365 Inspirations—330: Setting Intentions

Leading a Workshop at Kalani on the Big Island, Hawaii on Intuitive Writing

"I had let go of WAITING for anything. I had moved on to the next creation and while I was in the act of creating, this good news came through. And that is how it has happened again and again...."—Katherine Jenkins

Yoon and I are offering a very special retreat for the New Year. It's called Setting Intentions: An Intuitive Writing, Collaging and Yoga Retreat. You can find out more about it on the side bar of this blog or on my Yoga and Writing Retreats page HERE.

I am a BIG believer in setting intentions. All the best things in my life came to me by doing this. I have notebooks/journals full of pages which state my intentions and an art presentation book full of collages (like vision boards) that I've created on retreat and in my own free time.

I can tell you one thing I've learned for sure: These methods, which activate a different part of the brain, WORK.

But they don't work in the way you'd like them to. The intentions you set for your life come when they are ready to come. Sometimes they slip through the back door or sneak up on you when you've completely forgotten about them.

If you are waiting for something to happen, you may be waiting for a lifetime. The best things in life come when you least expect them to. Of course you have to do the groundwork, but let go of the outcome. It's that simple.

Lots of people quit before they even start. The road may seem long or difficult, but I truly believe that the FIRST STEP is just as important as any other step towards living a life that is uniquely yours.

Intuitive writing, which I'll talk more about in my retreat, has helped me in uncovering my subconscious mind. That's where the juice of life lies. If you've ever had a hunch, a vivid dream, an inner calling or a gut feeling, you are tapping into that authentic part of yourself that wants to be front and center in your life but has somehow taken a back seat to the 'rational,' 'practical,' or 'realistic'. Not that these aren't important in life, but they've somehow taken over the wheel completely.

They took over the wheel in my life and still sit on my shoulder and tell me to 'get real' from time to time.

But what is 'real'?

Intuitive writing and collaging are playful ways of bringing back that childlike innocence and purity to our lives. Somehow, in our need to be mature or grown up, we've lost touch with that purity. Instinctively, we all know what makes us happy and what fills us with joy, but it's easy to lose touch with that as we get older.

Do you feel happiness and joy in your life? Do you like the way your are living? Are you completely satisfied with your life?

If you can say "yes" to all these questions, I congratulate you!

I wasn't able to say "yes" to all those questions. I didn't know what I really wanted until I started to creatively explore this area of my life through writing and collaging. Meditation and yoga also helped shed light on that inner part of myself that had been buried beneath a pile of 'have tos' and 'shoulds'.

Many years ago, while in a long course of meditation, I saw an image of my very first book. I saw the title Lessons form the Monk I Married. I saw the entire book, with all its pages and chapters, as if someone had flipped it right in front of my face.

At first, I was irritated by this. After all, I was there to meditate. I was in a serious, long course of meditation. I wasn't supposed to be daydreaming about a book.

But it kept coming back again and again and again...

In 2012, that book was traditionally published exactly how I saw it in my mind's eye.

A few days ago I was lamenting that I hadn't heard much about my book lately from my agent. I was worried and thought I needed to do something more.

Today, while I was working on material for my upcoming retreat in January, my agent contacted me to let me know that I had received an offer for the simplified Chinese rights of my book. That meant that my book would be available in Mainland China! The complex Chinese rights had already sold, which covered Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong, but this was the cherry on the cake and I did NOT know it was coming.

I had let go of WAITING for anything. I had moved on to the next creation (my upcoming retreat) and while I was in the act of creating, this news came through. And that is how it has happened again and again....

Only through my own experience can I say for sure that this works.

I invite you to attend my upcoming retreat to experience how you might put these tools to use in your own life. If you can't attend, perhaps you know a loved one, family member or friend who might find this retreat useful. I'm also available for personalized Skype sessions on this topic.

And now a few questions for you...

Do you feel you are living the life you were meant to live? If not, what would it take you to get there?

365 Lessons-Lesson 47: Awaken your Intuition

My husband, Seong Yoon Lee, is a believer. What does that mean exactly? He believes in what he is doing so much that he is willing to make very bold statements. Sometimes his statements scare me. When we were living in South Korea, he used to say things like, "Quit your English teaching job and teach yoga full-time to Koreans." This was his suggestion to me when I was at the end of my rope with my teaching gig in Korea. I just looked at him with wide eyes and an opened mouth. All I could think of was How will I do that? Well, I did it. I quit my job, got my yoga teacher's license in Colorado and started teaching yoga to agile Koreans while trying to speak Korean. I'm sure I chopped up the language a bit, but it went quite well. For those of you who have just arrived at this blog, my husband used to be a Buddhist monk. After we married, he left the monastery and opened his own yoga school. This was not an easy leap and it's one I am writing about in my book Lessons from the Monk I Married.

Flash forward to 2009, my husband hasn't stopped making these bold statements. Sometime during the past year he said, "I'm going to teach yoga at Microsoft." Guess what he's doing? During the same year he said, "I'm going to open my own yoga school." Now this one I couldn't believe. I mean, we didn't have any money for this..how would it be possible? It's expensive to rent business space, how would we pay for everything? I couldn't wrap my head around it. When I asked him directly how this would be possible, he answered, "I have no idea, I don't think, I feel it."

In early December, I went to a 10-day silent meditation course. When I came back, Seong Yoon had a business partner who wanted to invest his time, energy and money into opening a business with Seong Yoon because he too believes it will be a great success. I thought jokingly, "It's contagious, more and more people are becoming believers." They will open Yoon's Yoga Bliss near Seattle on February 26th. When you are around this kind of energy, you can't help but start to believe in your own inner feelings or intuition.

I asked my husband just now, "What does intuition mean?" and he said, "Message from inside." Most of the time our insides are so jumbled, it's hard to hear anything clearly. Meditation has helped me immensely in tuning in to what I am meant to do.

I have spent periods of 20, 30 and 45 days in silent meditation. All of this time was not wasted; it was training me to hear myself from the inside out. Unknowingly, I have also come to trust my intuition. It takes training to hear what your inside has to say.

My inside is telling me to connect with as many people as possible and share with them the fact that everyone has this possibility of hearing themselves. Meditate, feel your breath, practice yoga, take a walk, get out of your head..all of these are helpful. The most helpful thing I can pass along is to live moment to moment because living in the moment is where you will find your answers. If your mind is racing to the future or falling back to things that happened in the past, you will miss what your intuition wants to tell you. You will miss now and if you keep missing now you will miss your life.

In the evening before my husband and I go to bed, we like to read to each other. I always grab a random book from the stack by our bed and say to my husband, "What page?" The other night he said, "Page 76." Whenever he tells me a page, I say, "You always say that page." He starts to laugh, he knows this isn't true and that I'm playing with him. Then, he lies flat on his back with a peaceful look on his face and closes his eyes. Then, I start to read the page to him.

The gist of page 76 was about struggling to find the answer to something or to remember something. Only when you completely let go of your efforts, do you find what you are looking for. Like when you forget an actor's or actress's name and it comes to you in the middle of the night when you are no longer focusing on finding the answer.

I believe that when you set good intentions which are helpful to you and others and you release those intentions into the universe, without being attached to them or attached to the results, good things will happen. It's the law of nature. The key is to be opened and remain in this moment. I know this to be true as I have seen unbelievable things happen with my own eyes which have caused me to become a "believer" too.