Life-Changing Practices

Part 1 of a series on how to live your best life

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Admittedly, it feels strange to share that I experienced a spiritual awakening in 2018. I’ve always been spiritually oriented, intuitive, and energetically aware, but what occurred in 2018 was a level up, an opening of sorts.

I’ve spent the last five years recalibrating my life according to that ever-widening aperture and have begun aggregating the lessons and tools that brought me here.

This is the first part of a series of imperatives, perspectives, tools, and stories that describe how I evolved from a hyper-distracted busybody to a peacefully modern mystic.

My hope is that these tools can help liberate you the way they have freed me from the crushing grip of socio-emotional oppression. Each imperative is followed by a brief story and a practice to help you embody the value and embed these life-changing tools seamlessly into your life.

Befriend mortality 

I’ve experienced a number of near death experiences (NDE) and traumas. Those of us who have experienced NDEs are a special group of folx whose connection to the unseen and supernatural phenomenon is heightened. The theory is that having nearly crossed over, the veil is thinner for us and our intuition and spiritual abilities are often supercharged even if we lack conscious awareness thereof. 

My heart flatlined during an umbilical hernia repair surgery at 18 months old. I dove headfirst into a marble table (it looked like water to me) at age three, and nearly drowned in a swimming pool at age five.

My brain was without oxygen for so long that the doctors warned my parents that I would have severe brain damage, but miraculously, I escaped death and any measurable injury. Decades later, I escaped an abusive adult relationship with someone who nearly took my life.

We’ve all been through varying degrees of trauma, and our traumas don’t need to be extreme to appreciate the value our lives hold. Each of our bodies will be left behind eventually. Death is not a frightening prospect when you live your life with intention while cultivating presence, love, joy, and pleasure. 

Practice: Release

I practice dying or sending off outgrown and worn out aspects of my Being regularly. Write your obituary and highlight the legacy you wish to leave behind. Release your burdens and the parts of yourself you need to let go every month during the full moon. Write down what you want to release, tear it up and bury it or safely dispose of your words with fire. 

Set goals 

Napoleon Hill famously wrote that, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Many of us have dreams about an aspirational future in which all we desire is made manifest.

Some spiritualists advise holding the image of that which we desire and embodying the feeling associated with having said desire, as a means for attracting the objects and circumstances we covet.

I agree that meditation and visualization of our desires is a magnetic force that draws us closer to our dreams. That said, specificity is sometimes key. 

I am a proponent of setting near term goals to avoid pushing dreams too far into the future. The biggest thing to remember is that if you tell yourself you probably won’t have or accomplish something until 10-20 years from now, you’ve actually cast a spell (or curse) instructing the universe to delay delivery of your desires by decades.

Avoid thinking that liner timelines, established processes, and known obstacles will have any influence on the manifestation of your desires. I genuinely believe that our capacity to receive is limited by our capacity to believe.

Being realistic is one thing. If you haven’t finished your undergraduate degree and you want to be a brain surgeon tomorrow, chances are slim. But if you have had a career in marketing and you want to pivot to photography and work on a major project, that can happen in the blink of an eye if you believe it can. Here’s how:

Set your goals, inhabit the energy of feeling that goal in the present, then signal to the universe that you mean business by doing things photographers do. Learn everything you can about photography. Research cameras. Join a photography club. Take pictures every day like it's your one true passion. Tell people you are a photographer, believe it, practice it–and watch how quickly the universe conspires to deliver your goal. 

Practice: Setting to seasons

Set a 12-week goal. Make it something you are comfortable putting some energy into and something that you wholeheartedly believe you can manifest in 3 months.

Write it down where you can see it. Change the screen saver on your computer or homepage on your phone to reflect your goal.

Do at least ONE thing every day towards your goal. Bonus points for doing more than one thing any given day. The daily efforts don’t need to be monumental or exhausting. You simply need to communicate to the great unknown that you are focused on achieving your goal.

Worst case, you don’t make it in 12 weeks but you have 3 months of sustained effort and energy towards something you want. Keep going! Once you get there, set a new 12 week goal. If your updated goal is related to the previous, your focused energy will yield phenomenal results over time.

Feel free to change up your themes and stack habits and goals as you please. When you get good at it you won’t want to stop.

I have been living out sustained and elevated goals since I was 12 years old. I’ve built my entire life on the platform of believing I could achieve my dreams and it has been extraordinary to say the least! Have fun!

Rewind Daily

Socrates asserted that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Taking time at the end of your day to recall and reflect on the end of your day is halfway between presence in the moment and the seasonal life-dump we inflict on our friends and therapists. Don’t let that energy build up.

Check in daily through your moments of pause, presence and reflection–at the very least, before you close your eyes and lay your head upon a pillow, rewind your day in your mind. A mental rewind is great for your memory and brain health, and it allows you to locate any sticky places worth examining more deeply.

Dementia runs in my family and I have never had the greatest recall of daily or past events. I particularly struggle with the mundane. I remember firsts and elevated experiences, but the daily ordinary slips away as quickly as it arrived.

I have found that my mental rewind helps me hold onto moments and memories better than I used to. The Covid-19 pandemic and 12 rounds of Covid took a toll on my mental clarity and I was worried. This is a more recent practice that has served me well. 

Practice: Playback or journal

As noted above, before you drift off to sleep, take a moment to replay the events and emotions of your day from last to first. If you prefer to write it down as a journal activity, that’s perfect.

People often lament not having a journal habit or practice because they don’t know what to write. Journaling at the end of  your day can be a cathartic release.

If your only goal is to document the events and feelings of the day, the rest will take care of itself. If you feel like expanding on something, do it. If you want to express gratitude for something, do it.

Let your heart guide you toward what it needs released onto the page.