I am (re) discovering that daily practice = magic.

Years ago I did my morning pages (3 written pages every morning – I thought of it as the morning dump, ahem) every single morning.  Showed up and wrote even if it was about the spoon sitting next to my cereal bowl because I could think of nothing else to write.  It definitely helped me work through some hard spots:  my father’s death, moving into a new house with a ski jump driveway in the middle of an ice storm, both kids in outpatient surgery, job transition, brother-in-law’s death….all in the space of one month.

I remember sitting in the dining room of my new house, on the floor since half the furniture was in our truck not able to make it in the house (snow, ice) and looking out the french doors to our deck where small pine trees reached through the railing slats.  It was dark outside and the back door light cast shadows.  The new house had noises that I wasn’t used to but didn’t scare me because I knew I was home.  My journal was in my lap and I remember thinking:  this too will pass.  I can write my way through this:

I don’t really feel like doing this.  I feel tired – physically and mentally.  I’m doing it because I know it’s a focusing discipline that is helpful to me.  I’d like things to settle down a little.  I think I’m past overload into just existing.  Even staying in “the now” is hard because what I need/should be doing keep crowding in.  There’s so much to be done – even listing isn’t helping.  BUT!  I did make it through the first 3 days of this week.  And so I”ll continue to put one foot in front of the other and go forward.  [yes,  I keep all my journals…from as far back as 8 years old when I called it a diary]

Somewhere in the intervening years between then and now I lost the practice of daily focus.  Instead, I focused on making lists and getting through them, making business plans, and DOING …..stuff.

I forgot how important BEing is.  And got kinda of lost in there.

Then I started working with a daily telephone group of check-ins and meditations, Flowing with Change‘s Collaborative Manifestation (part of the Professional Member offerings).  I have to tell you that 2012 was rough and in March and April  I was in a pretty rough space.  Nothing like a rough space to make me sit up and pay attention!  I didn’t find this daily practice until the Fall and I have to tell you that when I found it, I felt like a duck finding water.

I remembered:  show up, do the work, release.

Sounds pretty woo-woo until you realize that the focus of daily work primes your subconscious to pay attention to whatever you are focusing on.  In this group we speak into our circle of our gratitude for something in the last 24 – 48 hours, and then speak of what we want to energize.  Kathryn, the founder of this group, then weaves what we want to energize into the meditation – we hear our own words back.

When I first started, I decided I couldn’t do any worse with doing daily practice, releasing the DOing and concentrating on BEing with whatever showed up.

Yes, the voices were having a party and sneering at me but the DAILY practice kept them at bay because I had a foundation to fall back on:  my circle of women.  And then the magic started.  People and occurences just dropped into my life and while I might have missed them before, focused on DOing, I was being quiet and watching for new things.  New things arrived as called or not – some are just showing up in the cloud of my own learning about how best to follow my heart:

1.  I am a participant in a collaboratively-based, web reality show, Prosperity’s Kitchen, running from January to April this year, one of 15 chosen from about 75 self-selected applicants.  I am on Team 4 with Kristin Elliott, CEO of Doodie Pack, in New York, and Colleen Feldpausch Conger, Digital Photo and Design, Aberdeen, Mississippi.  The grand prize is a package worth $10K, but the real prize is the opportunity to work with experts on web marketing…..for free!

2.  I just finished one of my best workshops ever last weekend – full and spilling over (didn’t have room for everyone who wanted to come) and I did no work putting it together. A friend wanted to learn mosaics.  She talked to a friend and pretty soon I had a spilling over list of people who wanted to take the workshop.  I just had to show up and teach.  And there is a possibility that 3 more workshops will come out of that one.

3.  I am now less than $250 away from my income goal for this month – and we’re only half way through.

4.  I have one new Master Mind Client and later this week will be talking to the Executive Director of a small non-profit who is interested in hiring me to consult around fundraising.  And we’re only half way through the month!

5.  I am talking with the local Chamber of Commerce about facilitating a focus group with non-profit members.  It has been approved by the Board of Directors and the Director and I will be getting together to talk time/date/details.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made the point that some pretty marvelous things are showing up – just because I daily breath a claim to a Hell Yes! life into a circle of women who believe for me sometimes when I can’t.

Here are the steps revisited:

1.  Find a daily practice that includes gratitude and visioning and saying things out loud to one other person.  Son describes it like this: that other person doesn’t have your baggage/beliefs around the vision.  So they can beam it back and believe in it totally for you until you get there.  And a third thing is created between you – and that is magic.  So there’s a 2nd part to this #1:  find community or at least one friend to share your practice with.  It makes it all easier.

2.  Practice.  Vision.  Dream.  Claim.  Keeping a Vision Journal or having a Vision Board (or any of the other lovelies listed on that link) won’t hurt – the subconscious works with symbols.  Gather those picture together and put them somewhere you can seem them every day.

3.  Really, really, really important:  release.  Trust that the Universe has heard you, wants for you everything you want, and you already have it.  Watch for it.  Expect it.  Then welcome it when it shows up. And be grateful.  which takes you back to #1.  It’s a spiral path.  The more you do it the more reasons will show up for gratitude.

Yes, it is that simple.  And you’re reading a total non-believer here, who has been converted.

Need some magic in your life?  Let me know how it goes!