Wishing Goes On…
Wishing on Day Three - only nine wishes now:
1. I wish I could be Jennifer Louden’s assistant for the Retreat weekend.
2. I wish the Kung Fu Master had a new friend.
3. I wish I had four new coaching clients.
4. I wish I had a new painting teacher.
5. I wish I blogged regularly.
6. I wish I had a great haircut.
7. I wish I was measurably changing lives.
8. I wish I painted one painting each week.
9. I wish my psychic gift was growing and active.
I know, it’s day four and this is day three’s list, my sincerest apologies. I hope my inability to post (I was without an internet connection yesterday) didn’t keep you from reducing your own list down to only nine wishes.
As your list gets smaller I’m sure you’ll find that your wishes are changing. Maybe you are dropping more than three of the old wishes and adding a new one, or today’s list may have something that was on your first list but not on yesterday’s! That’s ok. The whole point of reducing the lists is forcing yourself to choose and discover what it is you truly want in your life right now. The only rule about making your list is that it should reduce - everything else is up to you!
Posted by Megan @
4:18 pm |
Two Days of Wishing
If you are coming in on this assignment a little late I recommend you visit yesterday’s post so you can get the whole blurb and start from the beginning of the exercise. (Don’t forget to let me know if you decide to play along! I’d love to know how it’s working out for you.)
Day two means we have to whittle down our twenty wishes to only twelve. This is the biggest jump we make in one day and it actually seemed like a lot of wishes to have to leave behind. I found it really hard to do when I was thinking about it from the negative point of view: Which wishes do I not want?
It was a lot easier to do when I went from the positive: Which wishes do I absolutely need to keep? Which wishes excite me the most?
Here’s my Day Two Wishes
1. I wish I had four new coaching clients.
2. I wish I painted one painting each week.
3. I wish I blogged regularly (3x a week).
4. I wish I had a healthy, whole, and happy body.
5. I wish the Kung Fu Master had a new friend.
6. I wish Kung Fu had a location.
7. I wish I had a painting teacher.
8. I wish I had a wise advertising plan.
9. I wish I had a great haircut.
10. I wish I were changing people’s lives - measurably.
11. I wish I could see steady growth in the store.
12. I wish my energetic gifts were growing and I was gaining more control over them.
Speaking of the power of wishing, have you seen Jamie’s awesome WishCasting site? She’s created this fabulous place where you can share your wishes with the blogging world and we can come together and support each other in our wishes and dreams! I love it! Go check it out while you are in a wishing frame of mind.
To borrow Jamie’s patented wish supporting line, while you are placing your wishes this week I’d like to send a little support your way, so: As you wish for yourself, so I wish for you too!
Posted by Megan @
3:21 pm |
If Wishes Were Horses - An Assignment
So, on the subject of goals and setting courses and all that, I thought I’d share an assignment I’ve been working on lately.
I’m reading a new book (when am I not?) called The Psychic Pathway. It’s laid out much like The Artist’s Way and is a 12 week program; read one chapter a week and do the assignments, etc… So far, it’s been enjoyable, but I’m chomping at the bit to get into the meat of the book (I’ve never been one to be patient with the initial stages of anything).
Anyway, last week’s chapter had an exercise that I truly enjoyed working on, and it’s just the kind of thing that’s sure to get the ball rolling on Changing Your Life, because it takes advantage of that amazing, magical power that happens when you write things down. I swear, within two days of starting this exercise I was already seeing things start to take place to would allow me to check things off my list.
It’s not the best exercise for long-term goals or dreams, but it is highly motivational (and slightly less scary!).
The game is all about Wishing.
If you could have anything right now what would you wish for? What’s really important to you right now? Pull out a pen and paper and write:
1. I wish…
Now finish the sentence. What do you wish? Do you wish you had a nice new dress for the weekend? Do you wish you could have a day to yourself? Maybe you wish you had a new car, or you and your husband were talking. You could wish for anything. Nothing’s too big and nothing’s too trivial.
Write down twenty wishes.
1. I wish…
2. I wish…
3. I wish…
Tomorrow you’re going to do the exercise again, except tomorrow you’ll only write down twelve wishes. On Day 3 narrow the list down again to nine, Day 4 is seven, Day 5 is five, Day 6 is four and finally on Day 7 you’ll only record three wishes.
When you’ve worked and whittled your way down to three you’ll finally know what your most important goals for right now are and you can start working on those (instead of wasting your time on those things you think you should be working on).
For the fun of it, I’m going to post my lists each day for the next week so you can see what I’m wishing for and watch how my list evolves. Hopefully, it will inspire you to take part too. (Remember to make a comment with a link if you decide to blog about your list!)
Megan’s Day 1 Wishes
1. I wish I knew how to draw people into the store.
2. I wish I could not worry each day.
3. I wish I had four new coaching clients.
4. I wish I was speaking regularly.
5. I wish I had a published book.
6. I wish my paintings had sold.
7. I wish I made one painting a week.
8. I wish I blogged regularly. (I bet some of you do too.)
9. I wish I was more psychicly aware.
10. I wish we were in England.
11. I wish I had more energetic control.
12. I wish I had a healthy, whole and happy body.
13. I wish The Kung Fu Master made a new friend.
14. I wish the store were prospering.
15. I wish Kung Fu started again.
16. I wish I were changing people’s lives.
17. I wish I had a great haircut.
18. I wish I knew what to do now.
19. I wish I had a painting teacher.
20. I wish I had a mentor I could trust.
So, what are you secretly (or not so secretly) wishing for?
Posted by Megan @
12:28 am |
Setting Course
I know I’ve alluded to the The Hidden Power of Paper & Pen before - but I’ve really only alluded to the mystery that I’ve discovered hidden in the process of writing things down. I don’t think I’ve come right out to tell you that I truly believe writing things down has a magical power.
I’ve always believed words have power. For example, did you know that the concept of creation being caused (either of gods or of our physical world) by the mere speaking of the appropriate word is common throughout all kinds of religions and mythologies? And did you know that multiple cultures around the world believe that a person’s name holds power over their soul; there are even wide spread practices of giving children secret or “true” names and a second name which they go by.
Which just goes to show that words manifested (i.e. brought outside of your head and into the real world) have some kind of power. Whether it’s a soul magic or a psychological phenomenon is relatively irrelevant in my eyes - I have enough kid left in me to be held in awe of the power no matter how it manifests itself.
I mean, come on people, no matter how old you are - or how much you understand the physics of the thing - bubbles remain pretty darn cool to look at.
Right… so back to the point. The power of words. I have found over the last few years that writing things down makes them happen. (I just ordered a book about it actually: Write It Down, Make It Happen because I’m fascinated to read about someone else’s point of view on the topic.) I don’t know how or why this is. All I can tell you is that in all my experiences with the life changing books (see my last post) that have required me to write things down and make lists have proven to me that if I want something to happen in my life I need to write it down.
Or, coming at it from the other direction, if I write it down, there’s a really, darn good chance I’ll see it happen sometime soon.
It’s right about at this stage in our Life Changing Course that I think I should point out that if you want to be able to see a quantifiable change in your life by this time next year then you need to start deciding what kinds of changes you’d like to see.
It’s just Life Coach 101: if you want to go somewhere you need to define where you are going so that you can tell when you’ve arrived.
Yes, I’m talking about those dreaded Goals (cue the heavy music: dun, dun, dunnnnn).
If you don’t decide what areas of your life you’d like to see changes in, or what results you’d like to produce in your life, then how will you be sure that a change has been produced? (Remember, most changes happen in slow steps - so slowly we are often unaware of what or how it happened.)
Now, if you write down your wild and crazy and impossible dreams and hopes you not only get the benefit of being able to look over the list a year from now and therefore have the ability to truly measure your progress and growth. You’ll also benefit from the magical power that flows out of every pen - you’ll see an amazing number of things slowly become crossed off your list.
I swear that you will see more coincidences and amazing happenings that allow you to cross things off your list that you thought you’d never see crossed off than you have in any other one time in your life - just because you wrote the list down. You don’t even need to look at it once you record it; you can just tuck it away in a drawer somewhere and forget it even exists. The magic of writing it down doesn’t actually require your attention to work!
It’s a baffling phenomenon I tell you!
You try it now. Take a pen and paper and start to write down your hopes and dreams. See how long a list you can make. If you get stuck just keep sitting there. Ask yourself: What dreams would I like to see come to pass in the next year? What changes do I want to see evidence of over the next few months? See if you can make a list of 50. Now see if you can push the list to 100. When you get stuck ask yourself what the totally crazy, impossible, isn’t ever going to happen, but if it could…. thing is. Write that down too.
How to Change Your Life Lesson #2: Set a course. It doesn’t matter what your road map looks like, or how big or challenging it is, all that matters is that you create one. Otherwise you’ll just be drifting around aimlessly like a two-man canoe with only one paddler.
No goal is too big or too small to record. “A great haircut” isn’t too petty and “fly around the world” isn’t impossible. No matter what it is, if it’s in your heart then WRITE IT DOWN!
If you decide to take part in my How to Change Your Life series, or if you are declaring today to be your new beginning I’d LOVE to hear from you. Post a comment or shoot me an email (muse @ flamingrenaissance dot com) and I’ll be sure to join your personal cheerleading squad! If you are up to sharing you goals, and hopes and dreams feel free to put them in your comments - or better yet - blog about them yourself, be sure to include a link for us!
Posted by Megan @
11:56 pm |
It Has Begun
Have you ever sat down and tried to figure out where you particular journey really began? I have; every time I think I have it pinpointed I remember a time a few months before that moment when…
Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that life is one great long dance; that God is wooing us deeper and deeper into life and as long as we are willing to be challenged and to face our presumptions about the world (and God himself) then there will always be a deeper place that we can be drawn into. The journey and the wooing will just keep happening. After all, we live in a world of “more than we can ask or imagine” so how could we possibly run out of amazing and mind blowing things to discover?
Of course, there are some significant events - moments - that were definite beginnings in our lives. For me, many of them revolve around reading books (my primary source of mind stretching and belief challenging information). I can trace so many significant revelations or moments of waking up to a hidden truth to specific books I was reading (it doesn’t mean the books are life changing in and of themselves - but more that they served as a “time and place” nudge). Reading Writing Down the Bones, Jesus, Life Coach, The Artist’s Way, Our Father Abraham, and A New Earth (among many others) have all brought about great moment of introspection and revelation that I remember as New Beginnings in my life.
The problem, I think, with beginnings is that they too often happen by accident. We fail to mark them, to declare them, and so it’s often not untill we are well down our current path that we even become aware that there even was a beginning. So, we are always trying to work our way backwards and figure out where it all began.
What we really need to do is make a declaration; we need to decide that Today, right now is going to be the beginning. “Today is the beginning of the rest of you life” and all that jazz. Sometimes we have these great electrical moments happen to us (like Cynthia commented about on my last post) and sometimes we need to create those moments in our lives.
I figure we might as well create one of those moments right now. It’s simple enough, just make a declaration, an agreement with yourself (and with me, if you like) that: One year from today my life will be measurably different.
If you like, you can journal about this decision, you can make a piece of art about it or create a ritual that helps you to draw a line in the sand. But really, all that’s necessary is that you intend for it to be true - and then it will be.
It may not be dramatic. It may creep up on you unawares. But without fail, I can promise you, that the life you are living one year from now will not be the same as the one you are living today. As long as change is what you want, then change is what you’ll get.
Lesson #1 in How to Change Your Life: Sometimes we need to be intentional about our Personal Renaissances. Go ahead, choose to do something different and declare your new life to have begun. Now you are actively pursuing growth and Life instead of just aimlessly wandering through it all!
If you decide to take part in my How to Change Your Life series, or if you are declaring today to be your new beginning I’d LOVE to hear from you. Post a comment or shoot me an email (muse @ flamingrenaissance dot com) and I’ll be sure to join your personal cheerleading squad!
Posted by Megan @
5:19 pm |
