plan.

I had a theme for this month: plan. Not to be confused with the March theme: planning.

Plan.

The word itself could trigger a variety of individual reactions. The roles we play. The archetype of the planner could bring a reader either onboard (‘I love to plan.’), or create resistance in a reader (‘Ew. I want to live my life, not plan every detail.’).

Words.

All up to individual interpretation.

Part of my healthy transformation of day has been to intentionally use the skill/inner resource: to plan. For reference, my guess is of the variety of categories others may place me in to make sense of my contribution in various settings, the planner identity most likely is of no consideration.

I have learned that having an end-in-mind, whether it’s the end of a segment of time, or the end of a work day, end of a day, a week, month, year; to desire outcomes and execute backwards from there, is as essential to one’s general sense of satisfaction, as it is fun.

I recall when I first began using this skill/inner resource to transform my depressive cycles. I suppose if I were to give my depression a name, one way to label what I experienced would be existential: ‘She self-diagnosed herself with existential depression.’ My experience of existential depressive thinking patterns would include a general coloring of the world as grey. The theme that organized this dull state was one which defined life experience as a cruel joke.

The beliefs and thinking patterns matched an energetic frequency. Dullness, despair ➡️ energy-in- motion. As I have mentioned before, there may be many pathways or stories that arrive a person to this state, but the patterns seem similar. I often described the experience as: ‘I wasn’t suicidal, but I didn’t want to get out of bed, so I wasn’t sure what the difference was.’

The skills that supported the transformation included:

Belief. I mentioned in the-story-i-tell my Catherine Zeta-Jones moment. I believed I could flipflop the depressive state to the expansive state – and live mostly in the expansive state, and deal with the depressive state now and then. This is why I can understand medication or other processes that support access to the expansive state. Feeling the goodness gives you an end-in-mind. You tell the story about this state. It is our natural essence. It is the vibrating energy (the pixels of you) that sources the physical and nonphysical. It exists. You don’t earn it. You align with it. My guess is that any self-help, personal growth, religious or spiritual dogma, believes in something more.

Notice. Name. Notice the experience you are having and objectively name what is happening. The first content I created was the checkIN. This includes 8 steps that essentially grow the skill of awareness. It is the practice of mindfulness.

Quiet time. Recently I heard self-care described as child-care: do for yourself what you would do for a child to reset and calibrate, or realign, to a balanced state. Create time in your day to slow down and be. It has been my experience over this past decade, that the time will grow itself and become what it needs to. This time becomes your ‘ghoul’, your safety zone. No one can take away the experience because it lives within.

Plan. When you become the noticer of what you push against: Step.Away. This can be physically/literally, or figuratively. Press the pause ⏸ and slowly create some distance/space from what is happening. Notice. Name. Soothe your response. When you can do this, you can ask the why and the and then what. A justified why may be found in criticism of self/other, comparison, judgement and blame, or a desire to prove. However, the and then what is not going to lead to sustainable growth outcomes. You will find yourself once again stuck or spinning in a version of the same pattern with limiting outcomes. You have to see where you want to go. It’s one thing to know what you don’t like. The alternative is to create and imagine what it is that you do like – the opposing force. What you are pulled toward. Plan your experience of day with the desired state of what you want, the end game, the done goal.

Creating your own algorithm begins with an authentic state of being, your authentic self. To begin in this energetic space will allow connection to other ideas/thoughts/situations/circumstances/events that match the state of wellbeing and authentic self-expression. Your connections will grow, slowly building new neural pathways that will eventually become a default system of what is possible; rather than continuing the familiar and well worn pathways that can lead to the dullness and despair. No way out.

A behavior plan in a school setting begins with Setting Events. What are the Setting Events, the self-care or daily practices, that when in place, the chances of you getting ahead of your own problematic behavior (see October and November posts) is highest. Imagine day. Integrate yourself into the imagined sensations of the day you desire to experience. This experience is cellular. You are aligning with the source of wellbeing. It feels good.

What story do you tell about feeling good?
Disrupt the story of fear and lack.
Be curious about possibility.