Day 255/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
There's the belief that we can nut it all out, think it all through, find all the answers by applying ourselves to learning more.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that life is much bigger, more complex, more mysterious and more fascinating than anything I've ever been schooled in.
I would even go so far as to say that there's plenty of evidence that the advice we commonly encounter is completely paradoxical to anything that could be possibly useful. There's plenty of evidence around us to suggest that the path we have taken has not exactly worked out okay.
When it comes to marketing your business for example, I know the marketing spiel is about networking and making contacts, building relationships and touting benefits.
Then there's the real possibility that sticking to the knitting, beavering away at your art, looking for improvements, toning and fine tuning your offering will be noticed by those with whom it resonates.
Maybe, just maybe both are true. I guess that's a perfectly reasonable assumption. Until you're really able to trust yourself and life itself to bring you what you want and need, then honing your marketing mojo could be a great stepping stone.
Be open to the mysterious. To the threads that hold you back that have nothing to do with knowledge or marketing actions, or anything that others can tell you or you can learn from the next you-beaut online programme.
Be open to the fine lines that connect you to your ancestry, to your shared history, to your passed and your future that carry resonances that contradict and confabulate.
Look for areas that seem stuck, interminably blocked for no apparent reason at all. Things that don't make any sense in any analytical and logical way.
Take your time to explore deeply into these areas. Explore them experientially, allowing implicit moments of understanding to surface, for connections to be made, for life to restore itself.
Expect the unexpected. Explore the uncharted. Be open to the unknown.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.