This week, I am going to suggest that you write a letter to yourself from your heart. See if you have come to any agreement yet as to what is the thing that you can do that will make you feel full filled, or at least useful. If you have already agreed among yourself what it is you want to do at this time in your life, maybe you will want to discuss the steps in doing this, and commend yourself on your progress.
There is a lesson in Julia Cameron's Artist's Way that calls for picking an affirmation from a list she offers, or making up one of your own, and writing it at the top of your journal every day. The whole notion of writing an affirmation at the top of the page roused the pack of cynical hounds that bray in the corners of my mind. Who am I kidding? They howl in the middle of my mind. Offended though I was by being requested to do such a foolish thing, I am a much more direction following individual than I would like to admit, so I followed the rules to the letter. She insisted that you would find great reward in doing the very exercise that you found yourself most resistant to doing. Writing the same dumb slogan every day was at the top of my list. So I went the next step and picked the most offensive of the offered affirmations. "By treating myself as a precious jewel, I become strong." Ich.
I wrote that every day at the top of the page. To my surprise by the end of the week, I began to feel a certain inner glow. And, I found that I was indeed being a lot nicer to myself. When you treat yourself well, and you hold to the intention of changing the world to a better place than you found it, you find yourself treating other people nicer. When you treat others well, they treat you well ... and so on.
If we were to find ourselves standing on the continental divide and just rearranged a few rocks, the next time a rainstorm came along; the water might follow an entirely different course down to the sea, changing the entire shape of the great rivers. Or not.
So it is with our way of being in the world. We are always standing at the continental divide. Everything we do makes an indelible imprint on the future. Therefore it is very important that we identify our intentions and hold to them.
"Is this what I want to be doing?" is a very important question. As long as we modify our wants by holding in our minds what we wish the outcome of what we chose to do now, to be.
This is why writing the affirmation at the top of the page works.
