January Intentions

I realize that we are nearly two weeks into January so it’s a little late for me to be sharing these, but something that I’m hoping to set each month is a new set of intentions and mantras.  There’s a lot out there about the Law of Attraction – basically, what you put out into the universe is what you get back – and part of ensuring that you’re putting your true desires and needs in the hands of the universe is knowing what those are.

One of my favorite people to follow on Instagram is @honeyrozes.  She is a bullet journaler with a minimalist style that is refreshing to me.  She’s an artist, so her bullet journals are full of beautiful things, but she has layouts that are inspirational and achievable for non-artists like me.

Drawing heavily from a picture that she posted recently and I have inserted into this post, I started thinking about what I hoped to achieve in January.  And I don’t mean how many books I hope to read, or how many blog posts I’ll write, or how many things I hope to knit.  I was thinking about the kind of person that I want to be.  So I started by writing down some of the themes that swirl around in my head so often and I feel like I just can’t conquer.  The few that I was able to verbalize were: self worth, creativity, grace and dignity, love, and success.

From there, I set three intentions, which I’ve never done before.  To do that, I thought a lot about the themes that I wrote down.  What were three things that I could embody that would help me resolve as many of those themes as possible?  Here’s what I came up with:

• I intend to value my contributions to the world and not allow others to make me feel inferior feel inferior to others.  (After a few days of repeating this intention, I felt that saying “and not allow others to make me feel inferior” still gave too much power to other people and their actions.  So I tried to take more control of my own self worth by saying that I just wouldn’t feel inferior to others.  Period.)
• I intend to speak fairly and kindly about others, no matter what.
• I intend to be a bottomless well of love and support.

I also wanted to come up with a fast and easy mantra that I could repeat to myself in a moment of need.  I often get distressed about feeling inferior and less important than other people throughout the day.  I also get frustrated in the mornings with the boys when I’m trying to get ready for work and they are acting totally age appropriately but still make my mornings a nightmare.  And the one person that I could think of that always seems the most in control of her emotions and appropriate in public is Queen Elizabeth II (of course, you know how much I love royalty).  So, almost as a joke, I wrote down this mantra: I have the grace and presence of a queen.

So what do I do with these?  There’s something called a Miracle Morning, and Kara at BohoBerry outlines her routine here.  But here is my own mini-version:  I set my coffee pot to brew the night before, so there is a hot pot of coffee waiting for me when I wake up the next morning.  I do my morning pages, which usually takes about an hour.  And then I spend 5 minutes with my intentions.  I set an alarm for three minutes, which I use to repeat my intentions and my mantra over and over (the time passes surprisingly quickly).  And then I set an alarm for two minutes, which I use to visualize my ideal life.  That usually involves living in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and being surrounded by children, animals, and books, ha!  Even though I only spend two minutes on it, the visualization is the hardest part for me, but I keep trying.

Results?  It’s too soon to tell.  This is one of the things that I hope to report back on in February.  And of course my mind is already swimming with themes for next month!