Tag Archives: Conscious Living

6 Ways to Capture Your 2011 Life Lessons

December 19, 2011 4:43 am \

We may have jumped ahead by planting the seed for your One Powerful Word 2012, but let’s not forget to capture our 2011 life lessons.

They are precious gems, indeed!

Have you ever noticed how insights that are so uplifting in one moment seem to dissolve in the next?

Unless we capture them and actually practice integrating them into our being, they will vanish into the mists.

How to Capture Your 2011 Life Lessons

I’ve recently read six extraordinary articles that offer different slants on learning from our life experiences. Some focus on 2011, one goes all the way back, and one focuses on the present moment, the culmination of 2011 and all our years.

I would like to do all these processes!  So I bet one of them may ring true for you.

Maia recommends taking a full day to focus on reflection and journaling on the past and coming year.  She offers 5 keys questions to deeply stimulate your thought process, including celebrating the positive.  She describes intentions in the following way and explains how intentions link to goals:

“Intentions come from the heart and soul – they are rooted in the values that are most important to you. An intention is connected to your life’s purpose, and is a specific way of expressing it at a given time in your life.”

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Posted in: Personal Development \ Tagged: , ,

One Powerful Word 2012: A Simple Approach to New Year’s Resolutions

December 12, 2011 4:04 am \

Note:  This is a revision of an article originally published on my blog last December. 

I love the simplicity, force, and focus of choosing a single word as a guiding light for each year.

One Powerful Word 2012

According to some surveys, almost 90% of resolutions end in failure.  So why not skip the exhaustive list of New Year’s Resolutions?

The truth is there’s a physiological limit to the amount of willpower we each have.  Hence, if you try to change too many things at once, you inevitably fail.  It’s a scientific reality.

Instead, consider the simplicity and elegance of selecting one powerful word.

But let’s not get hung up on the idea of “one” word.   You could choose one word or two.  Or a whole phrase.   You could work with your word for a full year, six months, or until its done.  You might decide to focus on a different facet of your word each month.

There are no rules!  It’s your life.  Experiment and find what works for you.

Finding Your Perfect Word

Is there is a single word or a phrase that captures what you would like to manifest in your self or your life in 2012?

A perfect word may immediately pop into your mind.  Or you might need to let the idea percolate for a while.  Then see what bubbles up.  There’s no rush.  It might be easier to see clearly once the chaos of the holidays have passed.  But you can let the idea simmer in the meantime.

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Posted in: Personal Development \ Tagged: , , , , ,

Making Space to See the Purity of Your Being

August 14, 2011 12:12 am \

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

One of my spiritual teachers – Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche – recently disappeared.  On purpose.

He was just entering into a three-year retreat.  Then, one day he vanished from his room leaving only a letter behind.  He left without money, credit cards, extra clothing, or smartphone.  No one knows where he is.

Rather than practicing in closed retreat in one location, as most dedicated retreaters do nowadays, he’s adopted the approach of a wandering yogi.  He says:

“As demonstrated by the great yogi Milarepa, there is also a tradition of wandering from place to place, staying in remote caves and sacred sites with no plans or fixed agenda, just an unswerving commitment to the path of awakening. This is the type of retreat that I will be practicing over the coming years.”

Not only is Mingyur Rinpoche an extraordinary spiritual teacher with a dedicated community of followers, he’s a New York Times best-selling author.

And he was one of the long-term meditators invited to the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin in 2002, where Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, and other scientists examined the effects of meditation on the brains of advanced meditators.

In other words, he had all the trappings of ordinary success.

So why would a successful person drop their normal life and activities to pursue spiritual awakening in such a radical way?

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Posted in: Mindfulness & Awareness, Writing & Blogging \ Tagged: , ,