So your life is dreary, ho-hum and boring, even to you. You are stuck. Give our month full of “try-ons” a whirl. They won’t change who you are, but they might change who you will be. Liberate your mind, your senses, your spirit. Find out how small changes can lead to large ones. Its summer. Go for it!

To make it real and to make it solid, it helps to do each change for 21 days in a row. From a try-on to a habit….21 days.

1. Spend 5 minutes each day looking at the world upside down. With your back to the world, bend forward and look through your legs. Watch out for dizziness.
2. Spend one hour a day in silence…just watching –eyes only. Make a note of everything you remember.
3. Spend one hour a day just listening… not just to music and your friends or TV. Listen outside, feel how the sounds can resonate in your brain, in your bones. List the ones you remember.
4. Spend 10 minutes, eyes closed, just hearing your breathing. Don’t try to control it, just hear it & feel it.
5. Spend 1 hour a day totally focussed on counting clouds. If clouds aren’t available, count grains of sand or blades of grass or leaves. Don’t worry about correct, just flow with the count.
6. Spend 5 minutes a day, eyes closed, seeing how many things you can smell…rain, heat, plastic or pine.
7. Find a lake somewhere. Half sitting in the shadows, let the waves rock your body. Does it alarm you being off balance? Can you find a position where the waves are a cradle and you can give up to them? Don’t try this in heavy surf!
8. Taste something with your eyes closed… really taste it, savouring each flavour. Now try it with something you hate to eat… one bite should be enough.
9. Sleep naked.
10. Sleep outside on the porch, in a tent, in a hammock.
11. Spend two hours under the stars after midnight. Count falling stars. Try it on a beach away from city lights.
12. Once a week, find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Close your eyes and take the longest time possible to consume a piece of fresh fruit or vegetable eg; fresh tomato, watermelon, corn or peaches. Really taste it. When you are done, grab your coloured sidewalk chalk, head outside and draw or compose an "Ode to a Tomato". Next week follow up with an "Ode to a Peach". Each week another act of subversive creativity.
13. Once a week, go to an art gallery, a theatre or a part of town you never have been.
14. Once this month, read a classic book. If you aren’t sure what you would like, ask a librarian. If you read classics read a comic book or a kids book that you missed.
15. One day a week, liberate the cyborg in you. Shut down your computer, your phone & all the rest of the machinery that ties you to the “Empire of Electronica”. Resistance is futile you say? Captain Kirk freed himself, so can you. Check out who you are without the headset & invisible wires.
16. Spend 2 hours with an old person. Ask them what is the most important thing they know. Interview them.
17. Interview your 6 year old cousin (or anyone else’s). Ask them what they know.
18. Interview yourself. What is the most important thing you know? You will be surprised how hard it is to choose or how much you know. Ask yourself why you believe that?
19. On the hottest day of the year, go ice skating or bowling.
20. For one day a week (choose the same day each week), do not judge others.
21. If you only paint your nails black, paint them screaming orange for one week.
22. If you only paint your nails colours, paint them black for one week.
23. Scare yourself, once a week (in a safe way). Try something you never would, like wearing a skirt instead of jeans or not wearing black or trying a new sport like rock wall climbing or singing lessons or just sitting in your yard till morning or loosing the hoodie.
24. Sit on a park swing and blow bubbles ...share them with a friend.
25. Stay out of the mall for two whole weeks!
26. One day a week, avoid fried or junk food. On that day, when you get a craving, eat a melon…ymmm watermelon!
27. Splash in a kiddie pool or cool yourself down under a hose.
28. Fingerpaint with chocolate pudding. Better yet, chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch.
29. Perfect your huggability. One day a week ask for hugs and give hugs. Proper hugging is a life skill. Use caution though. Only practice on safe people that you trust.
30. Count your blessings. Every single day, choose one person, place (yes some places are a blessing) or things that are in your life or have been part of your life. Find a way to celebrate life’s gifts to you. It may be a talent or a friend. It may be a memory of a day beside the lake or a lyric to a song that is meaningful. Isolate that gift in your mind. Create a space for it…a mental room of gifts & treasures where you can visit when you are living life’s challenges or visiting that other headspace where we keep all our bruising moments, letdowns & fears. If it’s a friend, say thanks. Maybe even give them one of your now perfected hugs. If it’s a place try to visit, to savour & to let the essence of the gift fully register in your new gallery of blessings.

When you have tried some or all of these activities, choose three that you will maintain as habits, real changes…. like the gallery, or scaring yourself or not judging… Even acorns grow to mighty oaks in time… Change is the law of life… getting stuck is resistance… and as Captain Kirk knows, resistance is futile, so play with change and let the seasons roll…