lockdown, you can do all of these things in the safety of your own home with very few people watching so it was a great time for me to push the edges of what my body can do without facing public embarrassment.

I spent a lot of my life in total denial about how much stress I was carrying in my body; I was unable to feel myself because a toxic cocktail of stress hormones was running through my system almost every moment of the day. After healing from burnout and integrating these practices into my life, I'm better at recognizing a stress response as it's unfolding in my nervous system and knowing what I need to do to get it out.

Episode 9, Shake It Off, has more information on how to end a stress cycle by shaking. You can shake, dance, run on the spot, shout, punch a pillow, or go for a run. It can be a few minutes, or even 30 seconds, of physical activity. You need to discharge that stress physically out of your body, and then you can relax, unwind, or meditate. Missing the crucial step of physically discharging the stress response and getting the hormones out of your nervous system is key if you want to calm down afterward. If you go straight to calming down, those hormones are still running through your body. They don't know that the threat has gone away. They don't know how to stop until you show them how to stop with your body.

There were many times I was stressed this year – I was disappointed, emotional, and struggling – this practice was so valuable for me.

5. Aligning With the Seasons

Thanks to lockdown and restrictions I was able to take full ownership of my schedule. This was a great year for me to push the boundary of how far I can align my schedule with the seasons.

I aligned my work with the seasons.

I worked a lot in the spring and summer. I poured my energy into exciting public-facing projects like my Align + Flow program, getting more coaching clients, and creating content. I worked with the energy as it waned from high summer into the harvest and then into the dead of winter. Episode 19, Everything Has Its Season, goes into more detail on how you can start to use the universal energy that's around you as you move through seasons.

As a human being, you are nature. It is not a place you go visit, it is in you. There is a right time and a worse time to do anything. I believe that when you align your goals, desires, and how you use your energy with the seasons, you can ride on that energy to serve your own aims. You're not fighting against the current.

I embraced the natural cycles of expansion and contraction.

I worked much more in spring and summer, and interestingly, I didn't burn out, not even close. I taught, hosted webinars, did a big launch, and it felt absolutely delicious the entire time. In autumn and winter, I focused on behind-the-scenes work and tidying up loose ends.

I'm recording this in January 2022 and I'm simply listening. I'm listening for the seeds of what wants to be born later this year. This is the most Yin time of year, and spring and summer are the most Yang time of year. This is the time to work with the silence to feel and hear what might want to be born so that you can make sure that when you throw your energy into something as spring comes along, you're facing in the right direction. We will never know if we are facing in the right direction if we are not listening.

These five habits transformed my year and made my life more magical. I hope they inspire you and help you remember some of the things that you found magical about 2021 so that you can continue to invest your attention and loving energy there as a new year is born.

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Megan Weber
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