Day 306/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
Making sense of my life has taken many forms. Right now what is working well is to think of my my life as a garden. There is so much inspiration that we can take from nature. From the beginning, I find in nature the ability to thrive no matter what, and that gives me so much encouragement! We are after all, nature.
It's spring in the garden right now. Everything is blossoming, plants are pushing up and pushing out new shoots of green foliage to capture the sunlight and turn it into food for growing and ripening fruits. Nectarines sprouting from the bare branches, baby avocados like baubles on the tree, big saucer-sized magnolia flowers providing stunningly beautiful landing pads for bees to bath in the ample pollen.
This year my garden is well nurtured. The moisture has been kept up to it, and I've been much more diligent with nutrients. Last year the scene was different and so was the response from the garden plants. My life was full with pre-occupations and self-care was relegated to a lesser priority. In the garden, instead of lots of green foliage, plants threw out many more flowers for pollination, and survival!
After a long winter, spring is our time too, to blossom. During the winter months it's a good time to think deeply about our year, allow inspiration to form, care for our deeper yearnings, and nourish ourselves well in time for bringing our ideas and insights into the world in spring.
It's odd in the southern hemisphere. Our spring heralds the end of the calendar year, but for me it's a new beginning. The trouble is we are all in wind-down mode as we head into the Christmas season. It's unsettling.
In spite of that I've updated my website, designed my promotional material and set preparations in place for the New Year.
We are fortunate that our summers are long and our winters are short. There is plenty of time to blossom and grow and mature our ideas in the next step in our evolving journey of work and play and living life fully, until winter rolls around again.
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.