PROJECT | What If I?

I have signed up for a Mastermind Intensive over the next six months. There are a few criteria I have to follow as part of the course. Then there are the things I will figure out as we go along, and other ideas that just occur to me because they are in alignment with the intention of the project.

It started on August 20th with a group Zoom call – though the reality is it may have started a few days before in the Facebook group. Or even at the initial sign up in Austin at OraclePalooza.

Five minutes before the call, I was mortified when the payment didn’t go through (Amex flagged it as a fraudulent charge). I had prepared everything a week in advance – notified the card company and still rejected. Was this not meant to be? Was this beyond my ken? Was I to fail before I started? No. I was not going to return to that panicky place of scarcity that had ruled the first 50+ years of my life!

I sat through the first call grounded in a place of personal peace and openness – with more than a few laugh out loud moments.

As I closed the screen I realized that there were a number of things I needed to do to get my shit together to make the most of this experience. I thought I was prepared. After all, I have my fabulous Get Your Goals on Paper gridded journals; my Get to Work Book; my Academic Monthly DayMinder; the recommended books have arrived and the first – really cumbersome and super smart – is already half read and annotated; a file folder starting to fill up with monthly files; downloaded a number of iAwake meditations; boxes and boxes of brilliant and beautiful Oracle Cards; stamps, inks and Washi tape.

It’s not enough.

What if I, for the next six months, dialed it all back. Keep all of the crafty, colourful and smart stuff listed above that I love so much and got rid of the rest.

What is the rest?

• I’m a news junky. What if I turned off the television and social media for the next six months?
• I drink wine every evening. Perhaps too much wine every evening. What if I stopped for the next six months?
• I am a competitive meditator. I love my Muse. It was a good tool, for then. What if I stopped and embraced other forms twice a day for the next six months? Who knows? Maybe it can replace my wine consumption?
• I am in a strange space. The only dream in my life was to have a family and be a better mother than my mother. At the time, I didn’t know how low I had set that bar. My youngest leaves for University on September 2. I have raised all four of my kids to graduate high school and enter university. One has graduated and now in college, the others are in year 4, 2 and 1. What if I came up with another dream for me and my future?
• I buy books and read (far too slowly) like a crazy person. There are piles in every room of my house. Even my piles have piles. What if I purchased books only for the purpose of this course?

So there you have it. My plan. The next six months, I will incorporate less in order to gain more.

What does that mean around here on the blog? More hello, more gratitude, more living in the now. I share my life so that anyone who cares to visit can know that as big or small as you want to make it, our lives matter. Lives expand and contract depending on time and circumstance. It can be big and small – simultaneously! This is the space where I am authentic. If you’re here you resonate with it. If not, you don’t. Either way I get to share my truth.

I’m looking forward to less sensation, more silence.