❣️ It is going to be very important this week to stop and listen to your captain, your soul, you true self or your Will, whatever you call it for yourself.
As we revamp our planning methods and overhaul our ‘to do’ lists, the ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ and childhood conditioning will rear their heads.
You don’t have time and energy to complete a ‘To Do’ list so we have to really connect with what will make you happy and increase your well being.
It’s false to believe that perfection will make you happy. That’s an avoidant behaviour. At the same time, paralysis is not your friend either.
So TODAY and this week, make time to connect to your main thing.
Post a picture of your sankalpa or mantra below and keep talking to yourself and writing to yourself in your journal.
💭 Today is a pen and paper day!
If you can do this exercise first thing today that’s the best time but later on is fine too.
Look at the day ahead. It will have various things that you need to do and commitments. How are you planning to spend the next 12 hours? Write down today’s jobs and tasks. What do you feel when you look at it?
Now draw a heart by each task that is part of The Main Thing. ❣️ and a sad face ☹️ beside tasks that make you feel heavy or burdenened. How is the balance? Let us know here your ratio of hearts to sad faces.
THINK of the sad face items: is this because there are elements of delayed gratification – for example you might not enjoy tidying up but you may get pleasure from the results, you may not want to go to work but you might enjoy the income or perhaps helping someone today will feel heart warming ? – or are there items on your list that bring you no joy that are simply habit and conditioning? What would happen if you cross them off your list?
🖐 Today follow the 3 – 2 – 1 method and feedback here.
3: rest move eat
2: worthwhile experiences / 2 beautiful things
1: a job that you’ve been avoiding but that will ultimately improve things for you
You don’t have to do more than this and each of these things can be pared down to the level that is right for you. However I’d like you to give it a try.
Full details were posted in a blog in this group on Sunday.
❣️ As we move into this planning focussed week it is more important than ever to spend time with your inner voice, your wise woman or your captain.
Visualising your journal as the ‘Captain’s Log’, write about your feeling and thoughts related to the direction you described on the book cover of your life.
💭 plan 1, 2, 3 How will you move, eat and rest today?
💭 Plan 1, 2 beautiful, connecting or heartfelt moments. What are they?
💭 What is the one job you will tackle today?
Make these appropriate to your ability and report here!
Make a list. This one is remembering Monday (or Tuesday as this post is late). Being utterly honest with yourself write an account of your time yesterday between waking up in the morning to bedtime at night. Eg, 7.30am- 10.30pm. You do not need to share this noticing exercise. At the end of your list you should be able to see roughly what time you spent on personal fulfillment, on work, on housework, on caring for others, on TV and social media, on self care and on this course. It would be useful to do this list for a few days. This is a personal exercise and is about telling ourselves the TRUTH and looking at self fulfilment, self discipline and self sabotage, but without judgement or unkindness. Remember the crew members? The saboteur is there within most of us. A wise captain listens to the saboteur and gets to know their ’cause’, sometimes it’s a ‘political difference’ that requires understanding, not criticism.
Have you looked at our gallery of Sankalpas posted on Monday’s Heart Post? Have you drawn or created a picture of your own? Today go over the heart posts for the last 3 weeks, focussing on who you are, what makes you happy, what you want and what the blocks are. Find the wise inner voice and THE MAIN THING, make it concrete, draw it, write it and say it three times focussing on the cave in your heart centre where the light shines bright. If you’ve already done all this then ensure you have ‘anchored’ it to a conker which you keep in your pocket, by the bed or in your bag. Touch base with your inner wise space today, in calmness and love.
The Wheel of Life
Download and print 2-5 copies of this.
Or use your coloured pencils and and art pad (hand drawing is often more effective when working on deep issues) to draw this out twice.
Go to today’s thinking post to see how to use it.
Take your hand drawn or printed out wheel of life and reflect on your fulfilment in each area of your life. Within the sections of cake you can draw pictures, write words, or score numbers, or all three. Save the 2nd wheel for tomorrow.
Thursday Heart Reflection:
In your journal or your quiet time today, ponder the learning so far about your Will or the Captain, who directs us and can often delay gratification for a long term outcome, and your feelings and body and their talent for immediacy and letting us know what we need in the moment. It’s not easy to know the difference between what we want and what we need, and when to gratify our wishes and when to hold off. This heart reflection time is key to our growth of wisdom to this dilemma. Let yourself discover more about how you know when you are connected with your soul purpose or your heart’s song.
Thursday Thinking: The Wheel of Life
Never assume concepts such as this are accurate for you, they are broad areas and there’s no requirement to score highly in every area or for everything to be in balance. It’s about how satisfied YOU are in these areas, not about achieving a social ideal. This is where the heart reflections come in, and where the book cover concept is useful, to help you see if your daily life NOW matches your deep spiritual essence, your true values and so on.
Take the Wheel of Life and take a day this week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Now take your activities for that day and mark within the slices of the cake / wheel how much TIME each area of your life takes. Compare this to yesterday’s Wheel of Life Exercise. You might want to post photographs of the results here.
Friday Heart Reflection:
It’s been a week of lists, but one of the most effective lists we can make, that has a known impact on the wiring in our brain is a gratitude list.
In your personal quiet space today, make a gratitude list. And afterwards, please share 3 gratitudes here.
GROUP DISCUSSION:
We are nearing the end of our fourth week and 28 days of habit installation. The main habit to support you through this course is that of time to really LISTEN to yourself. Rather than racing off doing things (or being paralysed by the amount of things not done / to be done) it is essential that you question how these things to be done even landed on your plate.
By listening to yourself – preferably each day – you begin to illicit dissonance between your soul’s song, and heart calling, and your daily life. This is GOOD! Dissonance is the material of this course and your life. By reflecting on it you can begin to have the courage to change what you can change and the strength to accept what you can’t change. The icing on the cake is that this perspective gives you “The Wisdom to know the difference”.
Today’s topic is:
WHY is it so hard to establish a habit that takes only a few minutes a day, that can impact the whole of my life now and in the future, that is not onerous? and WHAT has helped me establish this new habit, what works for me? and CAN I see the benefits in my life of beginning this new habit.
WHY? WHAT? CAN? Discussion is now open! 😁
This is an active reflection for today’s action.
🖐❣️
Take a sheet of drawing paper and divide it into four squares.
In the top left hand square draw YOU.
I don’t mean your head and face. I meant your essence. It might be colours, shapes, symbols. Try to AVOID words for this exercise.
Choose the colours intuitively.
In the other 3 squares draw 3 significant people in the same manner. These three people should be people close to you in your life. You perhaps live with them, they may be family or housemates.
If you’re feeling able to be open, share your drawings here.
ACTION
Make a new things to do list.
Choose colours to write in or to highlight with.
Have no more than 4 job-type-jobs on there and highlight these with one colour. You may add further job-type-jobs only to replace these once they are completed.
Ensure you have at least three things that bring you pleasure and joy on your list. Highlight these with another colour.
Body care – appointments, exercise etc are additional to jobs and soul longings, they might not feel pleasurable (you may need to visit the dentist or get a flu jab) but they are more caring for yourself rather than general jobs that might be for the whole household. So these can also be a different colour.
Layout your list in a way that works for you, you may have columns or tick ✅ boxes or little icons even.