Day 55 of 365 - What Do I Value?
A newsletter that I get in my email gave me pause this morning. It is a spiritual path seeking newsletter which does not come very frequently. It was rather welcome after the deluge in my inbox in the last several days of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday offerings. I guess today is Waiting Wednesday (my term) for all the things we have ordered. :)
The newsletter I read was talking about when we are in a fallow phase of life, where we mostly feel tired and not excited about too much. We may want to blame any number of people or situations for our exhaustion. But, the author suggested another approach instead. They asked us to look gently at whether we are living from our soul values.
An example was given about how someone, even though physically exhausted for whatever reason, does something they are passionate about, that it is energizing. That is a clue for identifying a soul value. As with many other things, paying attention to our bodily responses is helpful here. It's less of a mind exercise and more of a feeling one.
For myself, for example, being of service has been a life long value. That seemed a lot easier to define and recognize when I was younger, working in a career, raising a family or being on committees. But it seems I need to redefine that for my retirement years. Am I only being of service if I can make a list of regular accomplishments that would be recognized by others? Lots of people nowadays continue working into their senior years, but I am not one of them at present.
To help me in my exploration of this value of service at this stage of my life, I turned to some life coaching tools which I was introduced to ten years ago in life coaching sessions. What came up for me is that another strong value for me is prayerfulness or spirituality. I practice this with meditation as one example. Meditation can help me go beyond ego and mind for guidance from the heart, from life.
It's easy to get caught up in left brain mental activities which drive the 'to do' list cycle. And, that is a very common fall back strategy for me, to just get busy doing some chore if I'm uncomfortable with something. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as there are always daily tasks to be done. But, used as an avoidance tactic it does not get to the root of the issue.
In fact, I strongly felt the need to stop working on this blog post and go to finish my chores! Busted!
Something about doing the exercise seemed threatening, as if I would be exposed as some kind of fraud. But, that did not happen. Instead it pointed me to considering the strength of my practice of meditation to help me create the space for new beginnings in my retirement years. That is more of a right brain activity.
We can exhaust ourselves and burn out when we focus too much on doing and do not give priority to creative expression, playful activities or just daydreaming. Giving ourselves the opportunity to rest the analytical mind and just enjoy life allows us to hear what our hearts long for, what we value inherently. Then we can act upon that.
I expect this exploration will continue for me as a side benefit of doing this blog for a year. I am open to receiving new insights from the ongoing experience of daily writing.
The newsletter I read was talking about when we are in a fallow phase of life, where we mostly feel tired and not excited about too much. We may want to blame any number of people or situations for our exhaustion. But, the author suggested another approach instead. They asked us to look gently at whether we are living from our soul values.
An example was given about how someone, even though physically exhausted for whatever reason, does something they are passionate about, that it is energizing. That is a clue for identifying a soul value. As with many other things, paying attention to our bodily responses is helpful here. It's less of a mind exercise and more of a feeling one.
For myself, for example, being of service has been a life long value. That seemed a lot easier to define and recognize when I was younger, working in a career, raising a family or being on committees. But it seems I need to redefine that for my retirement years. Am I only being of service if I can make a list of regular accomplishments that would be recognized by others? Lots of people nowadays continue working into their senior years, but I am not one of them at present.
To help me in my exploration of this value of service at this stage of my life, I turned to some life coaching tools which I was introduced to ten years ago in life coaching sessions. What came up for me is that another strong value for me is prayerfulness or spirituality. I practice this with meditation as one example. Meditation can help me go beyond ego and mind for guidance from the heart, from life.
It's easy to get caught up in left brain mental activities which drive the 'to do' list cycle. And, that is a very common fall back strategy for me, to just get busy doing some chore if I'm uncomfortable with something. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as there are always daily tasks to be done. But, used as an avoidance tactic it does not get to the root of the issue.
In fact, I strongly felt the need to stop working on this blog post and go to finish my chores! Busted!
Something about doing the exercise seemed threatening, as if I would be exposed as some kind of fraud. But, that did not happen. Instead it pointed me to considering the strength of my practice of meditation to help me create the space for new beginnings in my retirement years. That is more of a right brain activity.
We can exhaust ourselves and burn out when we focus too much on doing and do not give priority to creative expression, playful activities or just daydreaming. Giving ourselves the opportunity to rest the analytical mind and just enjoy life allows us to hear what our hearts long for, what we value inherently. Then we can act upon that.
I expect this exploration will continue for me as a side benefit of doing this blog for a year. I am open to receiving new insights from the ongoing experience of daily writing.
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