40 Days of Conscious Living

DAY 1

When I want to improve I tend to back out fairly quickly. It lasts a few days and then it's back to normal. One reason is pure laziness. Another is often emotional. I throw my hands in the air and say, "Forget it!" Lastly, I often want to change so much at once that I'm overwhelmed by the things I should do, so I don't do anything. I've done this since I was a teenager if not younger. My parents can attest to this!

I've been learning a little bit about meditation and energy work, two things I want to dive deeper into. One idea is to choose a mantra meditation like this and do it for 40 days. I've also heard of people having a "babymoon" (the restful period of time after giving birth) for 40 days. I didn't choose to do that latter. The point is that there's a lot of significance to that number that I hope to learn more about as well.

This is what my 40 Days of Conscious Living is about...

"Don't get so caught up in the details of whether you are "doing it right"

that you become paralyzed to doing anything.
If you are trying, you ARE doing it right." Kate

A huge part of being conscious through out my, as cheesy as this sounds, is asking myself "How am I feeling?" My brother had a consultation with a friend of mine that does Joy Coaching. She's the one who pointed this out and for whatever reason, it has sat with me. I am a very reactive person. I get angry easily. Last night I knew why I was mad, and though I did not make the best choices, I at least told Rob WHY I was so flaming mad. I've heard that anger is a secondary emotion. The first emotion that I was feeling was burdened. Whether I should have felt that way or not is another story. I apologized for my behavior to my kids and I need to do the same to Rob. We'll also have to discuss how I feel when he's annoyed that the baby nurses loudly or she's in bed with us after I nurse like this morning. I climbed out of bed at 5:51am and I'm SOOOO tired since I crashed at 1am. Obviously I chose to have these quiet times and I think it will be fine if I can get a nap later! Okay, moving on....

So, more about how I feel. In the quote above it mentions "doing it right." In my mind, I feel that I should be doing x, y, and z most days to be a successful wife and mother. Since I'm not consistent about most everything in my life I usually shut down and doing nothing or nearly nothing. As Rob puts it, I do the bare minimum (if that). I own it! I have rarely ever lived up to my potential. I think my perspective about myself is unique. I say this without meaning to sound pompous or anything, but I feel that if I were to do my best or as this quote says, **TRY** I could do amazing things for my family, myself, and my community. Some people have self esteem issues, we all do in some way, but I'm not worried about my abilities. I just have this crushing habit of avoiding what I NEED to do and what I COULD do to bless our lives.

I'm not sure how this will work because it's not a specific goal per se, but it boils down to trying each day to be a better person... to be closer to God and my family by making small strides in that direction without letting life's stresses bring me down to the point where I don't care about what I need to do. And these obstacles will absolutely come such as limited finances since Rob just started a new job with less pay after a few weeks without work. I know it will be okay, but I'm trying to be conscious about the fact that it won't be easy & I am almost always driven by how I feel instead of what I should do. Below is what I've done to make today a successful day. I'll check back later to post how the rest of my day went.

Moving Forward

Calm Heart Meditation for a handful of minutes.

Read 1 chapter of my scriptures.

Yoga- Energizing Morning Sequence.

This is huge for me: I prayed kneeling and out loud.

Later...
Danced with my girls, though they were mostly staring at my moves :-P
Said yes when I wanted to say no.
Tried really hard to NOT flip my lid at bed time with child getting out incessantly, but failed. Could have been worse though.
I know there were more, but since I'm adding these the next day they're foggy now. I'll try to stay on top so I don't forget!