A small, powerful practice that keep me creatively grounded in difficult times

Week 23: The Brilliance Experiment

Welcome to The Brilliance Experiment, a 52-week reclamation of the inner magic that gets lost in difficult times.

This week, I’m sharing an unusual practice to stave off the existential scaries and remain grounded in my creative practice, lessons from Big Magic Book Club, why I think you should plan a One-Day Vacay, yoga for when you’re spiraling, and more…!

America has been completely crashing out lately. Like, Huda-crashing-out-over-Jeremiah level crashing out. It’s hectic.

Because of this, I’ve noticed myself more frequently disappearing into podcasts and TV just to feel okay. And, also, that’s totally okay.

I have a theory that disassociation is actually incredibly valuable when we can’t process the enormity of what’s happening. It served me well in a childhood that felt unmanageable. Disassociation is a survival instinct to get us through the choppy waters of life, so I think it’s perfectly okay for us to end up there for a while.

The problem is that many of us park ourselves in the Land of Dissociation. We move in and decorate the place, because we live in a world that sends us into fight-or-flight every time we unlock our phones with our faces.

And unfortunately, disassociation has a sharp point of diminishing returns.

Eventually, life starts tugging on my shirt asking me to pay attention to what it wants to communicate, but I’m too busy filling my brain with podcasts and Love Island and Instagram.

The Internet is loud and intuition is quiet… so we have a little bit of a problem.

Last week I wrote about surrendering what isn’t working anymore, a topic that has been taking up a lot of space in my brain lately.

In March, I did a week-long experiment called a podcast deprivation inspired by Julia Cameron’s reading deprivation exercise in The Artist’s Way.

She describes reading deprivation as helping you eliminate the “tiny tranquilizers” of too much information. She says that we fill our mind with other people’s thoughts, like junk food that tastes delicious but makes us feel fried when we consume too much of it.

(Name a better analogy for too much reality TV/doom scrolling/ mainlining podcasts… I’ll wait.)

But with the weight of the world pressing downward on my shoulders ever so slightly each day, last week I decided to do another podcast fast, because the first one one I did was so profound.

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Want to read about my original podcast fast? Catch up here:

This is your brain on podcasts

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Of course, during this fast, I did a great job trying to fill the space with other things!!! I binged Ina Garten’s memoir (fantastic, in case you’re wondering.) But even that became a choice in my awareness… I started noticing my desire to disconnect and numb out with something (anything, please!) instead of stay in the open, quiet space that I set out to create for myself.

It took almost six full days until I could hear my intuition whispering anything at all.