Make Space, Sweeps, Gaps, Rituals, Self-Care, Enrichment (MM 05.25.18)

#MeditationMusings • Highlights from today’s meditation

Clean out life to make more space for love.

There is an ongoing pull to go through minimalism in my life: the physical, the digital, the mental … everything. I want to own so much less than I do. I want to have less “bookmarks” than I do. Less notes. Less to-do’s. Less… overall. I essentially want to be able to point at only the most important, useful, or beautiful things in my life. I’m close, but there is still a lot of clutter that doesn’t serve that purpose.

The Sweeps – Dedicated time to “process” life.

A concept I heard during a live call just prior to meditation. Moderators of the group have assigned hours of the day where they go through all of the posts in a group and make sure everyone is taken care of and there’s no stone left unturned.

There are a lot of ways that I can incorporate this into my life, even if I’m not running a massive group. I could set aside a specific hour (or number of hours) during the day (or week) to …

• Go through emails and Inbox Zero everything.
• Respond to people who have taken the time to private message me, text me, or comment on one of my threads.
• Go through my “shelves of projects” and make sure that they are processed and organized, instead of cluttered (which often invites procrastination and delay).
• Process receipts and other financial stuff.
• Dedicate that hour to “moving a project forward.”

By spending time dedicated to processing those kinds of areas, I can make sure that what is taking physical and mental space isn’t just gathering dust and increasing in clutter-intensity. I often feel really great when I “do a sweep” of my stuff, archiving irrelevant stuff, taking 30 minutes to enter a few receipts, taking time to message some people, and so on… and making that a part of my day or week sounds great and so fulfilling. … As long as I actually do it.

Daily rituals/meditation needs to be re-integrated with intention and consistency.

I was doing daily meditation and had a morning/evening ritual for a while, but it fell off. It helped when I had everything visibly listed and could literally check-off when I did them. I stopped doing that and as a result the routines fell apart (no surprise there, I didn’t give it enough time to actually integrate as a habit). Time to go back to that.

There is value in balance AND extremes.

Some people like balance, some people like to play in the extremes. Both I find to be useful, because it just depends on the situation. As someone who is highly impacted by stimulation, I find myself moderating my environment around me quite often. Sometimes I need to dim the lights if I want to be less anxious during a meditation. Other times I need high intensity music and lots of noise to “keep me in the zone” when I get to working.

Ultimately it’s more important to recognize what I actually need and what’s just going to be a distraction that keeps me away from doing the heart-work. If it’s balance: great. If it’s an extreme: great. I don’t want to push myself into a box and not have the option to adjust.

Endure the restlessness of meditation.

Meditation is “the inner work,” and without it I may not easily find the gold laying in wait that leads me to my true self. I dislike that I’m so restless during meditation but I recognize that that is very reason I need to do it. If I sit with it long enough, the mental noise quietens and softens and what lays underneath is who I really am. It’s always there, but when I’m in that restless state, jumping from distraction to distraction … who I really am gets overlooked in favor of all the “noise.”

I must embody what I want to learn before telling others about it.

It’s such a habit of mine to see something I want to do or that would help me … and then go tell someone about it, instead of spending the time (minutes, days, weeks) actually implementing and LIVING it. I should instead be living it and sharing it after I’ve started or implemented it. Not before. This helps me to lessen the impact of people pleasing habits like validation/approval seeking prior to trusting myself. (This is slightly a hypocritical thing to bring up, but I originally wrote all of this for myself first anyway.)

Should I “watch more Heart-based stuff” or start living it?

After my meditation, as I was counting the hours left in the day and how much time I have before other things going on… I thought about catching up on the EShift series group calls that I missed. Those would be helpful, certainly … but if I’m in the state of flow to LIVE and ACT … shouldn’t I start with that instead? There’s not a right or wrong answer, but in the moment it feels more right not to watch more stuff, not to consume more but instead to start moving forward with what the heart advises. And it’s saying no more content, please.

Take care of yourself first.

Go meditate. Take the shower before reading the emails. Eat something healthy. Go sit on the porch and chill. Watch some comedy. Play a game. Reach out to that heart-based person. … Do what you need to do to take care of yourself.

The moment you take care of yourself and you get into your heart, the faster you can make a positive impact on your own life while changing the world.

There is more fulfillment in following flow and heart.

“Focus on what’s most meaningful, exciting, fulfilling — not the quick fix impulses.” It’s easy to fall into the trap of a quick fix. “I’ll just check Facebook, it’ll only take a minute.” Each time I use my willpower to stop that impulse, the stronger I become because it means staying in the flow of my heart for a longer stretch of time. Each time I “tab out,” that flow weakens because I have to “shift gears” from heart to ego, and then have to try and get back.

Just stay with the flow as long as possible. Sure, take breaks when it’s needed, but make sure it’s intentional and needed, not just to feed fear.

Keep reminding yourself that you feel the BEST when you’re doing work from your heart. Doing work that matters. Doing work that means something to you. Or is creative. Or is fun and engaging. Don’t numb yourself: live in that fulfilling work.

You are the Judge.

It’s ultimately up to each of us to decide whether or not we are living at our best. Others may look on from the outside or even go so far as to cheer us on or boo us on our journey, but our life is not up to them. Just like their life is not up to us.

Each of us has a unique journey and unique experiences that only we can experience. While it can be helpful at times to receive encouragement or advice, or warnings when we step astray from our path, at the end of the day we face ourselves, our hearts, on whether or not we lived with love. That burden is on us, so it’s in our best interest to listen to our intuition and trust what is right and true for each of us.

Seek and act to enrich your own experience first, before telling the world.

Listen to yourself. Act for yourself. Experience and take action for your gain – not to tell others and to garner validation or admiration. This is has been a recurring theme on the forefront of my mind. I tend to listen to others and reach out to select people to garner “support” for what I want to do, for what feels right in my heart.

During my meditation, it returned to me again, this message to do things for myself, to experience things exclusively for my own gain – and to not think about what I’m doing from the perspective of how I will share it with them, in a blog post, or in a video.

First, I should experience it and process it for my own personal growth and for my own gain. And if it may benefit another by sharing it: then share it. But do not share it before experiencing it.

Learn it, implement it, experience it. Share those experiences only when you are not sharing simply to get the “green light” to act. If you want to act, act. If you want to experience it, go experience it. Save the stories for when you’ve taken the first step or completed your journey – not before.

Do not fill the gaps. That’s where you are.

It’s alluring to fill the silence with something – anything. Facebook. My favorite music. YouTube. TV shows. A new course. A less important project.

But I’m finding that it’s in the silence that I discover myself, where I can hear my own voice, where I find my own motivation. By allowing silence to exist, and not instinctively filling it out of habit, I am more likely to feel what I am called to do in that moment.

The more silence I can create (whether there is audible silence or not) within my being, the more clarity I have in my actions and thoughts. And the more I will move with confidence in anything that I do, because there is no attempts at trying to make me better, but rather in letting the better-me that already exists… show up.