MEANINGFUL 2019

By Diane Breneman

Featured Wellness Contributor

4 Minute Read

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COMMIT TO A STATE OF BEING NOT DOING

“If you don’t go within, you simply go without.”

VICTOR FRANKL

An astounding 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week in February.

Most fail because they are simply not meaningful or inspiring.

Although it may be responsible to lose a few pounds, save a little money or eat healthier, the typical New Year’s resolution will not create a profound soul-fulfilling experience of life.

In a short period of time, your enthusiasm wanes, your old patterns kick in and then year after year you find yourself making the same resolutions that never come to fruition. So what’s the answer?

Resolve to live a meaningful life in 2019.

2019 requires something radically different from each one of us. The same mediocre intentions are simply not going to create meaningful lives for ourselves or support humanity to step out of the current level of suffering.

Our world is truly in need.

I invite you to embark on a journey within yourself to create a more meaningful life and support the world as a whole. This journey requires that you choose what you will embody and therefore, what you will give the world.

This is a journey into meaning and purpose. If you choose well, it will inspire you and the end of 2019 will not look like its beginning.

So what is it to have a life filled with meaning?

Meaning is experienced when you align your internal state of being with an aspect of the highest.

You can think of this Presence as God, if you are a person of faith or as aligning with your highest possibility if that feels more comfortable to you.

Some of those highest aspects of being include peace, joy, love, compassion, devotion, dignity, integrity, freedom, passion and tenderness.

When you embody one of these states, life becomes full and your heart expands. When you are instead, filled with fear, anxiety, anger, depression, jealousy, or sadness, life dries up and you are left feeling small, empty and alone.

Meaning is always about something greater than yourself and a critical point to accept is that you are always sharing your internal state with the world. As physics teaches everything in this world is vibrating strands of energy.

The frequency that you hold, i.e. your emotional state, like a cell tower is automatically transmitted to everyone around you.

• This is why your spouse knows you are upset with them even when you insist that all is well. 
• This is why one person in an office can poison everyone’s morale.
• This is why you feel the love someone has for you without them saying a word or taking any action.

Your state is simply contagious and whether you intend it or not, will ripple through the whole of this collective experience called humanity.

For me, since I met my meditation teacher, the state I have chosen each year has been unconditional love. I am most assuredly not a perfect vessel of that state but each day, I set the intention to be able to love just a little more. I meditate on my chosen state routinely.

In the moments where I am aware, I repeatedly ask myself whether I am embodying unconditional love and adjust myself accordingly. As a result, I have only one benchmark to check into for this life.

Life becomes simple.

The more I embody the state of unconditional love, the more that the state drives the thoughts I have, the actions I take, the goals I set and my capacity to achieve my goals.

This is how I got from being a lawyer to a meditation teacher. It was not that I didn’t love my law practice, it was that the love I am devoted to embodying can be more fully expressed as a meditation teacher and therefore the decision was obvious.

I am devoted to being an influence for creating a world of acceptance, compassion and love. Therefore, I must create as much of that within me as possible. When I think to this resolution, my heart is full, I know my purpose and life is ever so meaningful.

So this year, commit to a state of being instead of doing.

Pick an aspect of the divine that you choose to see more of in this world and cultivate it within you through both your meditation practice and your daily living.

To deepen that state within you through meditation set 15 to 20 minutes aside each day and begin to meditate on your chosen meaning and its resulting legacy. 

Breathe a three-sided breath, inhaling for four, pausing for two and exhaling for a count of six. 

Choose the state that you are committed to embodying and on the inhale think “I am” and on the exhale, affirm your chosen state i.e. peace, joy, love etc. 

Imagine what it is like to fully embody that state and allow your body to slowly take on that form. Drop your shoulders. Open your heart. Relax your hands and toes.  Soften your abdomen. Align your spine and feel the resulting strength come into your body.

When you feel that state fully within you, imagine walking in the world as a vessel of that. See yourself taking action from that state. Know how the world is influenced by your very being.

Imagine your heart gifting that state to those you love and all others. 

Resolve that 2019 will be a year where you are devoted to becoming what is possible for you in this life.

Resolve to commit yourself to a state of being that fulfills you while supporting your fellow human beings to know the highest humanity has to offer.

Accept that you have an important role to play in the world that must begin within you. Have a beautiful and meaning filled 2019!

What are your intentions for being in 2019? Comment below and thanks for stopping in!

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