This practice is so easy that sometimes I forget how effective it is! Studies even prove it – people that write down their goals are one to one and one-half times more likely to achieve them. So, let’s do it!
While this practice is useful for any kind of goal or dream, I’d like to encourage its use with Divinely inspired goals, goals that are good for both you and others, goals or dreams that make your soul sing!
The whole process will probably take you less than 5 minutes, depending on how detailed you are with it. Once you have your goal or dream in mind, you want to do four things: say it, write it, read it and see it. Every Day.
1. Say it. Recite it from memory and repeat it, changing the words around if necessary until it sounds just right.
2. Write it. Once you’re happy with the wording, write it out 10 times. You might want to keep a journal so you can look back on previous dreams and how they’ve changed or materialized.
3. Read it. Read what you just wrote, out loud. Every sentence.
4. See it. Close your eyes and see what that dream looks like once achieved. Feel into it as well: what does it feel like once it’s real?
It’s okay and even encouraged to write the same goal every day for weeks, or really for as long as it takes. You may find the goal evolves a little bit every day and that’s a good thing; focusing on it daily helps us to be clear in what we really desire.
It really is that easy! Might as well start right now: what is your dream?
Do you want more joy in your life? Who doesn’t?! The good news is it’s quite simple to start allowing more joy in on a regular basis; we just have to get used to it. This is a great exercise to remember if we’re in a funk and want to get out of it. There is nothing wrong with feeling down, but eventually we’re ready to move on.
A quick note on negative and positive emotions – all are good and necessary. Negative does not mean bad; it is just relative to other emotions. It’s a scale, negative on one end and positive on the other, or terror and rage on one end and joy on the other end. The more we intentionally feel joy the more we move up the scale on a regular basis. Because most of us prefer to feel happy and joyful!
This exercise is so simple you can do it almost anywhere you are comfortable closing your eyes for a minute.
Bring to mind something that makes you very, very happy. It can be anything – a loved one, a pet, music, friends, art, mountains, food, elephants – truly anything; no one is judging you. Anything that just thinking about brings a smile to your face or makes you bust out laughing.
Once you have it in mind, set your timer for 17 seconds (“Siri, set timer 17 seconds”) and then just dive into that object of love and feel the joy; live it, feel it, surround yourself in it, swim in it and get it all over you! Feel the happiness and joy like it’s the only important thing in the world.
Once the timer goes off – how do you feel? Doesn’t it feel great to take the time to do nothing but sit and feel that joy? And it was less than a minute.
As you practice this more and more, you’ll find you instantaneously recall it throughout the day, lifting your mood more and more frequently.
Do this at least once a day every day for a week; two or three times a day is ideal. Feeling this every morning encourages good days to follow!
If you are determined to move forward into a greater life for yourself, but you are harboring grudges or resentments towards another, forgiving is essential. I know it’s not easy. I know you may not want to do it; I didn’t. I had heard people promoting the value of forgiveness for many years before I decided to take a serious stab at it.
After all, “He did it to me; why should I forgive him?” He needed to suffer, and I wasn’t going to let him off the hook, no way; he needed to pay! The problem is, he wasn’t paying for it. I was. In reality, he probably had no idea the series of events still played over and over in my head and he’d long forgotten them, so it certainly didn’t torture him at all.
I was the one paying for it, wrapping up good energy on past events that truly had no significance in my current or future life. And that’s why we need to forgive; we need that valuable, awesome energy to help us move forward, not hold us back. It doesn’t make the person’s actions okay or acceptable; it’s a matter of taking back our energy and our Power. Take your Power back and get rid of that icky energy.
There are many ways to start a forgiveness practice. What I’ll share here are three possibilities using prayer beads or malas. There is no magic number of times you need to do it; you just do it until you feel you’re done. It might take one day, two weeks or two months, but eventually the charged energy goes away when you recall the person. None of these three practices is any better than the other. Do the one that feels best for the situation.
First Option: This is particularly useful when you really wanted someone to change. Imagine the person in front of you, as if you are speaking directly to them. Speak sincerely. “Joe, I forgive you for not being the person I wanted you to be.” It allows for a space of letting them be them, and not someone they’re not. Repeat it over and over until you feel a shift.
It is also sometimes useful to combine it with the second option.
Second option: Again, imagine the person in front of you, as if you are speaking to them. Speak sincerely. “Joe. I love you, I bless you, I forgive you, I release you.” That’s it, over and over.
Combined it is even more powerful: “Joe, I forgive you for not being the person I wanted you to be. I love you, I bless you, I release you.”
The third option is my personal favorite as it helps me recognize that the faults I see in others are also my own, which helps me come around quickly to compassion or understanding for that person. Again, imagine talking directly to them. “Joe, I forgive you and myself for being ignorant (Choose appropriate quality). I love you as I love myself, for God is the love I am.” This also turns the situation over to the Divine Source that allows love to flow to and from all without judgement.
I’d challenge you to just try one for a week if there is someone that really triggers you. You don’t have to fully forgive them, but just see if it frees anything up in you to be open to starting the process.
Are you willing to be open to moving toward your greater life?
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
~The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
We never lose control of what is happening to us, but we lose the perception of having control over what is happening. Let me be clearer though – we can never control what another person does to us, but we can control our response and reaction, and thus the situation. Many people are unaware that there is a choice, that if we are being attacked in a physical, verbal or emotional way, that it requires a specific kind of response. But that’s not true. If it were true then everyone would react the exact same way to a specific stimulus, and we don’t. We are a product of so many things, including previous experiences, that we all experience the same event differently. This can be proven simply by asking four eyewitness what happened in an accident. There will be four different answers because they observe and report based on what is most important to them. The thing we need to try to understand is that what someone is doing to us is not about us, but about them, and although it may be very difficult and it feels like it’s about us, we must try to not take it personally. I realize this is not a quick or easy lesson to understand, but it’s worth the time to fully grasp it.
Back to the quote, losing control over what is happening and being controlled by fate is also about giving up, not believing we have a choice in how our future plays out. We do have a choice, and starting by understanding we have a choice in the moment leads us into understanding our perception shapes our future too. There are so many spiritual practices that can help with this; the one I want to share now is about writing your future.
Practice: You: the Novel. Consider a real situation you feel you have no control over. There is a good chance as you review this situation in your head, it never comes out in your favor. Let’s change that. Write down the situation, but as you’re writing it, write it in your favor. Change any details you need to change so you’re the winner, and feel the power of that! Really feel and imagine it as you write it, knowing that a new or different outcome really is possible. The situations you write about may not change immediately, but you will start to see unexpected outcomes, and as you continue this practice, things will begin to shift.
Here’s a video with more on the practice:
Create the life of your dreams! Please let me know how writing your life works out.
Does the thought of sitting down for 20 minutes of meditation overwhelm you or keep you from even starting? If so, this might be just the trick you need to get started. That’s the very reason I started this practice, because I just couldn’t bear the thought of getting up any earlier in the morning, and I wasn’t sure that even if I did that I wouldn’t fall back asleep being still and quiet for that long, that early!
I call this my “Two Minutes More” meditation because that’s exactly what it is. Before I get into the details of it, let me ask you – is there a time in the morning, as you’re bustling about getting ready for the day and before you head out the door, that you sit down? Do you sit to eat breakfast? Drink Coffee? Put on your shoes? Watch news or read the paper? Put on makeup? Or any other reason? If so, this may be for you. This won’t work for everyone, but if you fit the “sit” qualifications, why not give it a try?
This practice evolved the way it did because I knew as I sat at my makeup table, when the dog or cats would start to pester me to be fed or let out, I would just tell them they’d have to wait until I was done and so they became used to leaving me alone. But when I would try to sit somewhere else to meditate they would disregard any boundaries and pester me nonstop. So I just extended my makeup time a little more, fooled them!
So, Two Minutes More was born. When you’ve finished with your sitting activity, instead of rushing up and around right away, sit for just two more minutes. If you have a smartphone, tell it to set a time for 2 minutes, close your eyes, straighten up a bit, and take a deep breath. Really feel the air moving into your lungs, feel your lungs expand, then feel them relax as you slowly exhale. Then also check your feet- are you feeling grounded to the earth? Feel the bottom of your feet and maybe even feel them sink through all of the materials between you and the core of the earth. Be grounded in your day to help you stay stable and unshakeable.
The two minutes will pass very quickly, so if at some point you want to increase it to three, five, seven minutes it’s easy to do. The other beauty of this practice is you don’t need to get up any earlier, the alarm can stay the same because you can always squeeze 2 minutes in!
One gentleman told me he literally does not sit down from the time he gets up until he leaves the house, so this won’t work for everyone. And if that’s the case, is there another time throughout the day you can try it? Maybe before you start the car or after you turn it off? First sit down on the bus? The coffee shop or your office?
I hope you’re able to give this a try. Starting to establish a spiritual practice starts the shift in your life to allow more great things in, and this is a simple one to start!
