Cultivating a Life you Love

What makes you get up in the morning? What do you get excited for? What “turns your crank”, as my Mom likes to say?

Mindfulness is a practice of becoming aware, again and again. One byproduct of this awareness is being able to figure out what it is you want to do with this precious life. For anyone feeling stuck or in a place of transition, this can be a really difficult time. It can be met with feelings of anguish, anxiety, sadness, helplessness, inadequacy and overall pain.

So how can mindfulness help? By spending time with our thoughts, with ourselves, we can ask the questions that may help illuminate what we truly want out of this life.

A practice around cultivating a life you love can look like this:

• Find yourself in a comfortable seated position.

• Close your eyes and start to bring your awareness to your breath. Focus on your breath moving in and out.

• Allow your awareness to travel away from the breath, away from thought, and to begin to cultivate an inner environment of creativity and curiosity.

• Ask yourself one of the following questions; whichever feels right to you:

  • What am I meant to do with this one precious life?

  • Who am I before the noise starts?

  • What is the next step I am meant to take?

  • What is my purpose?

  • How may I serve the greater good?

• Then sit with that question, maybe repeating it to yourself a few times. Then sit in silence and see what comes up. This can result in images, sounds, sensations or emotions. Follow that down the rabbit hole and see what you find.

Meditation allows us the time and space to see what IS meant for us. It takes us out of the rational, problem solving mind into the realm of possibility from a place of intuition and intention. From there we can make a choice to cultivate a life we want to lead.

April Prescott, B Ed, 200-HR RYT