A Year of Positive Intention

The Month of March - Connect to Your Community

When you live in the midwest, the go-to theme for March is spring, growth, new things to come. You struggle to make it through cold, gray winters and it's pretty much all you can think about. This year, however, we had the most amazing, mild, somewhat sunny winter I can remember. Do I dare admit that it was easy this year? When I moved back to Chicago from San Francisco a decade ago, I cited one of my top reasons being the collective hardship of getting through these winters with everyone else around you, which creates an automatic sense of community. While I never experienced a major earthquake during my time in San Fran, there was nothing that happened in nature there that encouraged an unspoken bond with the people around me. Maybe because of the missing sense of collective survival, or maybe just because of cultural differences, I also felt just slightly detached from everyone else. Occasionally, I'd meet someone from the midwest and we'd commiserate about the cheek kiss greetings and how much we missed a good, solid hug hello. I was grateful to have three of my childhood best friends living in the bay area at the same time I did for my down home connection with them. So, this year, instead of the predictable "spring is coming" inspired theme, I'm thinking a lot about community. From family of origin to family of choice, there are people we feel connected to. There are also ideals and interests and hobbies when shared that help us feel connected. I encourage you to build and nurture your sense of community this month, and I'll do the same! * Happy to say I've already started by having lunch with two new girlfriends today and having a family-of-friends over for early kid-friendly dinner and then two golden oldies over for after-the-kids-are-down dinner tomorrow night. Hadn't even thought of these plans when I came up with this idea, but I'm sure these get-togethers are part of the inspiration for the theme. How do you connect to community? Who or what is your community?

Grateful

I forget how lucky I am to work in a field where I am surrounded by positive energy, creative ideas and people trying to live life to the fullest. I take for granted my level of self-awareness and mindfulness, which I am continually challenging myself on. I just wanted to take a second to write this.

If you are reading this blog and feeling like you don't even know where to start to "look within," then know that you are not alone. Daniel Siegel calls it "mindsight" - knowing your own mind, and the minds of others. I like to think about knowing your mind as paying attention to the running thoughts that are always there, rolling past as if on a scrolling marquee, narrating your experiences, your feelings, your thoughts, your self-judgments. When you can start to tune into that "thinking mind" and notice the trail of thoughts that inhabit your brain, you will start to know your mind. And then, once you have mindsight, you can do two very crucial things to happiness. One, you can stop and/or change the thoughts that are in your thinking mind. Two, you can detach from your thought process all together in order to be fully present.

Maybe I will continually write notes like this, both to clarify my own thoughts about how to teach mindfulness, and to help readers who are new to this idea. Please share your comments and feedback!

Thinking of Dr. King

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
MLK

I am trying to channel Dr. King today. Fighting internal negative energy while contending with 8+ months of sleep deprivation is constantly trying. I give in to the darkness too much.

Love and light. Love and light.

January: A Month of Going Within

With the winter solstice in December came the sense of quieting my mind and turning inward. Inspired by the renewal process of plant life where I live in the cold midwestern US, I find comfort in the way the outer growth slows or stops and the deep roots sustain life in the winter with the promise of buds in the spring. I like to think of myself as going within too, letting my soul sway into my inner depths as the winter season quiets my mind.

You are invited along this month. Move your consciousness toward a sense of going within.

Meditation:
I choose to go enjoyably inward.

Action Plan:

Deep breathing every day (using "Mindfulness Bell" app every hour, and I will take a deep breath each time I look at a clock)
Electronics curfew at 10:30 every night so that I can move into silence and presence well before it's time to sleep.
Only eat foods that nurture me.
make more art. Do it now.

Please share your ideas, meditations and actions too!

Loved sitting in the unusual warming January sun while very quickly painting during the baby's naptime!

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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!