A New Year of Positive Intention

2012, I am so glad you're here.

I am excited to capture the fleeting moments of the year in a mindful and present way. My hope is to use this blog to shape my consciousness as the year unfolds. I see abundance and joy on the way for us all.

My hope is to set a positive intention for each month, posting early in each month to describe the intention, and then later in the month to document how it's unfolding in daily life. Please send notes, photos, art, dreams and any other bits of story from where you are and what you are experiencing as it relates to living with positive intentions. As soon as we can get my basement art studio functional, I'll be posting on a more visual sister blog, Intention Arts. (More on that later.)

If you have any inspiration or intentions that you'd like to send, I'd love to hear from you! I'm forming a loose foundation for the twelve intentions this year and would love to have a more interactive dialogue as part of my creative process of coming up with the monthly intentions.

I'll post the first month's intention soon! Thanks for being out there!

Taking a Break

March 31, 2011

As you probably know, I am pregnant right now, and at 33 weeks, it's getting to that time where I need to set limits. I am going to take a break from this blog as I go inward to nest, connect and emotionally and spiritually prepare for this baby to come. I'm also getting to a vulnerable point in the pregnancy regarding my history of HELLP Syndrome. If you'd like to stay in touch, my pregnancy blog is here:
http://hopefulafterhellp.blogspot.com/

Here's to a birth of positive intention! :)
Amy

How Vulnerability Leads to Connection

If you didn't get a chance to watch the video that I posted (and still highly recommend that you watch), here's the short of it. Brene Brown has been studying connection, empathy, shame and vulnerability for the last decade. She's come up with a way of framing her work that I like, and it's based on research. It goes like this:

If you think of a spectrum, with Connection and Empathy on one side, and Shame and Fear on the other, then Vulnerability is the dial that moves between them. Here. I'll make a quick drawing:

Brene talks about "whole-hearted people" allowing themselves to be vulnerable, as in open, self-aware, and comfortable with their imperfections. So within her framework, connection can only happen when you move toward whole-heartedness in this way. If you exist in your own thoughts, caught up in fears or in shame, it will be very difficult to feel connection. 

I've been trying to dissect myself within this framework over the past week. I don't come from a very shame-based place, so I have been focusing on fear. What fears am I aware that I sink into, as well as what fears may be lurking within my unconscious. I do feel like I am pretty vulnerable, as in open, self-aware and accepting of my imperfections. But in my quest for continued self-awareness/vulnerability and increased connection, I am still searching for what else I need to work on. Am I stuck along the spectrum on not fully accepting all of my imperfections? Are there imperfections that I fear admitting? Or is it just that I fear admitting imperfections at all? I am acutely aware of my overcompensating need to be competent, capable, and smart. So if I can let myself be seen as imperfect, if I can tell the truth about myself faster, will I feel more connected?

And a side note I've been thinking about is that she talks about the message we need to give our children, "You are imperfect. Human life is filled with struggles. But you are worthy of love and belonging." I think I got that last part, but not so sure about the first two statements... the root of my problem being imperfect? Seriously, comment.

Great Talk about Connection

One of my clients recently sent me this video, and I thought you might like to watch it. It's about 20 minutes long and well worth the time.  (If you haven't heard of the TED Conferences, they're totally inspiring and you can find free videos of many of the talks online.) From the site, "Brene Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share."

:Connection: is the Theme of the Month

In our society, December is often a time of connection. We spend more time with family, get together with friends, and some of us even send real mail! Since my HELLP experience/ birth trauma in December of 2007, I've struggled with my sense of connection to others during this time of year and especially around the winter holidays. I've really turned into a Grinch, actually, finding it much easier to dismiss the parties, cards, shopping and gift-giving scene as a parade of superficiality rather than to be really honest with myself and see that my dismissal of these things is related to my own struggle with connection during this time of year.

Probably the last time I can remember feeling connected in December was the first Christmas after I had my son, just days after leaving the hospital. We were having holiday dinner with my husband's family and my mother-in-law asked us to go around the table and say something nice to the person to our left. It was a sweet thing. When it was my turn, I sat frozen, hormonal and sweaty, with a squirming pink newborn on my lap, a nursing cover awkwardly placed over my shoulder, and looked over to the person on my left. My husband. My partner with whom I had just shared the scariest time of our lives. The days leading up to that moment flashed in my memory like a train passing too fast, and too close. I looked at Brian. The person who stayed by my side for 30 hours of labor, who feared for my life, and who mothered our son on his own for the first 7 hours of Gavin's life. Only to sleep on a thin mat on a hospital floor for the next 6 nights, never leaving his wife and son. The man who wore a handmade necklace of birth beads over his scrubs while our baby was lifted from my lifeless abdomen in the next room. Who ran, scared, with the nurse down the hall with our minutes-old baby, pushing his cart to the nursery, barely aware if we'd had a boy or a girl, let alone how many fingers and toes there were to count. The man who fought tirelessly to recapture any of our intended birth plans, bringing a breast pump into the recovery room where I wasn't yet out of the fog of anesthesia, pumping me as best he could on his own, trying to get precious mother's milk from my body... I just sat at that surreal Christmas table, with its casseroles and cheerful garland, looking at my husband, with his whole family watching me, and waiting to hear me say something nice. "Something nice" would never capture the way I felt about him in that moment. Connected by our souls. By this indescribable experience we'd just had. By this tiny baby who had survived. All I could do was cry. I cried and cried right there at the table, the only expression of the deep love I felt for him. He held my hand. I held our baby. I couldn't even talk. That's the last time I remember feeling really, really connected around the holidays.

This year my disconnection was so blatantly obvious for Christmas that I actually forgot to bring gifts, both purchased and made, to my mother-in-law's in Oklahoma City. Even with a three year old just starting to get the whole Santa concept, I couldn't muster any holiday spirit. I let myself make an excuse, yet again, for why I would wait to send holiday cards until the new year. It's just been easier that way.

But I know it's not good for me. I am usually a very connected person. The whole rest of the year I merrily reach out to others and seek connections and nurturing relationships. Because I am so connected the rest of the time, I can feel the negative impact that my December disconnection has on me. Starting this blog in the first place was a way to connect. I crave it. I thrive on it. I think all of us do. So it's only fitting that the first monthly theme in this new year is Connection.

More to come...

Happy New Year of Positive Intention!

Thank you so much for all of your love and support with my blog last year! Your end-of-the-year emails and comments warmed my heart and validated my intent to share this journey with others.

Writing this blog last year was so positive and helped me feel so connected to you, to myself, and to my constant quest for mindfulness. I want to continue on into this new year with a few tweaks. I realized a couple months into my first year of blogging about positive intention that having a new focus every week was just too much. I didn't get to really engage in the mantras and actions every week and often felt rushed. So this year, I will choose one theme for each month. I also felt my right-brained-ness struggling with the structure of weekly posts and having mantras and actions. I need a more free-flowing, creative approach, so that's what will happen this year. (Whatever that will be..) I loved that part of the blog was about donating to the Preeclampsia Foundation and I appreciate those of you who donated (to PF or to your own cause) along with me. I do want to make charitable giving an ongoing part of this blog, so will include that on a monthly basis as well as opposed to just being something I do when I don't post or follow through with an action. I hope you will come along with me again this year, and I also encourage you to interact more in the comments section. I'd love your ideas for monthly themes - either something you would like to see repeated from last year or something new. Also, I would love to have some guest bloggers this year! Step forward any time!!!

I'm officially starting tomorrow, or sometime this week. ;)

Happy New Year!

xo

Until Next Year

I have been quiet lately. Not that you've had time to read my posts with all of the holiday chaos that engulfs us. So you probably don't mind. I've been buried under an avalanche of challenges, but have come out the other side, feeling centered and even a tiny smidge excited about the holidays, which is very unusual for me!

I decided to take a break for the rest of 2010. My trauma anniversary came and went and things are good. I feel very present-moment-oriented. In the new year, if all goes as intended, I will continue this blog, but will post monthly instead of weekly. It was just way too much. Too many posts, too many weekly ideas to come up with, and too short of a time to focus on them. If there were any mantras or actions that you really liked this past year, please let me know and I'll work on building on them in the 2011. And I'll be making my donation to the Preeclampsia Foundation after this post. Maybe you'll also consider making a donation to support an organization committed to raising funding for research and awareness for a condition that kills one mother every seven minutes and kills half a million fetuses and newborns every year.

Looking back at my first post, I feel good about where I've ended up with my intentions.. 

I want to really live life. I want to feel and share the love that is all around me. I want to be in the present moment. I want to notice and appreciate the gratitude that fills my heart when I actually stop and notice everything that is good around and within me. These things are what I call living with positive intention. 

I am doing this now. Thank you for your love and support along this journey, and I can't wait to continue on in the new year!

Week 47 | Eat Mindfully | Take Longer to Chew Your Food

Well, since eating has been on my mind excessively for exactly 15 weeks now, and with Thanksgiving coming up this week, I figured it would be good to focus a weekly intention on eating. I have long been aware of the concept of "mindful eating," and I sometimes (inconsistently) do my own version of mindful eating, stopping to pay attention to the food that I'm putting in my mouth - thinking about where it came from, how it tastes, what the texture is.. But I only just now stopped to read information on the website for the Center for Mindful Eating. They say it way better than I would, so I will leave it at that. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :)

Principles  |  Philosophy  |  Authors

The Center for Mindful Eating has created the Principles of Mindful Eating. These principles are intended to guide professionals who are interested in mindful eating. The Principles of Mindful Eating are free to reproduce and distribute for educational purposes.

The Principles are also available as a PDF to download and print. (The Principles of Mindful Eating - PDF 110kb)

Principles of Mindfulness:
• Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention, non-judgmentally.
• Mindfulness encompasses both internal processes and external environments.
• Mindfulness is being aware of what is present for you mentally, emotionally and physically in each moment.
• With practice, mindfulness cultivates the possibility of freeing yourself of reactive, habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting.
• Mindfulness promotes balance, choice, wisdom and acceptance of what is.

Mindful Eating is:
• Allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing
opportunities that are available through food preparation and consumption by respecting your own inner wisdom.
• Choosing to eat food that is both pleasing to you and nourishing to your body by using all your senses to explore, savor and taste.
• Acknowledging responses to food (likes, neutral or dislikes) without judgment.
• Learning to be aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decision to begin eating and to stop eating.

Someone Who Eats Mindfully:
• Acknowledges that there is no right or wrong way to eat but varying degrees of awareness surrounding the experience of food.
• Accepts that his/her eating experiences are unique.
• Is an individual who by choice, directs his/her awareness to all aspects of food and eating on a moment-by-moment basis.
• Is an individual who looks at the immediate choices and direct experiences associated with food and eating: not to the distant health outcome of that choice.
• Is aware of and reflects on the effects caused by unmindful eating.
• Experiences insight about how he/she can act to achieve specific health goals as he/she becomes more attuned to the direct experience of eating and feelings of health.
• Becomes aware of the interconnection of earth, living beings, and cultural practices and the impact of his/ her food choices has on those systems. 

Week 47 

Mantra | Eat Mindfully 

Action | Take Longer to Chew Your Food

Week 45 | It is Better to Light a Candle than Curse the Darkness

Short but sweet:

The clocks have fallen back. It's dark early. I've heard a lot of complaining, and have participated in some myself. Then I went to my 12 week OB appointment and my doctor was dressed in a beautiful green shalwar and was celebrating Diwali, the "Festival of Lights," which she described as a celebration of lighting up the dark. This takes me back to the wonderful Chinese proverb I have had under the heading of this blog since Week 1.

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

And so it is.

Week 45

Mantra:

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

Action:

Light a candle every night this week and write one positive thought.

Week 44 | Dream On | Write Down Your Dreams When You Wake Up

 OK. This image is another throw-back to my adolescent decor. I borrowed Shel Silverstein's words from the opening of Where the Sidewalk Ends and hung them on my bedroom door.

I recently participated in a workshop about dreaming and it's got me thinking. As an art therapist, I have studied dream analysis and I use dream work in my sessions with clients. I LOVE and believe in this work! But, I have gone back and forth in my personal life with paying close attention to my own dreams, which I usually remember. The night before the workshop, lying in bed, I wondered if I would have especially vivid dreams, knowing I would be going to the workshop in the morning. Having that conscious thought was all it took, and I woke up having had a very complex and meaningful dream that I, of course, shared with the workshop group, gaining invaluable feedback that I continue to mull over during my quiet moments of self-discovery.

In the days before the sleep deprivation that comes from night nursings, and the groggy start to the day with a screaming toddler as an alarm clock, I actually used to jot my dreams down every morning. If you can, I suggest doing this. I miss the practice, and will attempt to write my dreams down every morning this week before getting Gavin out of bed. (He's been pretty content in the mornings lately to play with his "friends,"the 30 stuffed animals he sleeps with.)

Here's a shortcut to the dream process I learned at the recent workshop. (I'll give due credit, but just can't manage to get up and find the folder at this hour.)

1. Give your dream a title.
2. List the feelings that you had about the dream in your waking mind.
3. List any parts of the dream that mirror reality, or that could really happen.
4. List the questions that you have about the dream.
5. Share your dream with a friend and have them offer questions that they have about the dream.. "If it were my dream..."
6. After pondering the dream a little more, come up with a bumper sticker style message.

I'll try to post about one of my dreams this week so you can see how this works, in case this doesn't make sense.

Week 44
Mantra | Dream On
Action | Write Down Your Dreams When You Wake Up


ps - GO VOTE!!!!