better than winning the lottery or full body exfoliation (+ free mindfulness meditation)

It’s not just you. Everyone wants it.

More than a winning lottery ticket or a sundae made with honey-sweetened coconut milk ice cream (that just me?) or even one of those massages where they scrub off all your dead skin with a scratchy yellow mitt (again, me?)!

What is this magical treasure, you wonder?

CLARITY, my friend.

That elusive muse. The one-who-got-away….then came back and stayed for a wild, sensual tryst only to be gone again in the morning.*

So why is clarity so fleeting?

Well, honestly, we don’t make a lot of room for clarity because we’re all moving too damn fast…multi-tasking our little hearts out, amiright?

We’re also addicted to problem solving mode. You’ve heard me say this before — but it’s our cultural pathology.

The shitty, pathological, patriarchal, colonized, broken-ass story is this: everything in your life is a problem or a collection of problems (ie your job, your love, your body, your sexuality, your feels, your spirituality, your money) and it’s gotta be fixed. ASAP.

Nowhere in this exhausting fix-it paradigm is there any room for clarity (!), creativity (!!), enjoying the journey (!!!), or vision (!!!!). Mostly there’s just old teeth-grinding worries, crippling anxieties and heart-squirmy fears about not doing it (aka life) right.

What to do? Welp, it’s sort of a three-parter:

1. You have to shift your orientation from this cultural pathology to one of Vision. Capital V.The opportunity here is to practice and embrace a new orientation where you look at your life zoomed out, with the view of “How do I want to be alive right now? How do I want to feel everyday? What do I really want to experience and create?”You’re not alone with this. We all have to take the big vision stance. Because if you don’t do it for you, who do you think will?
2. And to get to vision you have to cultivate the conditions for clarity to thrive so vision can arise. Did you ever have to grow mold in your 5th grade science class? It’s like that.Carefully creating the conditions for the desired growth to thrive. But instead of dark and dank, think light and expansive!
3. To cultivate the conditions for clarity, you have to slow the eff down.Slow down your thoughts, your actions, your reactions. The mind, the body, the heart. Bring consciousness — usually focused on your external existence and fixing the problems — to what is happening inside of you.

That’s it.

Here are some tried and true ways of getting started with the slow down:

• Start your day off with meditation, prayer, self-pleasure (not as a quick fix but as energy movement and self-worship), working with oracular goddess cards, talking to plants, stretching, cat time, a little dance around the room in your undies, no phone or inbox your first hour (a must!), or just 10 deep breaths and setting a positive intention for the day.
• Let go of caffeine if you have to. You know who you are.
• Make time to be in your body. Bow down to yourself. You’re perfect.
• Eat breakfast, especially before the caffeine. And not like while you’re walking or driving. You want to be nice to your adrenals, trust me. A little protein is a must.
• Drink more water. Say a little prayer of love for yourself, your community, the world over the glass before you drink. When you drink, focus on the feeling of it moving into your mouth and down your throat.
• Focus on 3-5 friends who really make you feel loved, nurtured, and seen. Take an energetic pause with the rest for a bit.
• Let your calendar breathe if you’re always back to back.
• Discover “off time”. (That means no phone, no DOING of anything, just being. It might be new and scary, but you’ll figure it out.)
• Try a mindfulness meditation. (Oh hey, I made you a free one here with some very groovy music. Lucky you.)
• Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate: the folds of your body; a tree on your way to work; the feeling of the earth under your feet; the scent of your lover’s long, manly mer-man hair (again, that’s maybe just me); the air in your lungs; your home; this opportunity of being alive right now. Whatever it is, let the appreciation snowball.
• (Re)connect with your inner guide by getting quiet and still, asking for what you need support in, listening for the answer, trusting what you receive, and acting from there.**
• Make room for clarity. Just throwing this one back in here just in case you already forgot it because hustle.
• Say no. As Oprah tells us, “no is a complete sentence.” If you’re a people-pleaser, this is especially helpful/difficult. Practice drawing boundaries. Saying no to things that you don’t really want to do = saying yes to yourself!

Once clarity has some space to be, you can begin to observe your thought/behavioral/emotional patterns and notice that which no longer serves you. #seewhatididthere

Now imagine how you want to feel, not just what you want to do or have.

Do you want to feel safe, seen, heard, respected, loved, good enough, supported, courageous, clear, confident, abundant, grounded, whole?

Do you believe that it’s possible that you could have what you want? That you could feel/be/have/do what you most desire?

If no, you start here. Try on the possibility that you could. That you must. Because if you don’t, it ain’t happenin’.

If yes, find a way — right friggin’ now — to start feeling it. Call in gratitude and your emotional imagination to start feeling your way toward the feelings you imagine you’d feel as you be/have/do what you want.***

You create and guide your reality. Thought, by thought. Feeling by feeling.

Make your vision real.

[Don’t forget your free mindfulness meditation here]

[Join me over here for free coaching to dig on this topic, ask me anything, say hi…this Friday at 11am pst, facebook live]

 

* Look, it’s a Libra Full Moon and this sensual lunar influence got me like ❤️ ❤️ ❤️  (in fact I’m listening to this rn)

** More on this one very soon. Stay tuned.

*** That sentence is the grammatical equivalent of Mrs. Roper — a sassy, red-head in a wild patterned caftan topped with loads of chunky plastic jewelry. A gamble? Or a clear win? Only time will tell.

 

Image via sistergolden of their lavender eye dishes