It’s that time of year again!!
Have you noticed the surge in energy that always happens during the Back 2 School madness?
The transitional chaos – everywhere – as people sneak in one last hoorah before summer ends and every parent, teacher, student and child gets ready for the first day of school.
Everywhere you turn, mass marketing is reminding us to get our pens and pencils ready – another school year is in motion.
The last quarter of the year feels like one giant push; one last push at 2016 before birthing a new year of possibilities.
Even if we’ve left those hallowed halls behind us, we still feel all those years of conditioning and back to school rewiring.
You feel a huge pull to buy a daily planner, some pens and markers, and – if you’re anything like me – your inner nerd is begging you to sign up for some classes in the fall.
Just like that, we too start feeling anxious, needing to work more, study more – just one more Youtube lesson, one more book to read.
Whether you’re feeling the hype yourself, or you’re a parent and you’re actually deep into the B2S daily insanity, we’ve decided to share 4 practical tools for creating and connecting to your inner peace amidst all the excitement.
Find stillness within the chaos – Seeing and believing in the vision wholeheartedly is the anchor.
Chaos is beautiful… when you can see the potential and promise it brings. Chaos is energy expanding and contracting to expand you even more, way beyond your comfort zone.
If you can find your truth and live out your vision, you can experience clarity and create a clear foundation of self-purpose amidst the chaos.
This purpose allows you to be able to experience stillness, and your vision serves as an anchor to stabilize the fluctuation of uncertainty.
Vision is the picturing of your desired reality.
Write it down.
What’s your vision for 5 years from now, 1 year, 6 months…3 months from now…the last day of this month?
What does it look like and feel like? Put it onto paper – write down everything you want to see happen.
Once you outline and organize your vision clearly, you can focus on making it become a reality.
What would it feel like to have your vision self realized… go there now.
Use structure to create real freedom in our lives –
Routines & Rituals
Your morning routines, nightly routines, spiritual rituals, daily rituals – they ALL serve a purpose.
Routines and rituals create structure for freedom, a space to clear your mind, helping you align to your truth; surrendering the illusions of struggle and harmonizing our experience as we move through our journey.
It’s important to note how you meet and greet yourself every morning.
Do you run to your phone and infuse your daily morning routine with a social media extravaganza?
Do you jump right into work?
Do you get dressed with enthusiasm and excitement, or do you go through the motions, barely remembering what you wore the day before?
Do you feed yourself good nutritious food or do you skip it and grab a protein bar? No judgement here – no one way is the right one for everyone. And I have yet to figure out consistency with when it comes to health and nutrition.
However, it’s important to highlight 2 to 4 daily practices to provide structure to your day.
One ritual should be regarding how you greet yourself in the morning, how you present yourself to yourself each and every day.
Other rituals can involve other important parts of your day, such as creating a soothing routine for bedtime.
Do you read or write or meditate? These modalities will help you release the stresses of the day, clearing your mind so you can begin the next day anew.
Do you call someone just to check in, with no other agenda? Do you connect with people or do you steer clear of social interactions? Do you pray and how often? What words do you start with? Is the focus on you or your mission and purpose for being here? Do you pray for others? Do you acknowledge others and express your gratitude and appreciation? Do make time to learn or experience something new?
Create routines and rituals that will best feed your physical, spiritual, and emotional mind and body.
Focus on the intentions behind each goal – Being Integrity vs. Doing Integrity
Intention energizes, clears, transforms, magnifies.
Integrity is the foundation of intention; it’s either firm or floppy depending on you and the way you carry out your word.
Being Integrity versus Doing Integrity highlights our need to create and the false illusion of staying busy in the doing. In other words we think staying busy is the key.
There is intention behind every living being, whether it’s involving a relationship or a goal. The intention behind every rose, every sunset is simply to be. There’s no doing in their existence, no strategies behind their intention. The rose blooms, the sun shines, the butterfly transforms. Their intention is to be love, to express love, to be an instrument of love.
Evaluate the intentions you have for each goal and focus on Being Integrity – living with integrity, embodying it wholeheartedly, without forcing its creation. Where are you forcing it? Where have you resigned?
Who do you get to be to live out the full expression of your vision and intention?
Regular focused meditation will help you get in touch with your inner self, allowing you to open yourself up and connect to your inner values.
Allowing: The art of being in service – Gratitude & Devotion
Our vision creates a mental picture that anchors our passion, our devotion.
Passion cultivates an act of service, an act of love, and love in action is service.
When we allow the gifts of our soul to just flow, wonders begin to happen. Miracles take place.
Gratitude reminds us of the abundance of love, joy and purpose that is constantly being expressed through our allowance, through our devotion, through our gratitude.
The key is to prepare for uncertainty.
Keep a gratitude journal and write and express yourself in it through compassion, joy, and forgiveness. But this time, take action.
Do one thing today that’s different, whether it’s brushing with the opposite hand, sleeping backwards, listening to new music, or driving a different route home.
When we relax and allow things to happen, we aren’t in our heads so much. We get into a state of naturally going with the flow and allowing our dreams to manifest through clear intention, surrendering the how and letting our creative impulses of natural intelligence just flow.
When we prep for uncertainty, we stimulate growth related experience and connection and nurture growth.
Take action and utilize these tools to create your 4 daily routines to nurture inner peace, freedom, stability, and openness within yourself.
Choose routines that interrupt the daily flood of distractions and habitual thinking; rituals that leave you in a space of knowing that we’re all connected, that we’re all special, that we have all been assigned to our sacred mission.
There’s a reason for you, for me, for all of existence being here, and a divine order to all of it.
There is perfection in each moment.
These daily rituals will serve to uplift your soul and keep your heart grounded, helping you find peace in the center of our busy world.