The Living Fully Challenge

12 Months to a Fully-Lived Life

Month #9

After last month, your house — and you — should be squeaky clean. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. However, your house cleaning — leaning up at least one mess in each area of your life — should have left you with a cleaner living space inside and out, physically and non-physically. You should now feel a little less weighed down by unfinished business and untidy issues that tend to linger at the back of your mind, making it hard to focus on the more pressing issues to which you need to attend.

Plus, you should be pretty comfortable spending time in your house with yourself. If you did the work to get to know yourself, you should feel much more comfortable within your own four walls (or, as most people say, “in your skin”) and should have a good idea of who you are and how to have a relationship with yourself.

Living in a clean space always makes it easier to focus on the more important things. While each of us has different priorities, more than likely yours revolve around things that bringing beauty, pleasure, joy, peace, love, connection, and fulfillment into your experiences. Knowing yourself well helps you begin to understand what you truly want and desire and how you can live your live fully. Couple that self-knowledge with your house sans a few messes and you now have the ability to see through the windows of your life a bit more clearly and realize what might be missing in your house, or maybe what “furniture” you might like to rearrange. However, before you begin focusing on creating those desires or changing things around, you have to create space for them to exist in your house. That means . . . you guessed it . . . a little more house cleaning.

The Two Basic Monthly Assignments

Just as in past months, continue by, first, completing daily the two basic assignments. They continue to form the foundation of your living-fully practice.

Basic Assignment #1:

Take some deep breaths several times every day. The breath is the source of life. God breathed life into us. As we breathe in, we continue breathing in God’s exhale, and as we exhale God inhales. It’s a continuous circular breath from Creator to the created. Plus, without the breath, we die. Each breath gives our body what it needs to continue living. And the fact that we breathe without even thinking about it represents a miracle. So, breathe deeply and consciously as often as possibly, because the breath enlivens you! If you have a watch that beeps on the hour, I suggest you set it to do so, and each hour take a minimum of 10 deep, slow, conscious breaths.

Basic Assignment #2:

Each night before you fall asleep try to acknowledge at least one thing about your life and the way you lived it that day that you really appreciated or enjoyed. If you can't find at least one thing you appreciated or enjoyed, than commit to doing something different the next day - to doing one thing you can acknowledge the next night - something that puts a smile on your face - before you fall asleep. The reason for this exercise seems self-explanatory: If you aren’t doing anything that you can acknowledge as being enjoyable or that you sincerely appreciate, you aren’t living fully.

Assignment for Month #9

As you know, each month’s assignment is comprised of two exercises you will use for 30 days to help you live more fully. The first one will involve one area of your life. The second one will be applied to 12 general areas of your daily life – finance, romantic relationship, free time/fun, health/exercise, work/career, spiritual practice/relationship with God, friendship, relationship with self, relationship with family, continuing education, charity and care of the Earth, and commitments/responsibilities.

Exercise A

Moving on to the area of relationship with family constitutes one many people would rather avoid. Now, some people have lovely families that get along beautifully. If you happen to be one of these lucky people, then this month’s Exercise A will seem enormously easy to you. In fact, you might have to really work at finding a person and an issue to deal with to complete this exercise. You can always improve a relationship in some way, however, even if this means simply appreciating someone you have taken for granted.

If, however, you are one of the many people who have “issues” with family members, come from dysfunctional families or are struggling to heal from some sort of abusive relationship with parents – or have any other type of problematic relationship with a family member (or your whole family), this month’s Exercise A may seem daunting. That said, I suggest you see it as an opportunity. You don’t have to heal all your family relationships in one month, although that would be a super goal to have. You only need to heal, or improve, one family relationship within the next 30 days.

That’s your assignment: Take on one problematic family relationship and try to improve it in some way. Your goal should be to resolve whatever issue you and this other person have altogether. However, any signs of things getting better counts as having accomplished your task.

If you have a brother to whom you haven’t talked in 10 years, start a conversation. Write him a letter. Give him a call. Send him an email.

If you have a mother that drives you up a wall each time you visit her, try to find a way to visit that doesn’t end in you screaming and running out the door two days early. Go for a shorter visit. Commit to simply accepting her as she is, especially if she is elderly. Sit down and discuss with her what makes it hard for you to be in her company and explain that you really want to be able to spend more time with her.

If you have an uncle who abused you, stop avoiding family get gatherings that include him and, instead, confront him. Tell him you remember what he did to you, and it wasn’t okay. Decide what you need him to do to make it “right.” He can’t undo what he did; what will help you heal from the abuse and move forward? Be aware, however, that situations like this last one can blow up and get worse at first; be prepared to get emotional help and support for yourself. And if you are telling family members about something like an abusive family member, be prepared for some family relationships possibly to get worse before they get better. Not everyone is willing to believe that someone they know and love can do horrible things to people they know and love. You might find yourself feeling like you have done something wrong by “tattling,” especially after all these years. Support yourself by seeking out professional help prior to confronting anyone, so you know how to handle other people’s reactions and have a well-thought out plan for broaching the subject.

In all cases, think before you act and speak. You can role play with someone else before you approach the family member or practice what you are going to say in front of a mirror. If you feel that talking might be difficult, write a carefully composed letter or email. No matter what, don’t act impulsively. Remember, the goal lies in making the relationship better, not worse.

Exercise B

Just like last month, apply this part of the month’s assignment to the following 12 general areas of your daily life — finance, romantic relationship, free time/fun, health/exercise, work/career, spiritual practice/relationship with God, friendship, relationship with self, relationship with family, continuing education, charity and care of the Earth, and commitments/responsibilities.

This month, in each of the 12 general areas of your daily life, you must make space. (Here comes the additional house cleaning I mentioned.) By this I mean that you must physically, emotionally or psychologically get rid of something you no longer need or want or that is taking up unnecessary space in your life. You might want later on to fill this space with something new. However, if you have desires you’d like to manifest, you first have to create space for them to exist in your life.

The way this works is simple; it’s a bit like cleaning up messes. Take your finances, for example. How can you make room for more abundance or prosperity? What can you get rid of to clear some space in your finances? Do you need to open a savings account, so you have somewhere to put the money you save? Do you have to get rid of old debt? Maybe you need to clean out some outdated thoughts about your ability to be prosperous, or possibly you have to throw away those old bills and financial papers from 15 years ago that you no longer need.

In the area of romantic relationships, do you have an old relationship that really isn’t working for you any more that you need to end so you can attract a new one? Do you have a bunch of old photos of old lovers on your shelves at home that simply remind you of what you no longer have and take up the space? Box them up and put them in the attic. Make space for photos of your new relationship to be placed. Is your mind filled with thoughts of an old relationship? Find a good therapist to help you clear that person out of your mind, thus creating space for you to think about something — and someone — else.

When it comes to free time and fun, what stands in the way of you actually having some? Get rid of it. Maybe you simply need to clear a space on your daily calendar for lunch with a friend or 30 minutes for a cup of coffee and a good book.

The same could be said for health and exercise: How will you make space for it? What can you clear out of your busy life to make room (time) for 30 minutes of exercise at least three times a week? And what about that physical you need or that overdue dentist appointment? Clear a space on your calendar or create a once-a-month “take-care-of-me” day. If you don’t think you have the time, figure out what you can get rid of to make time. What do you do every day or every week that takes up time but is unnecessary?

Does your job have some aspect that you no longer enjoy? Delegate it to someone else.

Is your spiritual life filled with random thoughts rather than with thoughts of God? Learn to meditate so you can “throw away” the thoughts you don’t want and focus on your connection to the Divine. Or is your anger at God getting in the way of your spiritual practice? If so, find someone to help you let go of that anger and leave it behind. Maybe you simply don’t have a space in your life for spirituality or connection to God. What do you have to remove to make room for a trip to church on Sunday or time to pray each day?

You get the idea. While you are searching for places in your life to make space, don’t forget to look within yourself. Especially if you can’t find something physical to remove or throw away or a way to create space on the three-dimensional plane, look for emotional or psychological issues that take up space in your life. Find a way to remove those. Find a good therapist or counselor. Go to a hypnotherapist. Do something to “take out the trash,” as Dan Millman says in his book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. (He, of course, means the trash in your head.)

I like to think about this exercise like preparing to buy a new wardrobe. If my closet is too full to hang even one more piece of clothing, then I have to remove something. I need to clean out my closet. I have to sort through the clothing and find at least one item that can be given or thrown away. I may like that old shirt from college that I’ve worn once in 15 years, but it may not serve me any more. (In fact, it might not even fit.) I’d be better off without it. For each piece of clothing I discard, I make room for something new — something that fits me and my life better at this point in time.

If you don’t want anything new, consider the assignment this way: Each time you remove something physical or nonphysical from your life, you simplify your life to some degree. The simpler your life, the more peace of mind you will find, because your life will contain less “things” for you to consider. As you clean out your emotional and psychological being, you will feel freer to live fully, because you won’t be held back by that unnecessary and unwanted “clutter.” As you remove the physical things you don’t want or need, you will find yourself unencumbered — freer to do as you like, to live as you like — to live your life freely and fully.

Additionally, each time you make room in your life, you create more space in which to move. The more space you have in which to move, the more options you have for how to use that space. This means, you increase your choices about how to live in that space you call your life. In other words, the more space you create in your life, the more fully you can choose to live your life.

Go create some space, and then use well. Live in it fully.

Let me know how things are going with the Living Fully Challenge . . . send me your success stories as well as the area you struggle with the most.