Okay, so I was a week off last week. My inner calendar was telling me this was the first weekend of July, not the last weekend of June.
Since we are halfway through the year, this is a good time to take stock of where we are and how far we have come (or not) since the year turned.
At the beginning of the year, we started with a bunch of questions to gauge where you are now, what is important to you, what your satisfaction levels were in the areas of overall well being, physical health, spiritual health, finances, career, and relationships and how your personal prose is affecting your satisfaction level.
We worked through the Circle of Perception exercise and discussed values, goal setting and the 5 Whys and manifestation boards.
We talked about identifying roadblocks and assessing the true risks to achieving your goals.
We discussed moving from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, giving up bad habits, and getting back up after following off the wagon.
We worked on developing our follow through, moving through fear, and spring cleaning.
Finally, we discussed growing our best lives before starting the specific areas of finances (April posts), physical health (May posts), and spiritual health (June posts).
During the last six months, I've also thrown out several challenges for us to work on, starting with manifestation boards and including the following:
Sharing positive energy and eliminating negative energy
Tracking your expenses
Analyzing what we truly need
Tracking your input (diet) and output (exercise)
Fine-tuning your input (diet)
Believing you are enough, you have enough, you do enough (meditation)
Three pages a day (journaling)
Now I challenge all of us to review the material and the challenges we've accepted (or ignored), and see where we are right here, right now.
Has anything improved in our lives?
Have we truly committed to MaXIMIzing ourselves, MaXIMIzing our lives, and living our best life now?
If you've fallen off the wagon, remember you can always get up, dust yourself off, and get back on the wagon that will take you down the path of your best life!
For additional inspiration and support you can keep at your fingertips, I offer my book, Take Your Life in Your Arms and Kiss It!, available here.
Next week, we will tackle the topic of career, starting with is this just a J.O.B. or is this truly W.O.R.K.
Until then, Namaste!
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Sunday, June 22, 2014
MaXIMIze - Recharge Your Batteries
What is spiritual health? It's about what centers you, what grounds you, what you turn to in the dark times. Whether you are a church-goer or find your solace in nature, meditation, or just silence, taking time for this part of your life is as important as taking care of your physical health.
Taking the time to nurture your spiritual well-being also recharges your batteries,which helps you to better deal with the things that come up in life - whether they be the day-to-day trials and tribulations or the large traumatic issues that come up either gradually or suddenly in life.
Whether it is being filled with the Spirit by attending church services or honoring your innermost Self by communing with Nature, doing contemplative yoga, or practicing meditation, we all need to recharge our batteries on a regular basis.
How do you recharge your batteries? Are you doing this often enough to counter the daily drain of energy? If not, why not, and what can you start doing right here, right now to take better care of your spiritual health?
Next week starts a new month, and a new topic. We'll be discussing the career area of our lives, talking about things such as taking charge of your career, is this a J.OB. or is this truly W.O.R.K., and Follow Your Passion, Find Your Bliss.
As always, your thoughts and feedback on this post or any others on this blog are welcome and appreciated!
Until next time, Namaste!
Taking the time to nurture your spiritual well-being also recharges your batteries,which helps you to better deal with the things that come up in life - whether they be the day-to-day trials and tribulations or the large traumatic issues that come up either gradually or suddenly in life.
Whether it is being filled with the Spirit by attending church services or honoring your innermost Self by communing with Nature, doing contemplative yoga, or practicing meditation, we all need to recharge our batteries on a regular basis.
How do you recharge your batteries? Are you doing this often enough to counter the daily drain of energy? If not, why not, and what can you start doing right here, right now to take better care of your spiritual health?
Next week starts a new month, and a new topic. We'll be discussing the career area of our lives, talking about things such as taking charge of your career, is this a J.OB. or is this truly W.O.R.K., and Follow Your Passion, Find Your Bliss.
As always, your thoughts and feedback on this post or any others on this blog are welcome and appreciated!
Until next time, Namaste!
Sunday, June 15, 2014
MaXIMIze - Journaling: Clear Your Mind, Focus Your Energy
In her book, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron recommends writing three pages in your journal first thing in the morning to clear blockages to working your craft. No editing, no censoring, just writing to clear the flotsam and jetsam from your mind.
I too recommend journaling as a way to clear your mind and focus your energy for the day. By putting things down on paper, you unblock the path so your energy can freely do the work it is meant to do that day.
Journaling can also help us answer our innermost questions by opening the pathway for that small, still voice inside to communicate more easily with us by quieting our minds and focusing our energy.
Sometimes the mere act of writing something down brings out into the light that which has not truly been seen or acknowledged before. And we all know the first step to moving past a problem or a roadblock is to acknowledge it exists. Once we can see the problem or the roadblock and define it, we can work toward solving it or moving past it.
Journaling is a way our innermost Self - that small, still voice within each of us - can help us sort out our problems and work past our roadblocks.
My challenge to you this week is to write at least one - preferably three - pages a day, by hand - either in a journal or a notebook or even just a pad of paper. Do this without editing or censoring yourself. Just let the words flow - even if the words are, "I don't know what to write." Once your inner voice knows it has a consistent way to communicate, the words will come.
Next week we will discuss recharging your batteries.
And in remembrance of a voice from my childhood who left the world this day - "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars." RIP Casey Kasem
Until next week, namaste!
I too recommend journaling as a way to clear your mind and focus your energy for the day. By putting things down on paper, you unblock the path so your energy can freely do the work it is meant to do that day.
Journaling can also help us answer our innermost questions by opening the pathway for that small, still voice inside to communicate more easily with us by quieting our minds and focusing our energy.
Sometimes the mere act of writing something down brings out into the light that which has not truly been seen or acknowledged before. And we all know the first step to moving past a problem or a roadblock is to acknowledge it exists. Once we can see the problem or the roadblock and define it, we can work toward solving it or moving past it.
Journaling is a way our innermost Self - that small, still voice within each of us - can help us sort out our problems and work past our roadblocks.
My challenge to you this week is to write at least one - preferably three - pages a day, by hand - either in a journal or a notebook or even just a pad of paper. Do this without editing or censoring yourself. Just let the words flow - even if the words are, "I don't know what to write." Once your inner voice knows it has a consistent way to communicate, the words will come.
Next week we will discuss recharging your batteries.
And in remembrance of a voice from my childhood who left the world this day - "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars." RIP Casey Kasem
Until next week, namaste!
Sunday, June 8, 2014
MaXIMIze - Spiritual Charity Begins at Home
I know I've reminded us before of what flight attendants teach us about the oxygen masks in airplanes - we have to put our own on before we can help other put theirs on.
Spiritual self-care is just as important as self-care in all other areas of life. Our spiritual selves are an essential part of the battery that keeps us going, that keeps our light lit from within.
If we do not tend our spiritual selves, we find ourselves depleted, jaded, starting not to care about what goes on in our lives or the lives of those we care about. We may find ourselves sucked into the shallowness of inane TV shows or gossip or other one-dimensional ways of living instead of going out into the world and making our little piece of it better, instead of letting our light shine as a beacon to others.
We each need to take the time to shut out the world and connect with our innermost selves - that small, still voice that lives within each of us - in order to be our best selves and to share our best selves - our light - with the world.
My challenge to you this week is to take 15 minutes a day and find a quiet place where you can just sit and be with no distractions. Settle in, and do some breathing exercises to still your body and quiet your mind - inhale to a count of eight, hold to a count of four, exhale to a count of eight. Do this three to five times, as many as it takes to quiet your mind.
Then, on the inhale say "I am," and on the exhale say "enough."
Inhale - "I do"
Exhale - "enough"
Inhale - "I have"
Exhale - "enough"
Repeat the sequence three to five times.
Then, just sit quietly and let the small, still voice within you share its wisdom.
If you find thoughts coming in, let them slide through with no attachment. If you cannot yet do this, go back to the breathing and then the "I am, I do, I have...enough" mantra.
Just 15 minutes a day spent in this manner can have a profound effect on how you view what unfolds over the course of your day.
I hope you take up this practice, this challenge to live your best life right here, right now.
Next week we will discuss journaling as a way to clear our mind and focus our energy.
Until then, namaste!
Spiritual self-care is just as important as self-care in all other areas of life. Our spiritual selves are an essential part of the battery that keeps us going, that keeps our light lit from within.
If we do not tend our spiritual selves, we find ourselves depleted, jaded, starting not to care about what goes on in our lives or the lives of those we care about. We may find ourselves sucked into the shallowness of inane TV shows or gossip or other one-dimensional ways of living instead of going out into the world and making our little piece of it better, instead of letting our light shine as a beacon to others.
We each need to take the time to shut out the world and connect with our innermost selves - that small, still voice that lives within each of us - in order to be our best selves and to share our best selves - our light - with the world.
My challenge to you this week is to take 15 minutes a day and find a quiet place where you can just sit and be with no distractions. Settle in, and do some breathing exercises to still your body and quiet your mind - inhale to a count of eight, hold to a count of four, exhale to a count of eight. Do this three to five times, as many as it takes to quiet your mind.
Then, on the inhale say "I am," and on the exhale say "enough."
Inhale - "I do"
Exhale - "enough"
Inhale - "I have"
Exhale - "enough"
Repeat the sequence three to five times.
Then, just sit quietly and let the small, still voice within you share its wisdom.
If you find thoughts coming in, let them slide through with no attachment. If you cannot yet do this, go back to the breathing and then the "I am, I do, I have...enough" mantra.
Just 15 minutes a day spent in this manner can have a profound effect on how you view what unfolds over the course of your day.
I hope you take up this practice, this challenge to live your best life right here, right now.
Next week we will discuss journaling as a way to clear our mind and focus our energy.
Until then, namaste!
Sunday, June 1, 2014
MaXIMIze - The Importance of Spiritual Health
This month's focus is spiritual health, and we're going to start with the difference between religion and spirituality.
According to the dictionary, here is how those two words are defined, as well as the word "spirit":
Religion: 1. the service and worship of God or the supernatural; commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance. 2. a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. 3. scrupulous conformity. 4. a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.
Spirituality: Of, relating to, consisting of, or afflicting the spirit
Spirit: 1. an animating or vital principle held to give live to physical organism. 2. the immaterial intelligent or sentient part of a person.
Religion focuses on the outward; spiritual focuses on the inward.
The only person we can truly change is ourself, and that change, to be lasting, has to come from the inside out. Our outward actions come from what we think, feel and believe within.
Therefore our spiritual health is at least as important if not more so than our physical health.
In order to nurture both, we need to set aside time and space devoted to our practices. For spiritual health, meditation and/or prayer and reflection, preferably on a daily basis, helps bring clarity to who we are inside and can help transform us into our best being now.
Even if it is just five minutes of sitting quietly and clearing our minds by focusing on our breathing, that small amount of time letting go of the outer world helps bring balance back to our inner world which we can then share with the outer world.
We cannot give what we do not have ourselves, and we cannot know what we DO have if we do not know ourselves and how we fit into the greater scheme of life.
Tending the garden that is our spiritual life enables us to know ourselves on the deepest level.
What are you doing today to bolster your spiritual health and bring balance to your life?
Namaste!
According to the dictionary, here is how those two words are defined, as well as the word "spirit":
Religion: 1. the service and worship of God or the supernatural; commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance. 2. a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. 3. scrupulous conformity. 4. a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.
Spirituality: Of, relating to, consisting of, or afflicting the spirit
Spirit: 1. an animating or vital principle held to give live to physical organism. 2. the immaterial intelligent or sentient part of a person.
Religion focuses on the outward; spiritual focuses on the inward.
The only person we can truly change is ourself, and that change, to be lasting, has to come from the inside out. Our outward actions come from what we think, feel and believe within.
Therefore our spiritual health is at least as important if not more so than our physical health.
In order to nurture both, we need to set aside time and space devoted to our practices. For spiritual health, meditation and/or prayer and reflection, preferably on a daily basis, helps bring clarity to who we are inside and can help transform us into our best being now.
Even if it is just five minutes of sitting quietly and clearing our minds by focusing on our breathing, that small amount of time letting go of the outer world helps bring balance back to our inner world which we can then share with the outer world.
We cannot give what we do not have ourselves, and we cannot know what we DO have if we do not know ourselves and how we fit into the greater scheme of life.
Tending the garden that is our spiritual life enables us to know ourselves on the deepest level.
What are you doing today to bolster your spiritual health and bring balance to your life?
Namaste!
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