Amanda Berlin

In 2006, a man named Colin Beavan initiated a challenge for himself and his small family. He endeavored to live in New York City with no net environmental impact.  He created a blog chronicling his attempt.  And the blog became a book…and then a movie.  For a man who didn’t want to create an environmental impact, he certainlt had a cultural one.

A lot of people have put themselves through year-long challenges to write a book, or a blog.  Some famous ones come to mind:  Julie Powell (Julie and Julia), Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project – which I am currently rereading), and perhaps the master of the genre, A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically, My Life as an Experiment, Know-It-All…)  They had an idea, and they went for it.

Right now, at risk of sounding terribly downtrodden and, dare I say, negative, I feel starved for ideas, uninspired, small and impact-less.

I am worried about my impact. I woke up this morning fearful in my lack of “impactitude.” I have been thinking about this a lot lately (today).  What will my impact on the world be?  What kind of impact can I have?  What am I doing now that will have an impact? Why are the activities I am undertaking right now in my life, the ones that are most important to me, writing and teaching, being met with such little…response?  I mean, I don’t need a trumpets’ fanfare because I am working on these things, but it would be good to get some sort of positive reinforcement.  (Insert here the mandatory assertion that I shouldn’t have to look outside for positive reinforcement…the world will only validate me after I validate myself…)

Still, what will be my legacy?  How will I serve?  And why am I still living so small?

For an instant, my thoughts turned to having a kid.   That’s leaving a legacy, right?  Yeesh, not yet.

I am blessed to part of a community of amazing women, making real change in this world.  I am so proud of them.  But I am not proud of myself.  Apparently, so I’ve heard, if I see the offerings of these amazing women in my life as having impact, and I want to offer that , too, than I must have the capability somewhere inside.  Whether you see good, or bad, in the world around you, it’s reflected from within.  That’s what I have learned.  And I guess that makes sense.  Perception is projection.  But still, I have to admit I feel a twinge, the craggy-skinned, groady-sticky green devil sitting on my chest.  I am jealous.  Which makes me feel only more unsteady.

But something is plaguing me.  Maybe I am not letting myself think bigger, because it would mean taking risky action.  (That should be risky in air-quotes…because, really, what’s the worst that could happen.  No one will die.)  Maybe I am not open to letting unconventional ideas or prompts for outside-my-comfort-zone action come to me.  Maybe I am repelling my greatest teachers.  Maybe the fears that are so ingrained in my psyche that I don’t even recognize they are not “me” are keeping me from accessing my greatest potential.  I am scared of not having enough money.  I couldn’t possibly do…that…what about the apartment?  What about my gym membership?  What about my man?  What about…?  I am scared, perhaps, of truly putting myself out there and opening myself up to criticism.  I am scared of having to work hard.  I am scared of not having enough time.  I am scared of what I think I would have to give up…in order to get what and where I want.   Maybe I am not managing my time appropriately all together.

So how might I step up?  How might I serve?  I don’t know.  I only know that I want to.

So I guess I need to ask for guidance.  Where fear has blocked me now let love surround me.  I welcome guidance.  I welcome teachers of the highest order.  I am willing to learn.  I am willing to listen.  I am committed to unblocking the pathways to greatness by releasing the green devil and inviting in the brilliance of the women that surround me.  And I recognize the impacts don’t need to be tidal-wave-sized in order to have meaning.  Even though my impact is small right now, it doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.

It all started with an image of myself walking down the street in the middle of the day.  That was the sort of life I wanted.  I wanted my time to be my own.  I wanted to be the master of my fate.  I wanted to be free.  This was the feeling on which I committed to meditate for the month of March.

Well, it was a busy month.  And the memory of that previous post was all but lost.  However, in the midst of it all, planning the final details of a wedding, teaching intenSati, shopping for a wedding gift for my now-husband, dress fittings, food tastings, flash-mob organizing, and then the business of getting married and going on a honeymoon, I happened into a new meditation.  This month I meditated on presence.  I wanted to fully experience every moment of this amazing time in my life, so I worked on staying conscious and enjoying all of it.

The magical thing was that I it worked.  Of course it worked.  I was awake.  I was alive.  And my wedding and honeymoon didn’t feel like they soared by me in a blur.

The other magical thing was that while I was enjoying life and this amazing, spectacular, everyone-you-ever-loved-in-the-same-room time, I nearly manifested the vision…the dream (which I am no longer calling “the dream” for reasons to be explored)…of walking down the street in the middle of the day.

It’s not because I quit my job.  It’s not because I now live a 32 hour day while the rest of the world still struggles with the same 24 hours they always had.  It’s not because I’ve told everyone else to f*ck off and stop telling me what to do.  It’s because I had a Dorothy Gale-esque shift in perspective.  All these things: the walking in the middle of the day, the freedom, the “personal time,” were there all along.  I just failed to recognize them.  I didn’t have to look any further than my own backyard.

I had previously been choosing to live my life as though I was not in control of my time.  I was choosing to believe that I was not the master of my fate.  That I was stuck.  I was choosing to believe I was not free.  As easily as I chose to believe all these things, I can choose to believe the converse.  Except it’s not easy.  A lot of beliefs like these have been deeply imprinted on our minds.  It will take work and daily practice to believe I am free, I am in control.  But it feels so much better than what I used to believe.

So this month I commit to honesty. I dabbled with this a little bit throughout March.  This month, as Spring approaches – the season of rebirth – I allow my truthiest voice to be heard.  I say what I mean to say.  I speak freely.  I give up strategy.  I say, “When I am me, I am free.”

In February, I was committed to inquiry.

Why are there things in my life that make me less than happy?  And why are they still in my life?  Why are they making me unhappy?  And why can’t I seem to let them go?

I realized that I wake up every morning with fearful thoughts.  They range from fears for my personal safety to gripes and groans about my daily grind.  This may not seem fearful at face value but underneath it all, negative thoughts about my daily life, feeling stuck above all, are fearful.  If not for the sake of fear, why else would I imagine I am stuck.  I am stuck because I am fearful of what would happen if I took the steps to get unstuck.

I did something that may seem crazy.  I asked for my fears to be revealed to me.  It’s veryPandora.  Pandora was the first woman, created by unique gifts given to her by all the gods.  It’s said though, that Pandora opened a jar out of pure curiosity and released all of mankind’s evils into the world. She closed the jar leaving only Hope still inside.  With curiosity, and what I was calling gentle inquiry, I wanted to look inward.  I wanted my fears to be revealed to me so that I could understand their origins.  I wanted to see their evidence in my life.  I wanted to shine a light on my fears for two reasons.  Bringing them into the light is the only way to actually see them in their true form.  And also: dark things are no longer dark when they are brought into the light.  They are transmuted, recycled and purged.

The fears I uncovered included a fear of not having enough.  Enough money, most often.  I also have this fear of growing older and still not having a firm grasp on what it is I can most successfully offer to the world.  And along with that rides the fear that I don’t believe I can fulfill my most sought-after dreams.

In order to confront these fears I committed to standing up to belief in lack, whether confronted with my own or other people’s. I commit to believing in abundance. I commit to believing I am meant for great abundance.  I say to myself, “there is always enough.”  It’s not that hard for me to believe in abundance.  I have always lived by the maxim “do what you want and you’ll figure out how to pay for it.”  This way of living rests on the belief that we have all the support we need.  I tap into my intuition and know that I will take the next right action to strike a balance.

With respect to living my dream while not quite knowing what that dream truly is, I have been tapping into the feeling of that dream.  I may not know the form the dream will take, but being able to feel it’s content will put my on a path toward discovering what I should be doing.  On days that feel particularly in sync with how I’d like to live my life, I acknowledge the rightness of the moment.  “I love this day.”  And in that moment, I know I can recall that feeling at any time, so that I might live my dream day on any day.

As I accrue days that feel right, I commit, in March, to work on meditating on the feeling of those days, even…or especially…on the days that are not chocked full of the same grateful feeling.  I want to experiment on this and see what happens.  Will it invite more opportunities to experiences those dream-like days?  Will it offer new ways to experience the same grateful, enthusiastic vibrations?  Will it just remind me ever more starkly how many days don’t reflect the great days?

I can feel any way I want to feel about my life.  I commit to feeling enthusiastic and optimistic that my dream is here now and I can call it up at any moment.  It is all working out…and I suspend all doubt.

I was never one for New Years resolutions.  Whenever I thought I’d do something, I would just do it.  I wouldn’t wait until January first to start.  I would just start whenever it occurred to me that it would be a good idea.  But this year, I am feeling that resolutions might be in order.  But, it’s more than resolutions.  It’s reassessment, reinvention, renovation, and revision.

Throughout January, I did some work.  I thought and dreamed and asked to be guided.  I wrote in my journal.  I came up with intentions.  Saw my life through a lens of…”okay…where do we go from here?”

During the last week of January, I mapped out my goals and dreams and visions (reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song).  In each area of life, I wrote out my dream, or what I hoped to accomplish, and then I developed goals that would bring about those dreams.

This is the most organized I have ever been.  Especially when it came to something that could be as vague as “Write more…” or “Eat healthier…” or “Develop your spiritual practice.”

I did research into which goals and resolutions end up sticking and I found guidance.  If they are going to work, i.e. bring about their intended change, our goals and resolutions need to be tied to specific, time-bound, tasks.

So, instead of “Write more…”  I will write fiction for 30 minutes a day.  And I will focus on the joy of it, not the “have to”ness of it.  I write fiction for 30 minutes a day because it’s my creative outlet.

I also committed to doing a specific meditation, which lasts about 15 minutes, 5 times a week.   This goal should stick, too, because it’s designed specifically not to make me feel like a failure.  I was reluctant to commit to doing this meditation everyday, so I took on a task I thought I’d be able maintain.

To go along with these goals, I printed out blank calendars starting with February.  I assigned each task a specific colored star sticker and I have been giving myself a star each day for each task I successfully complete.  So far I have a (not perfect, but still beautiful) string of stars.  I even went so far as to cut a star in half when I wrote for only 15 minutes.  It’s still something deserving of a star.

This month, I am committed to further investigation.  There are areas of my life that are not working.  I am committed to inquiry.  I am committed to gently figuring out why.  I am committed to asking for, and working toward, change.  More on that in February.

So, this is what is working for me so far this year.  What is working for you?  What are you doing to get on, or stay on, track?   Which brilliant tools can you share with us?