Big Plans

What are your big plans for this coming year?

Specifically, how will you enlarge your soul knowing with purpose and consciousness?

Maybe…..

  • retreat

  • do a year of spiritual direction

  • do a year of coaching to let loose old habits and build out your own way in the world

  • face your scary past

  • meditate

  • quit your job and join an ashram

  • quit your job and go abroad to live and work

  • quit your job and find one that allows you to be fully present as yourself with your own unique gifts

  • stay in your job, but talk with your boss about reshaping it so that you can maximize your strengths

  • leave a marriage

  • end friendships

  • publish your original writing

  • save the planet

What feels sooo big? Too big? Outrageous?

And why won’t you do it?

What do you need to do it?

I don’t have an agenda with these questions. Just asking.

But,

Since we are here asking, tell me, how does your body feel when you read down that list? Is there any one item that set your heart racing? Are there things that shut you down? Did you jump to your own list of possible Big Plans?

I’ve done most of these (except join an ashram and I’m still definitely married), and I’ll tell you, there is a cost. To all of them.

  • When I’ve been on retreat, I have to face the fact that I can’t get my mind to settle.

  • I’ve done spiritual direction since about 1997 with a few odd years hiatus, and I won’t every be without it again.

  • I’ve done 6 months of coaching as part of my program, and it is AMAZING

  • I have faced my scary past. And it was an act of putting the last puzzle piece into the picture, and my response was a sigh too deep for words

  • I meditate daily, and am blown away by the simplicity of the wisdom that rises from time to time, as well as with the emptiness (in a good way) most of the time

  • I would love to live in an ashram for a year, but I have not done this

  • My husband and I lived in Puerto Rico for a year while we were in seminary.

  • I did quit my job to create a private practice of my own where I get to be fully present and in charge. Gulp! Right on!

  • When I was in my job, I was able to give shape to the tasks so that I was working from strength. I am so grateful for my former workplace.

  • I will not leave my marriage.

  • I have ended friendships or have created safe distance from those who do not see me and seek to manipulate me into fitting into their reality. I love some people best from afar.

  • I have published a sweet little Lenten devotional

  • I save the planet with each conscious effort to not use her resources wantonly

I didn’t set out to write about what I have accomplished. I didn’t know when I made the original list how I would be able to check check check most of them.

What about you? Forget my list. What is your list of Big Plans. Once you write it, go over it and check what you’ve already accomplished. Then check in with yourself to see how you could not possibly be the old you for having done that thing.

Be awake this coming year, so that you grasp on to the opportunities that surprise you into your next phase. You’ve cleared the fear before, you can do it again.

With you!

Amy