Yesterday evening during dinner with friends someone posed the inevitable New Year’s Eve question about what peoples’ resolutions were. I can’t remember what I answered–perhaps it was something along the lines of not making resolutions. “I might set some intentions about the coming year,” I heard myself say, “but I’m not going to make resolutions.” When I looked them up in the dictionary, they didn’t sound terribly different but I’m sticking with my intention setting. I still have a lot of things stewing in my spirit that haven’t fully bubbled up into my consciousness. Actually my current intention is to allow those things that are stewing resolve themselves into intentions/resolutions/things I can take some action upon. And, as is the case with some of the gratitudes I offer periodically, the first two intentions that popped up for me this morning are fairly simple. I suppose they fall under the broad category of wellbeing.
- I want/intend/plan to smile and laugh more often; and
- I want/plan/intend to sleep better; that is, I intend to create the conditions in my life that will allow me to sleep better.
That’s it for the moment. Simple, straightforward intentions. The smiling and laughing intention I am committing to doing regularly, several times a day if I can help it. There are too many known (and probably a bunch of unknown) benefits to laughing and smiling, releasing endorphins and such, that it makes sense to laugh and laugh often. I learned some years ago that your body can’t really tell the difference between real laughter and when you “fake it.” You can purpose that you’re going to start laughing for no reason, and your body will release the same chemicals and energy as if you’d just seen the most hilarious YouTube video or heard the funniest joke. So sometimes, whether I feel like it or not, I burst into spontaneous laughter. Sometimes doing this is so ridiculous that I end up laughing for real. Other times, I stop laughing and go on about my day. Either way, I am contributing to my overall wellbeing and lifting the energy around me. It’s all good.
As for sleep: this morning I slept until about 9:20, which was unusual (and gratefully received). I probably spent much of 2011 in some degree of sleep deprivation. From the stresses and anxiety I experienced that caused me to wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep, the bright summer sun blazing into my room at 6 a.m. waking me earlier than I liked, to the hard unyielding mattress on my bed, the cacophony of early morning noises and other issues all threatened to rob me of quality and quantity of sleep. And when one doesn’t get enough sleep, so many other less-than-positive outcomes occur. Thus my intention to sleep better. The challenge of course is how to do that. I still have to remain awake most nights to pick Jared up from work at 11 p.m. By the time we get home and I get myself settled it’s midnight. And unfortunately I still wake up at times in the early morning hours, bombarded by thoughts–sometimes random, sometimes specific worries–and often have difficulty getting back to sleep. In spite of all that, I intend to sleep better. One of my coaching instructors used to say, “Never let the ‘how’ get in the way of a good what.” In that spirit I’m going to stick with the “what” of sleeping better and let the “how” work itself out.
Day one of 2012 is very nearly in the books for me. I am going to post this blog then play my guitar for a little while because, yes, I am once again setting the intention of playing my guitar and/or singing every day. Music is too important in my life for me not to give it full expression in my day-t0-day life. I realized recently that I need to sing and sing loud. There’s a sense of power, expansion, heightened energy that comes from really singing my heart out (versus singing in a quiet contained way). I need to really sing full out. It’s a bit more difficult to do this where I currently live than where I used to, but I need to do it nonetheless. This means I’ll need to shift my music practice time from in the evening when I used to do it to during the daytime when singing loud won’t be as disruptive to the neighbors.
I am grateful for each intention that I set and met in 2011. Most of those intentions were not set right at the first of the year; they emerged over the course of months. This daily blog was one of those intentions. I am excited to see what will unfold in 2012. May it be filled with more beauty and wonder, love and compassion, abundance and generosity, and of course gratitude and thanksgiving. So be it!
One Response to Lessons in Gratitude Day 186