Creating a Year of Enchantment

When was the last time you felt enchanted? When experiencing enchantment, you’re filled with delight, you’re drawn towards the image, the item or the experience, and it creates a great feeling of pleasure. When you are enchanted you are captivated, fascinated, and inspired. 

If you’ve spent some time reflecting back on 2023, have you considered what brought you a feeling of enchantment in this past year? If not, take a look back and ask yourself, how often did I feel delighted, filled with great pleasure, and deeply inspired? As you reflect back on 2023, how alive, open-hearted, and charmed did you feel?

Imagine if being inspired, enchanted, and captivated became your primary pursuit in 2024. How different might your year ahead look? 

If you are feeling less enchanted as you reflect back over the past year, that’s ok! When you have time to deeply consider what enchantment looks like, feels like, and means to you, take a moment and really describe in detail, what does bring you a feeling of enchantment? Deeply consider what captivates your full attention, what fills you with pleasure and inspiration? I recommend beginning an enchantment journal for 2024. It can be a small pocket sized notebook that you can access easily throughout the day. If you prefer tech, you can start a page on your notes app in your phone, titling it ENCHANTMENT 2024. If you like to get fancy with your journaling, you can always make it colorful, crafty, and creative!

When you have some time to deeply reflect on what brings you a feeling of enchantment, begin to write down what you already know creates this feeling for you. For example, it could be something as simple as seeing the steam rise from your morning coffee or tea. Feeling enchanted may arise from having a good, long laugh with someone you care about, or it could be a moment of capturing colorful sunrise or sunset or rainbow. You might feel enchanted by a song, a great book, the taste of chocolate, or seeing a new leaf sprouting from the plant in your window. You might feel enchanted by the sweet face of a pet or a child, or from seeing a piece of art, a cloud formation, a tree, or a sparkling stone. You might feel enchanted by so many more things than you recognize, or that you take the time to fully notice in your day to day life. What brings you this feeling of captivation and delight is completely unique to you. Continue to notice, and to pay attention to these moments no matter whether they are small or large, simple or grand, and write them all down to have access to when you are feeling disenchanted or uninspired, or when you just need to have a smile.

Once you have your initial list, what you already know captivates your full attention, take a moment and reflect on it. How much of what enchants you costs a lot of money? How much of it has to do with success, striving, possessing, or acquiring? Most likely not too much. When we are enchanted we are not wanting, we are experiencing something wonderful, we are one with the present moment. And sure, maybe something enchanting may cost money, but it is definitely not a requirement. 

Spend time looking at your starting list and allow yourself to begin to add to it consistently. When you capture something enchanting, write it down after the moment or experience has moved on, try not to disrupt any of these beautiful moments! In my therapy practice, I recommend reflecting to all of my clients to keep a “what went well today” journal. This is about helping the usual anxious, stressed, worried, or negative mind take a break. When you reflect on what went well today you can shift your attention away from worry, negative self-talk, and projecting stress into the next day. Typically I recommend keeping a daily journal to reflect on what went well today? What wins did I have today? What am I most grateful for today? And be sure to add and include, what enchanted me today? When you focus on what went well, what wins you had, what you are most grateful for, and now adding this focus of, what enchanted me today, you can shift out of fear, negativity, and lack—and into contentment, delight and joy. 

When you are noticing the experience of enchantment, captivation, and pleasure in the moment it’s occurring, take time to really savor it. When we savor something pleasurable, we are creating an opportunity to feel full of contentment. When we are savoring the present moment, we are delighting in the experience of being delighted! When you are savoring, you are practicing mindfulness as you are fully immersed in the present moment, the here and the now. Savoring allows your mind is focusing on the good, and you can feel a sense of pleasure and gratitude as you are experiencing it.

When you are reflecting on moments of enchantment and writing them down as a reflection process at the end of the day, take time to savor each element you have experienced. Can you linger in the feeling of enchantment, let it fully enter your being in mind, body and spirit, and allow it to be re-experienced in a way that you feel the delight all over again?

This process of allowing yourself to be present, to experience pleasure, and to re-experience it upon reflection can impact your inner emotional world, your mindset, and your mood in a way that you can experience your own inner ability to create an internal shift. Moods are temporary and usually impacted by experiences, however, if a mood is lingering outside of the experience and it doesn’t feel great, you can bring in this reflective practice and try savoring and see if you can impact your mood in this helpful and positive way. When you can, it feels very empowering, life enhancing, and even healing. Allow yourself this momentary treat of reflection, and be sure to repeat it daily. We get good at what we practice, and this repetition of savoring enchantment offers an opportunity to create positive change in mind, body, and spirt.

Imagine the year ahead as one where your primary focus becomes searching for these moments of enchantment every single day. Imagine the year ahead as one where you notice the good, savor it, linger in it, practice the process of savoring, and search for more. Imagine the year ahead as a year where following what enchants you, what makes you feel most alive, open-heated, and fulfilled becomes your Full-Time pursuit. Here’s to creating enchantment in 2024!

How to Strengthen Your Mindset Muscle

If you have ever tried to build muscle at the gym, then you know that only lifting weights once in a while simply won’t cut it if you want to get stronger. It’s through consistency and repetition that you begin to build your muscles and feel stronger over time. The same is true for building your mental muscles related to your mindset and creating the opportunity to change your own patterns.

Think of building your mindset as if it’s strengthening your mental muscles. Each time you practice strengthening your mindset you become stronger. If you take a long break from this practice, most likely you will have to start small and rebuild one repetition at a time in order to regain your strength.

Mindset is what you focus on with determination coupled with consistently following through. Mindset is the muscle you strengthen that supports the process of change through taking consistent action. Each time you practice engaging your mindset, you become far more likely to follow through on the action steps needed to create the change you desire.

When you have a strong and focused mindset you are able to work through the mental noise and take control of the mental gymnastics that can derail you. We all have an inner self-saboteur. When your mindset muscle is strong, you’re ready to deal with that saboteur part of yourself. Through strengthening your mindset, you are prepared to remain strong in the face of the internal saboteur—usually experienced as convincing excuses— that usually arise from fear or shame.

Fear and shame are two emotions that can keep you living small, keep you feeling stuck and out of alignment with your vision for your life. The trick is that you must experience and understand these emotions, allowing you to feel and recognize the fear and/or shame and get curious about why it’s there. The shame plays off of the fear by way of reminding yourself how you maybe didn’t follow through in the past. The shame will then try to convince you that you won’t follow through based on these perceived failures from the past. This inevitably makes you feel so crummy about yourself so that you feel safer feeling the fear of change rather than taking the action YOU KNOW would move you closer to your vision. The mind is so tricky to conquer. The good news is that with consistency and practice you can have a greater understanding of your patterns and where the fear and shame are just an old narrative that you DO have the power to change.

Setting the foundation to build your mindset and strengthen your mindset muscle begins with knowing what you want and why you want it. When you can connect to your vision for your life and set goals, you have your future self to route for you and support you through the change process. The process from there really comes down to putting in the effort and using the energy of your hope for and belief in your future self to create a plan and then to take decisive action—consistently.

As always, it’s most effective for long-term sustainable change when you start small and develop your own inner trust muscle. You have to trust yourself; you have to believe in yourself. That is where you have to face—and at times wrestle with—the discomfort of any lingering experience of fear or shame. If you haven’t believed in or trusted your own abilities in the past, then it will try to come back and convince you that it won’t now either.

Setting up your plan based on your vision for your life and the goals that support your vision with action steps gives you a roadmap to follow. You want your goals and action steps to be simple, specific, doable and desirable. You build on these steps over time as you begin to trust yourself and believe that you not only can, but that you WILL follow through. For example, if you want to move more, you might begin with putting on the clothes you want to move in and wearing them for the time you want to move. The next time, wear the clothes and move for 5-10 minutes. Plan each detail such as the days you will do this and specifics of what you will do for the week. Review at the end of the week and check in with what happened when you did follow through and what happened when you didn’t. Understanding your own pitfalls, blocks and inner saboteur as well as what motivates you gives you valuable information about how to move forward. Self-reflection and self-awareness will guide your process. You can apply this process to anything you’d like to integrate, change or do.

When you do this consistently, week to week, you will be strengthening your mindset muscle, which will draw you closer to your vision for your life. If you are someone who prefers step-by-step specifics, try the going through these steps below to begin strengthening your mindset today.

1.    What do you want?

2.    Why do you want this?

3.    What will allow you to get what you want?

4.    When will you do the action that allows you get what you want?

5.    What fear or shame comes up for you around taking this action?

6.    Where can you start small and put these actions into place?

7.    Now create your plan.

8.    Now reflect on how it goes and learn from your struggles and from what motivates you.

9.    Practice, be consistent!

10. Re-evaluate.

If you go through these steps to strengthen your mindset muscle so you can align yourself with your vision for your best life, I would love to hear how it goes. If you’d like a refresher on the 10 steps to create a life you love, you can revisit the full overview HERE or go to the blog and read about each step in depth. Change is challenging and yet necessary for growth. The stronger your mindset is through the change process, the more alignment you will experience with your vision for a life you love. Practice strengthening your mindset muscle and you will feel the impact within your life in so many positive ways.

Step EIGHT to Creating a Life You Love: Building on the Change Process

“Quitting is never an option on the road to success. Find the way forward. If you have a positive mindset and are willing to persevere, there is little that is beyond your reach. The attitude of being ready to work even in the face of challenges and despite odds is what will make all the difference in your life.” ― Roopleen

Step 8 to creating a life that you love is about celebrating your change process and nurturing it as it develops. You will focus on the good, the wins you are achieving and the positive shifts that are occurring. You will have opportunities to make adjustments when your motivation needs some tweaking. Developing a consistent daily practice to focus on the positive and express gratitude will be outlined and encouraged to integrate into a daily self-awareness positivity practice. When you focus on what’s going well you tend to want to create more of it!

As we move into this step, and really the final three steps, the aspects surrounding change are more nuanced and less direct. They are more about how to hold onto the changes you’ve created and continuing to dive deeper into what you want and why you want it. Because backsliding is an inevitable part of the process, developing a daily practice to ensure forward momentum is essential.

You may find as some of the smaller steps become habits that your focus may change, what you want may change and your desires become deeper. For example, for many who struggle with emotional eating, they often initially have goals related to wanting to change their body in some way or adhere to some type of diet plan. However, after making shifts and changes, they recognize that their relationship with food, body—or anything else—are all reflected within their relationship with themselves. This is experienced through deep self-awareness and constant self-reflection.

This step is about allowing the positive changes you’ve created to become not just a rote habit, but to savor the experience of the change, to take in the positive feelings of the change and to recognize and be grateful to yourself that you are responsible for the change. This is worth celebrating! Gratitude and daily self-reflection practices that focus on what went well, what changes you’ve maintained and where you can fine-tune your vision is central.

Now that you have seen how a plan turns behaviors into habits, maintaining those habits is how to continue to build on the change process. Taking time daily to reflect on what you did do, what went well and the positive impact that it had on you will help to keep the motivation flowing. This is the time to incorporate gratitude as a practice into your daily routine. As you reflect on what went well, say thank you to yourself for taking the time to put action into your vision and make the changes you desire. Expressing gratitude to yourself to be able to take action and for any of the people who supported you or anything/one else that helped you through this process will allow you to experience an abundance of positive feelings. When you link these positive feelings with the process of change, that will create a stronger desire to keep going. Reflecting on the good, taking time to let it sink in deeply and expressing gratitude all support your progress and build upon the change process in a meaningful way.

Putting this daily practice into your routine would look something like this… Start a daily positive action and gratitude journal. Begin by taking a couple slow, deep, centering breaths. Open your journal and write down two things that you did today to support your vision. These will be any action steps you did take today, no matter how big or small. Focus on what went well and how it felt to complete those action steps. (If your mind tries to distract you with what you didn’t do or anything negative, pause and go back to focusing in this moment solely on the positive.) Take a moment to savor the positive feelings that arise, letting them sink into your being. Notice how it feels in your body to focus on the positive, along with celebrating your growth and change process. Now thank yourself for taking the time to do these action steps and notice how that feels to focus your gratitude inward. Next, write down two things/people you are grateful for from your day and specifically why you feel grateful for these things/people. Take a moment to savor those positive feelings of gratitude, letting them sink into your being. Notice how it feels in your body when you practice gratitude. Savor the positive experience of reflecting on your dedication and expressing gratitude.

This simple and yet super powerful daily practice will help keep you aligned to your greater vision for your life. This daily practice is such a rewarding part of the change process. It does not take much time; however, it makes a big difference in how you feel and ultimately sparks more desire to continue to take action consistently. As you build on the small steps you continue to take, over time you prepare yourself to make big changes and live your vision. You are creating a life that you love!