I've been a bit absent lately. Since Bascha's passing, my energy has been a bit low and my schedule has been really demanding. I'm slowly but surely starting to plug back in to the things that are important to me and that includes blogging.
I'm being very motivated by a book called The Power of Full Engagement. It's about focusing on managing your energy instead of your time. It focuses on 4 different aspects of your life: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Interestingly, the authors define spiritual as living in line with your values.
I've recently been doing a fair amount of values work. I've written about values before. Getting clear on your values can provide a powerful guidance system for creating a life you love. I've seen the impact for my clients, in Circe's Circle and also personally. By values, I literally mean the things that you value in life, the things that are important to you.
In The Power of Full Engagement, they suggest turning your values into virtues by getting into action on them. They suggest that for every value, you start looking at what you can actually do to honour them. I've started this process and was amazed at how certain actions honoured many of my values and had lots of bang for the buck. For example, a self-care activity like going to the spa honours my values of life, love, beauty and pleasure. That's a whole lot of value! Cleaning actually honours my values of home and of beauty. In some ways it can also honour my value of love, celebration and magic.
I've got a lot more work to do but thought I'd share the start I've made in looking at actions I can take towards honouring my #1 value. I start off with some general ideas but am working on getting more and more specific.
I can honour my value of LIFE (enjoying it, living the sacredness of it, connecting to it, being sensitive to its rhythms) by:
- self-care
- healthcare
- fitness
- cultivating self-awareness
- honouring my relationship with the Universe
- experiencing life
- respecting and valuing others
- eating nourishing food
- getting enough sleep
- expressing gratitude
- getting outside
- celebrating the turns of the season and holidays
- celebrating birthdays
- not wasting energy on things that don't matter
- recycling
- gardening
- following the energy
- taking care of my cat, Jinx
- participating in activities that bring me joy
- photographing life
- chatting with the Universe
- throwing parties
- dancing
What are your values and how might you honour them?
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4 comments:
Thanks for this post, you got me thinking about my values as well and whether I give them enough space and time and attention.
I'm so happy to see you here Jamie, I hope you're healing. This post made me think of my value to stand up for myself and how I called a company to complain about them "accidentally" cutting off my cable and got free digital channels for 2 more months. :) Oh and I talked down the interest on my credit card!
oh maaaan, i still haven't made it to the bookstore and am dying to do so! :)-
sooo tired tonight but choosing to not sleep, but read blogs instead because (like yourself) I value blogging. i love your blog jamie and this post reminds me how doing an exercise like this right now in my life would have particular relevance. I'm needing to divest my energies more wisely and strategically- and connecting this to values is exactly what I need to do when thinking about this. you're doing great work Jamie, and I am so happy when I read about circles circle via melba. sounds powerful and amazing.
from krista aka the silent k
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