7 Ways to Uplevel your Joy in 2019 (That Most of Us are NOT Doing!)
I hope that you all are well and looking forward to all the possibilities that 2019 holds for you!
Two weeks ago, I was reviewing with my Miracle Sister what I felt my biggest wins had been in 2018, and I realized that by far my biggest win was that I feel I learned how to EXPERIENCE JOY DAY-TO-DAY, NO MATTER WHAT CHALLENGES WERE EMERGING.
I’ve been reflecting ever since then on exactly how I created that for myself so I could share these learnings with you all.
Why Pleasure Matters Way More Than We Think
Spirit has nudged me for about a week now to share this topic with you. If you’d told me ten years ago I’d be sharing this with you all, I’d have laughed HARD in your face for five solid minutes:
Pleasure?
Matters?
A LOT?
Buwahahahahahaha!!!
Is what I would’ve said. Maybe in movies and pornos. But in real life? I think not, my dear confused friend. Here on earth, hard work and hard work alone is the rule—the only thing that gets you anywhere or anything in life. So thank you, but no, thank you. I’ve got WORK to do.
Or something to that effect.
How To Love Ourselves When Things Are Falling Apart
Summertime can be a wonderful time for play and expansion; it can be a perfect time for tuning into our desires and giving ourselves permission to follow these where they lead.
For many though, summertime can also be a time of great upheaval and soul-searching. There’s something about the heat and lethargy of these summer months that seems to lend itself to making structures that no longer serve us fall by the wayside.
Perhaps it’s the awakening sense that the job we’re in no longer serves our soul’s highest expression. Perhaps long stretches of negative self-talk finally takes its toll and our bodies start breaking down under the stress of mistreatment, demanding that we stop and make a change. Or perhaps our struggling relationship or marriage finally has the time and space to reveal it’s unsustainable and needs to change shape. Or maybe all of these changes and more happen at once.
What We Really Need When We Think We Need Someone to Love Us.
Who of us has not at one time or another thought that our lives would finally work once someone else loves us? Respects us? Treasures us? Is committed to us? Has our back? Or who interests us?
How sly our ego mind can be at hiding things in places where we can never find them!
What I’ve discovered through personal experience and through my work with clients is that these “When I finally… (meet my husband etc.), then I’ll finally…(be happy, feel enough, know I’m wanted etc.)” beliefs disempower each of us who hold them in two ways.
How Sabbath Time (aka Downtime) Can Deepen Intimacy in All Your Relationships.
One of the first challenges I noticed when I was going through my own “Calling in ‘The One’” process was that I was living my life in a schism; there was the Anastasia who was deeply attentive to my inner world and could carefully mirror and respond to my inner feelings and needs (when I made the time), and there was my robot Anastasia, the older version of me who put the demands of everything else ahead of me – be it work requests, the needs of friends or family, or almost anything anyone could ask for that would reflexively provoke the people-pleaser in me.
How to Forgive Ourselves.
As a student of The Course in Miracles, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about forgiveness. Usually, when I read or think about forgiveness, it’s in the context of practicing it towards other people as a means of remembering my interconnectedness with everyone and everything. And for some reason, this has generally been relatively easy for me to practice towards other people.
Yet I discovered one critical area has been lacking in my understanding of the word.
How to Get Unstuck and Kickstart 2018 with the Full Force of You!
One of the things I’ve been hearing a lot of my clients and friends say they’re feeling right now is something that might be described as a “Post-Intention Hangover.” I’ve felt it myself.
Having made it through the holidays and the longest nights of the year, many of us have mustered up just enough energy to set big intentions for 2018 (or we haven’t yet for fear we’d be setting ourselves up for disappointment in some form).