Monday – Friday

Join us on Facebook: Daily threads are symbolised by a heart, a thinking bubble and a hand.

Reflective inner voice work will be on the heart thread, planning, strategies and awareness work will be on the thinking thread and habit installation will be on the hand thread.

Monday

🖐 Monday’s Action Post 🖐

Do the audio training “Breaking Emotional Habits” and ask any questions here or share how it was for you.

If you’ve already done the audio you can repeat the cycles with the audio or you can take yourself through the feelings yourself, using your thumb and forefinger.

As you practice you can get through the cycle more quickly. You can incorporate it into your day.

❣️ Monday heart post ❣️

Spend some quiet time with yourself today.

Imagine that inside your chest is a safe, warm cave and in that cave shines a candle or a lantern.

Focussing on the light say your Sankalpa / mantra / motto three times as you focus on the light at your heart centre.

Smile at your heart and let your heart smile back at you.

Write in your journal about the the experience of being gentle with yourself.

💭 Monday’s Thinking Post 💭

Multiple Choice:

1 Which feeling do you find easiest to express out loud?

2 Which do you find hardest to express out loud?

3 Which do you find easiest to see / accept in others?

4 Which do you find hardest to see / accept in others?

A SADNESS

B ANGER

C FEAR

D HAPPINESS

Any thoughts you’d like to share in the thread below about your attitudes or the attitudes you grew up with around emotions?

Tuesday

❣️ Tuesday Reflection

Ponder this and maybe write about your response in your journal or here.

🍂A reflection taken from ‘The Way of the Happy Woman: living the best year of your life’ by Sara Avant Stover 🍂

🍂This season we become the alchemist of our own change. Like metal we evolve through reduction.… This paring down comes through discernment and faith. Take an honest look at yourself in your life. What’s working? What’s not? What can you let go of on your own and with what do you need guidance? Traditional Chinese medicine acknowledges that grief and sadness are the primary emotions of the autumn season, which, when tended to, are transmuted into courage.

🍂 It’s time to start spending more time alone to see how those outward expansions translate into your in a spiritual and creative life. What’s essential? What Will you take with you into the dream time of winter, and what will you leave behind?“

🍂Can you let yourself rest with reality, even if it’s not how you want it to be? Can you trust the larger timing and wisdom behind everything? Letting go also means allowing yourself to be completely as you are and to do whatever you need to do to loosen your grip. Sometimes, to do this, you need to let yourself feel completely out of control.… The process isn’t always pretty but it’s real. Letting go asks us to be ruthlessly candid about what we feel and how much we have loved.

🍂Take a look at what relationships, beliefs, and activities no longer serve you. You will see where you are ready to let go and you can leave the currents of saying goodbye and grieving inherent in this season…

🍂 Leaning into unsavoury feelings doesn’t mean you’re a miserable pessimistic person who has sabotaged her happiness-just the opposite. Diving into discomfort brings you directly into your heart and into a deep, abiding joy that’s always your essence and doesn’t depend on your mood or on whether or not things are going your way. This is what the alchemy of the season teaches us: to strip away what is non-essential to reveal what is true and everlasting.

🍂While the long term repercussions of repressing emotion can manifest as disease, the short-term signs that you’re not honouring your feelings are anxiety and too much mental stimulation. This can make you feel a lot like the energiser Bunny – always staying in motion to avoid any kind of intimacy with yourself. This constant motion … keeps you from tasting the peace that comes when you face yourself completely.

💭 Tuesday Thinking 💭
“Every message, regardless of form or content, is an expression of a need.”
Marshall Rosenberg
  1. Read what I have written for Week 2 on the website.
  2. Print out the following handout (or read it online).
    https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory
  3. Then pick out words that fit how you feel and / or words that you are drawn to.
  4. Are there any words you’d like to share in the thread below?

🤚 Check in here when you’ve spent some quiet time journaling.

How is this new habit? What are the benefits and / or difficulties?

 

Wednesday

💭 Wednesday Thinking Post 💭

Repeat this earlier exercise a week in 💭

Write “what do you want, Sweetie?” again at the top of a page / piece of paper

Refine your understanding 💭

Pick out three important wants and write in your journal about the needs underneath the want.

Identify any unhelpful rules or introjects that get in the way of your wants

You might find yesterday’s video helpful when you’re thinking about this.

🖐Wednesday Action Post 🖐

“Harvest Festival”

Make an autumn display in your house. The reasons for this are: it helps you stop and do something mindful; it’s a reminder of the harvest and gathering in aspect of this time of year; it’s creative; it can become a visual reminder for gratitude. Share your pictures here.

Keep a conker in your pocket or handbag, every time your touch it, repeat your slogan, mantra, sankalpa to yourself 3 times.

❣️Wednesday Heart Post❣️

Permission slip Wednesday

It’s ok to feel [feeling]…’

Listen within, and write yourself a permission slip.

Thursday

💭 Thursday Thinking Post 💭

Go through your feelings list again (we looked at 7 feelings in the weekend meditation and 4 core feelings on Monday, on Tuesday there was an extensive list on the NVC online list – use any or all of these sources).

What feelings do you want to avoid?

How do you avoid them?

Would it be ok to feel them?

🖐Thursday Action Post 🖐

Habit installation: check in here when you’ve spent some time reflecting quietly with yourself.

Remember with good habits you don’t do them for immediate gratification. You can’t prevent mood dips and life’s challenges, but good habits will help hold you, while poor habits might reduce your resilience to meet those challenges.

Check in here to say you did it, where, when, how. Did it go to plan, did it happen as you wished / planned? How did you feel about achieving it? Any positive outcomes?

❣️ Thursday’s Heart Post ❣️
Feelings as visitors meditation
 
Feelings arise, but if we can avoid becoming too involved in them, and just allow them to arrive and depart like visitors (some more welcome than others) we don’t need them to be anything other than what they are.
If you keep the door closed to these visitors they simply bang on the door and ring the bell. If you invite them in for a cuppa, they have something to tell you and you can decide for yourself how much that information will impact your day.
Today, relax, close your eyes and see which emotional visitor is at your door today. Imagine inviting them in and sitting down with them. It doesn’t have to be cosy and happy, but see what is said. Make sure you end the visualisation with them leaving and you closing the door behind them.
You can journal about this or share here.

Friday

💭 Friday Thinking Post 💭
Look at the crew members:
 

In The Main Thing (Week 1) we began to look at the direction in which we want to travel in our lives now. We looked at the book cover of our lives and who we truly are.

This week we looked at our emotions. These can both help us in steering our course but can cause us to get sidetracked and stuck.

If you had multiple characters within your personality, as well as the Captain, who else do you recognise?

For help you can refer to my blog which is listed on Week One’s Website page under ‘Further Resources”

❣️ Friday’s Heart Post ❣️
The Main Thing
 
Feelings that come from deep within can help us find our heart’s desire or soul longing.
Feelings that are about survival needs and quick instinctive reactions can take us off track.
The primative brain is quick thinking and reactive, the more complex brain is slower thinking and reflective.
To truly give ourselves a chance to be free from instincts, fears and conditioning and to choose our own path, we must give ourselves TIME. Time to slow our anxious reactions and to feel our deeper direction.
Take this time to ponder, your main thing. This may be the Sankalpa or saying you made a week ago, or it may be an adjustment to that or something new. Think back to the book cover exercise, what is the key point of the book?
Take TIME, because it saves time in the long run to be wise.
🖐Friday Action Post 🖐
Honour the season and yourself today and this weekend.
 

Thinking back to the very first meditation – your seasonal journey through the woods – and thinking about the seasonal reflections we have undertaken.

What treats can you give yourself this weekend that are in tune with you SEASONAL wants and needs, that are in tune with your feelings?

Connect with and allow especially any hibernation or quiet needs as this will lead us into next week’s material for WEEK 3: THE CALM BODY.

Suggested choices:
Naps
Sky
Baths
Daydreaming