Day 9: The Power of Responsibility

Today's task focuses on taking responsibility for my life and cherishing and nourishing my soul's expression. My soul is my connection with God that tells me exactly what I need and I have the responsibility to respond accordingly. I made a list of what I would (will) do to nourish the needs of my soul. I also wrote a letter to my soul expressing my honor in having the responsibility to take care of it. I promised my soul that I would listen and asked it to teach me what I needed to know. Here is to having a responsible day.

Day 8: The Power of Liberation

Today was the day to liberate myself. I dressed up to celebrate this day and I also liberated myself from some other issues that were keeping me stuck in my life and my dissertation. On top of that, I put pictures messages and notes in a black trash and spent time reflecting on actually throwing that stuff away. It's amazing how free I feel and how long I held on to things that were truly poisoning me and stealing my joy. Today, was officially a brand new day!!!

Huge Step

(Photo from beautytips.info)

I just took a huge step and made a change that will directly affect my dissertation. I am feeling so relieved and this is exactly what I needed to do to begin to live in the present. To everyone, thank you so much for your support, prayers, and challenge.

THE PRESENT: Day 8

(Photo from http://affirmativethinking.files.wordpress.com)

(Photo from stanford.wellsphere.com)

Today is the 8th day of the 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse and I am to rid myself of the things that have been holding me back and stepping into the present so that I can feel free. The author talks about allowing our pasts to cripple us and likens this to wearing a size six shoe when my shoe size is actually a nine. In spite of the pain and discomfort it gives me, I don't feel that I deserve anything better. I don't believe that I deserve to walk comfortably and feel supported. This really resonated with me today. I have allowed certain things like this to hold me back in my progress to a dissertation. Today, I am letting go of this and making a determined decision to move forward. So scary, but I have to do it or the circulation issues in my feet from the "too small shoes" will lead to more severe problems. She suggests having a ceremony and dressing up today as if this is one of the most important days of my life. If I see you today, don't be surprise by the stunning look. Just kidding... kind of.

Blessed to have Support during the Dissertation

Today was a very interesting and insightful day. There are some things that I was finally able to admit and embrace when it comes to this dissertation process. I would not have been able to do this without the help of friends, colleagues, and mentors. Thanks so much. Here we go...

Drinking only Water for Lent.

(Photo from icq.com)

(Photo from avelient.com)

Lent is considered the preparation time for believers with prayer, reflection, and self-denial. I have been trying to come up with something to give up. I read about someone who drank only water for a year. They talked about how "cleansed" they felt. I am going to make my first attempt at this goal by giving up all other drinks and sticking to water. As always, I will keep you informed! Are you giving up anything?

Day 7: The gift of Self-Acknowledgement

Yesterday is the day I finished the first week of the cleanse. This marked the last day of focusing on the past and tomorrow I will begin while focusing on the past. I hope you like my celebratory picture, lol. Today I went through my life in decades (first year of my life, second yr...) and listed all of my accomplishments or things that I am proud of. This was pretty cool, but surprisingly it took a while for me to get rolling while trying to generate this list. It's amazing how easy it was for me to write about my regrets, but was stalled when writing about my accomplishments. Note to self: Focusing on your strengths is something you tell your clients to do so, if it works for them it will probably work for you.

More Than a Game

The movie, More Than Just a Game, was one of my Vday gifts for J and I was pleasantly surprised. This movie about Lebron James and a group of friends and teammates in high school was very touching. One of the things that struck me was the importance of family and friends. As a counselor, I always say that one of the most important things to help us overcome is support and this movie showed that. The lives of these young men could have easily been different if they did not find the support that is so eloquently portrayed in the movie. I remind myself that I am also blessed to have tons of support in my life and it will help me finish this dissertation.

Checkout the trailer...

Day 6: The Gift of Surrender

The goal of the day was to surrender and embrace emotions that I typically avoid. The task was to write down all emotions that I see as bad, reflect on where I learned this, and how I try to resist them. Finally, I was to reflect on the gifts, wisdom, and lessons they will bring me when I embrace them instead of avoiding them. As a counselor, I believe that there are no bad emotions, but I definietly realize that there are some I try and avoid. When reflecting on this I realize that I started avoiding certain emotions early on. I realize that I sometimes avoid because of fear that I will be out of control. However, avoiding them only intensifies them and that is when it becomes easy to get out of control. Embracing emotions allows for controlling them. That's my thought for today :).

Day 5: The gift of reverence

(Photo from doctorheadly.wordpress.com)

Yesterday, the focus was the gift of reverence. The author of The 21 day consciousness cleanse talks about one's body in a way that I have never thought of. She suggests that we are not our bodies, however our bodies are a vessel that allows us to participate in life. Meaning our minds and spirits allowing us to think, behave, feel, and experience, but without our bodies we can't do any of that, She does on to talk about how we do not value our temples (a.k.a. bodies) and mistreat them and ignored them. For example, I have neglected my bodies need for sleep when pulling "all-nighters" or when choosing not to work out because I don't have time. I have also mistreated my temple when I am unhappy with it or I am not please with it's size. So, today's task was to write an apology letter to my body. It was pretty powerful and I'll admit I even "teared up" (just a little). I have to make it a point to listen to my body and treat it with the reverence of a temple. I have to many things I am looking forward to and if my vessel is not well, then my experiences will suffer. What do you need to apologize to your body for?

So Really... What's Valentine's Day all about?

Don't get me wrong I enjoy any excuse to tell my loved ones how special they are to me, but I must admit even I think it's overly commercialized. I decided to post a little bit about where it started. According to stvalentineday.org, one of the more popular legends is about Prince Valentine who lived in Rome around 270 AD. Apparently, Emperor Claudius II had started some unpopular wars and found that many men chose not to join the army because of their strong attachment with their wives so he banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. In spite of the law, Valentine, secretly arranged marriages until he was discovered, jailed, and finally executed on February 14, about 270 AD. Aww. You have to admit that, his actions were pretty sweet. I am such a romantic so this story actually makes me like Valentine's day more. (Photo from zazzle.com)

Day 4: Forgiveness continued

I forgot to fill you in on the day 2 of forgiveness. The plan is to right down things you need to forgive, figure out what they are costing you, and to look at how I took things personally. This was actually really hard to do. I found that I felt justified in my grudges and didn't want to explore how I was internalizing these things. That's why I chose to take two days on this one. I focused the first day on what these grudges were costing me and after I understood all of the happiness, peace, and intimacy I was missing out on, I was finally ready to look out the incidents and how I took them personally. I came to realize that even when I was hurt by someone, the person's intentions were not to hurt me. Whoever hurt me was just doing what he/she thought was best for them at the time in that moment. That realization really helped me to let go of these things. Even more of a surprise was that I needed to forgive myself. I found I resented myself for being human and making mistakes. Finally I wrote a letter to God (for you it would be whatever higher power/presence you believe in) expressing my feelings and helping me to release those grudges. I pictured myself putting my problems in God's hands. To be honest, I feel lighter. Do you need to lighten your load?