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| I saw this picture on Facebook. I can't take credit, but I don't know who to give credit to either. If this is yours, let me know so I can give you your dues! |
Today is New Year's Day. I began my celebration last night by continuing a family ritual of hiding a silver dollar (a quarter for us) outside to be found the next day. I'm still working on getting the explanation of why we did that, I can't remember, but we did it anyway. The quarters are now safely tucked away, the first of many to be saved in the coming years. We did our best to stay up until midnight, I continued reading the Tao Te Ching, and my husband watched TV until we both fell asleep at about 9:30pm. Oh well, we're not night owls. We woke up for the fireworks at midnight, calmed down my dog, who hates them with a passion and went back to sleep. This morning I continued the celebration with a massive breakfast of bacon and eggs. I read some more of the Tao Te Ching and went to a workout class at noon. It was intense, anyone who does Crossfit will know what I mean when I say we did Fran. For everyone else, I lifted weights and did tons of pullups in a sprint, go as fast as you can workout, and finished in 5:47. Then walked outside to calm down my stomach and hold my arms which were vibrating and inoperable. After my body regained it's abilities I went home and took a bath. If me talking about taking a bath is tmi for some of you more squeamish folks, skip to the next paragraph. Kitty Cavalier's New Year Seduction Ritual kickstarted the idea. I gathered epsom salt, candles, scented oil, and a stone found on one of my hikes. I stated my intentions before adding each ingredient and soaked for a while. My body definitely thanked me. I love to meditate in the bathtub.
Today's meditation was brought on by something Kyle Cease calls Kylego. I can't find his explanation of it, he does a lot of his work via video, but basically he was talking about how he prepared for a comedy show he was about to do by pretending that it was already over and that it was amazing. He had a dialogue about how fabulous the show was, the reaction of the audience and the positive reviews it was getting. So my meditation used that general idea. I pretended that it was New Year's Day 2014 and I was taking a bath and reviewing how amazing 2013 was. I went through some of the events I know I have coming up. I was thinking about how nervous I was for the first "Lunch and Learn" class I did at the Y and how much more comfortable I had become with practice over the next couple of months. I thought about the new job with the ginormous salary I got in March that gave me a lot of freedom to schedule my day and do more that I wanted to be doing. And how that allowed me to really get into my private practice that I started after I passed the MFT exam (with flying colors, by the way.) I thought about how cool it was that I got to go to Amanda's wedding as well as Jeremy's because I had made so much more money and it wasn't as big of a deal to fly back and forth to the mainland anymore.
Not only did this exercise give me a sense of calm and satisfaction, but it brought up little flashes of insight along the way. Just a quick example is that I could totally see myself just finishing this stellar talk that uplifted my audience. They were so excited that they wanted to grab my business card so they could check me out online and see what else I was doing that they could be a part of. Guess I should make sure I have business cards, right? How else will they be able to find me?
This was a very insightful exercise and I encourage you to try it. It sounds weird, but it's super useful. What did you do to celebrate the first day in the next chapter of your life?
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