Yesterday, i wrote about balance after a Fast Company article got me to thinking (always dangerous).
I like writing things like that in clear, easy-to-put-into-practice chunks (which i at least started off doing) and I ended with a challenge – to take today, Valentines Day, to show YOURSELF some love and to spend some time figuring our your intentions.
Yogi’s do it before practice – they set their intention.
I try to start my day “as if it was on purpose” but I at least do it before I knowingly enter into situations that make me nervous – like big meetings with important people or unknown situations. What is my intention for this? What do I want the end result to be? What am I willing to do (or not do) to achieve it?
But as much as your mind can help you set intentions, your body knows intention, too. And sometimes it has it’s own agenda.
While I am currently living according to the plan I’ve set for myself (mind you, that’s the daily plan, I have no ultimate plan at the moment), I fall off the horse sometimes. I know that if i spend 30 minutes staring out the window daydreaming when I was scheduled to work on a project (and i left no time in the day for daydreaming), there will be consequences. Things will have to shift to accommodate the new plan. But that it is OKAY – my body’s intention took priority.
My point is this – Your body has the answers. Your body understands things, sometimes more than you do.
Here’s what I mean – you’ve set your goals, or your TDL and you’ve scheduled the time and you have the tools you need to complete the thing. But you don’t.
Why?
I suspect, it’s because your body knows something you don’t about where you want to be spending your time and attention.
I’m currently dealing with this myself and with a good friend of mine. We both understand everything as far intention and scheduling and balance and getting the work done. and for the most part, we embrace it and do it. But there’s pieces missing. And i think it’s because our body knows what our head won’t yet accept.
That what we’re doing, might not be exactly what we want to be doing.
And i think it has something to do with the big picture. There comes a point in your life, (maybe a few points, if you’re like me) when you start to question your purpose. And when you haven’t figured that out, or when you need to figure it out again, everything changes. You can’t seem to keep to your intentions – because you didn’t listen to your body, your insides, your all-knowing self when you set them. Maybe you set them according to what you thought you should be doing, or you didn’t realize you did. Or maybe it’s as simple as the intentions you set rang true at some point, but they just don’t anymore. And that’s okay. But it needs to be fixed.
How do you fix it? Well, i’m working that one out at the moment but I think it comes down to time and attention (like all things do).
I have questions. Questions that need answering. The kinds of questions that can only be answered by listening. Listening to yourself. Trying to figure out which voice isn’t yours and muting them. Oh, and time.
I think the thing to do is to spend time (or allow time to happen in it’s own.. uh, time) in order for these questions to arise and be answered.
There might be more going on with my friend as to why he seems to be… unhappy, overburdened & like he has a bad motivator. But I think for me, I need to:
- sit with myself and start spending some serious intention (Oh i see what you did there) on figuring things out
- break out of the routine once in a while
- inject fun when it’s most needed. (nts: buy more confetti cannons)
Here’s to listening,
