Here’s a project that will keep you from forgetting what your life is really for. Take a large, blank sheet of paper, and pin it to your wall. On the top write this quote from Tennyson (which is also a scare tactic): “How dull it is to pause,/to make an end/ to rust unburnished, not to shine in use.”

Now make a grid by drawing five lines down the paper and six lines across. That will give you thirty squares. Once the grid is complete, start entering, in any order, all the things you might do if your time belonged to you and if you were completely unafraid. Don’t be too literal about where they go; just start writing them into the boxes, blocking out a month or a year for each, for the next thirty years. In the next chapter, you’ll be looking for your dreams and adding to these entries, so don’t worry if you can’t think of too many right now. What’s important is that this thirty-year calendar exists and that you put it up somewhere you can see it every day.

You’re not used to thinking of the coming years as a time for one dream after another to come true, but that’s exactly what it should be. And this thirty-year calendar, no matter how fanciful or casually done, will serve one crucial purpose: It will remind you that you can have an exciting future and give you more courage to fight for your right to create it.

If it doesn’t, just scare yourself a little by reading the words by Tennyson that you wrote at the top of the calendar. Or write it again in the thirtieth square: “How dull it is to pause, /to make an end/ to rust unburnished, not to shine in use.”

Or rewrite it for yourself in bright red ink, like a promise: “Never to become dull, always to shine from use.”

That’s what courage is for.

Thirty years to shine from use, to live one dream after another. Put them all on one sheet of paper to hang on your wall. Or create your 30 year calendar on a spread of two blank pages in your daybook, with a bookmark to remind you to check it often. In a new comment on this page, tell us how it went. Did you fill them all quickly? Start slowly and keep speeding up? Or start boldly and then need to stir up more dreams because you never imagined being allowed thirty years of them? After you share your experience, read the rest of the comments and reply to a few. This is big stuff, and a little encouragement will go a long way for your fellow book club members.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 26: Test Your Courage after you are done adding your comments.

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Find a place where you can be alone without interruption for a few minutes. This technique works best if you’re lying on your back, in your bed or on the floor, but it’s just as useful if you’re sitting or standing. Close your eyes and sit up straight, arching your back slightly and putting your shoulders and arms back to open up your chest. Now imagine you’re standing on a mountaintop or somewhere else wide open, away from the ears of everyone. Take a deep breath, and without making a sound, imagine you are letting out a long, long scream at the top of your lungs. You might want to open your mouth wide, as if you were taking a bite out of a huge sandwich. But be very careful not to strain your throat. Let the imaginary scream come out with as little throat restriction as possible, more like a blast of heat coming out of a furnace than a sound using vocal cords.

As soon as you run out of breath, take in another long, deep breath and let out another very long silent scream. Try to do this at least three or four times, preferably more. If you make sure to go to the end of your breath each time, at some point, there will be no strength behind the screams, and you’ll stop.

As you scream, pay attention to what feeling is coming out.

You’ll find a great feeling of relief and an immediate drop in tension as you release these silent screams, but you’ll get even more out of the process if you know exactly what you’re feeling. Your first few silent screams might be just a warm-up, a way of putting your toe in the water to see how cold it is. After all, you haven’t screamed at the top of your lungs, even in your imagination, since you were a tiny infant. But after a few tries you could find yourself arching your back even more, putting your arms back, making fists, and hearing pure rage in those screams.

You often find that after a few such screams the anger changes into tears. Don’t drop your energy; try to push that feeling into silent screams too, because grief needs just as big a release and is probably the root cause of this anger in the first place. Unwept tears often hide under rage. If you listen to the imaginary sounds you’re making, you might now hear all the varieties of hurt you can hear in a small child, from howls to wails to sobs.

At some point, after around ten silent screams, you’ll be finished and won’t need to continue. You should feel comfortable, even relaxed. And you won’t be angry anymore. Wbere did that anger go?

It came out, the way it was supposed to.

When we’re very little, we don’t hang on to feelings and let them grow; we process them immediately. But as we grow up, we’re trained out of that behavior. Loud feelings upset everyone around us, so we hold them in. And they build up.

But using the silent scream can be a very good way to combine the infant’s open expression with the adult’s sense of responsibility, a very useful tool to release tension and discover what you’re feeling, and express it.

In a new comment on this page, tell us how the Silent Scream worked for you. After you share your experience, read the rest of the comments and reply to a few.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 25: Your Thirty-Year Plan after you are done adding your comments.

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1. Get a pencil and small notebook, and on the inside front cover write down an amount of time, at least three hours long, that you intend to make your own for the next six weeks, such as “Wednesday evenings, 6 to 9:30P.M.”
2. Then, on the first sheet of blank paper, write down the names of people who need to know about your decision, and plan to tell them as soon as you can.
3. Pay careful attention to what you feel as you do these steps. Are you scared? Nervous? Guilty? Keep a log of your feelings.
4. Now, with notebook and pencil in hand, speak to everyone on your list. Talk to them one by one, and tell them that you’ll be using that time for your own purposes and won’t be available to help anyone. If you’re on the phone, write down their responses as they speak. Otherwise wait until you’re alone, and then write down what they said in your notebook. Follow it with a description of how the conversation made you feel.
5. Now, for six weeks, take that time for yourself. It doesn’t matter how you use it except it must never be used to do any chores for yourself or anyone else, including your boss or your dog. You can go to the movies, but don’t pick up the laundry on the way home. You can sit by a window and listen to music, but turn off the phone. You’re not on call for this period of time.

Pay careful attention to what happens as a result. Do events such as emergencies or unexpected occurrences conspire to take your time away? Or do other people think their desires are emergencies and try to make you help them?

Or do you prevent yourself from taking the time, sneaking in a few chores just because you have no other time to do them? Or because you’re feeling selfish or bored?

Remember, this isn’t a test; it’s pure research. You won’t be graded on your success or your failure. Your goal is simply to become conscious of any obstacles to taking free time. You’re not really trained to actually take your own time yet; you’re just checking out the territory.

A separate small notebook is a good idea for this exercise. You’re going to be keeping notes on preparing everyone and actually taking the time for six weeks, which means through mid-July. Use a comment to let us know you have started and share any of your early experiences with us. This will be a challenge for almost everyone, so be sure to read the other comments and see if you can offer ideas to others in the group for making it work.

Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.

Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 24: The Silent Scream after you are done adding your comments.

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