The Miracle of Committing to a Specific Action

In our noisy world we are constantly bombarded by infinite ways to be distracted.  We're are asked to stay connected all the time and to make room for introspection. We're asked to be fit and to carve time to restore and relax.  We are asked to be mindful and to multitask.  And that is just my inbox today. No wonder it's very easy to live in a constant state of confusion.  

It doesn't have to be that way.

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As I savor my green smoothie this morning, I'm thinking of the power of committing yourself to a single actionable goal.  You see, a few years ago I was having a hard time eating breakfast consistently and now for over a year, I have eaten a nutritious breakfast every single day.  As I type I can feel the nourishing Prana (life force) of my green smoothie hitting my veins and I'm reminded of an important life lesson that is often ignored:  if you commit to an action rather than thinking about a desire, you actually get to experience your intention.

The mistake we all make.

As soon as I began my yoga journey, I learned about setting intentions.  Simplified, your intentions are the energetic starting points for your goals.  If you come to my yoga class, as I learned it from my yoga teachers, I'll ask you at the beginning to center yourself and then set an intention.  The intention usually reveals itself naturally and in a simple form: "I will breath fully," "I will be strong," or "I will feel peace."  Whether in a yoga class or not, intentions are the seeds for our desired outcomes.

For example from my intention to "feeling nourished," I arrived to my goal of "eating breakfast."   I really wanted to honor my intention so I would think about "feeling nourished" every day.  Thinking about my intention did bring me to eat breakfast, sometimes.  I figured my spirit would guide my consciousness and it would unveil how breakfast would happen.  This resulted in zero progress and lots of self-disappointment.  Finally, I changed my strategy, I committed to plan my breakfasts for a week ahead of time.  I made the commitment by braking down my goal into small actions.  I studied options that would work for me.  I started focusing on the daily tasks that would make me eat breakfast till things aligned with my intention.

My mistake was that I assumed that because I wanted to eat breakfast to honor my intention, I would end up getting a desirable result.  That wanting to do something was enough.

How often do you do this in your own life?

We often think about our intentions without committing to goals . And if we have goals, we think about them without breaking them into specific actions.  The bottom line is that without an action we won't experience our intention.  We want to "be of service" without committing our time and talents to helping others.  We want to "feel strong" without considering what part of our body we want to focus on and what exercises we'll be doing.  We wish to be "more creative," but we never work or finish a particular project.   In other words, we don't commit to a specific goal: a goal with tasks and a time frame.

Specific Actions Lead to Direction

All those intentions we set for ourselves will point us to important, but broad questions "what should I do with my life?" or "will I learn what love is?" or "how is God guiding me right now?"  Very important questions in our spiritual quest but non of these questions will clarify our next step.

When you commit to action driven goals, these are easy to break into tasks and then the steps are clearer to follow. You want to eat a nutritive breakfast tomorrow morning?  Next step:  what will constitute a nutritive breakfast?  So you found out what you want to eat? Next step:  do you have the ingredients at home or do you need to stop at the market?  OK, you got the ingredients? Next Step: how long will take you to prepare breakfast? At what time do you need to wake up? etc., etc.

Your intentions are important as a way to honor your deeper self, but if you only concentrate in your vague desires vs. specific goals, you'll end up confused and frustrated.  

Once you begin to commit to specific actions that work towards your goals, these will inform you of your next step and then the next, etc.  

So often, we avoid formulating a specific goal out of fear that we aren't sure if this goal will align with our intentions. We somehow forget that we can always change our mind later on.

This is perhaps the miracle about committing to a specific goal: if you concentrate in the actions to achieve your goals and not the goal itself, then you’ll begin to thrive and achieve something greater than you ever imagined.

Commit to something and begin it now.

Once you fully decide to start, to paraphrase Pablo Coelho, the universe will find ways to help you finish.

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  eduardo

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Everyday Miracles

In case you live under a rock next to mine and don't know about the genius of Thich Nhat Hanh, his Caligraphic Meditation Exhibit is a great introduction to his light and wisdom.  Running through December 31st at ABC Carpet & Home in the heart of Manhattan, this collection of the Zen Master's insight is for sure a refreshing way to get inspired and recharged during the holiday season.  My favorite phrase in the exhibit "No mud, no lotus." That is what I call Sassy Mindfulness!

Further reading his work, I found the passage below and got inspired to find a picture that captured his words. 

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh, from The Miracle of Mindfulness

You are in the Pink

When I moved to New York almost ten years ago, a great friend and I sat underneath a cherry blossom tree (that friend is my neighbor these days).  Under the influence of pink we exchanged ideas, laughter, painful memories and hope for a better future.  I am not a fan of the color pink, but I must say once you are near it, something magical always happens.

I was just thinking abut the miracles of cherry blossoms when I heard a poem by Kevin Kling titled Tickled Pink.  I think the poem says it all.​

At times in our pink innocence, we lie fallow, composting waiting to grow. And other times we rush headlong like so many of our ancestors. But rush headlong or lie fallow, it doesn't matter.

One day you'll round a corner, your path is shifted. In a blink, something is missing. It's stolen, misplaced, it's gone. Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise...... a person. Your innocence is gone, and now your journey has changed. Your path, as though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted and has left you pointed in a new direction. Some won't approve. Some will want the other you. And some will cry that you've left it all. But what has happened, has happened, and cannot be undone.

We pay for our laughter. We pay to weep. Knowledge is not cheap. To survive we must return to our senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, sound. We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in breath. With each breath we inhale, we exhale. We inspire, we expire. Every breath has a possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song. Every conversation is an exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue. Every scar is a monument to a battle survived.

Now when you're born into loss, you grow from it. But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it. A slow move to an embrace, an embrace that leaves you holding tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque, an embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance, a dance of pink.