Week #46 – Assurance
I paid attention to how my internal and external reality changed when I focused on feeling assured. First of all, I felt pulled to pay attention to people (public figures and people in my personal life) who had this quality. As I consumed more of the material they’ve put out there, I could see how they embodied this value in everything; from their demeanor to the work they did.
Secondly, I stumbled upon content online that spoke about this value, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Of course, it could have just been my reticular activating system seeking out patterns, but it did the joy nonetheless.
Thirdly, I found myself feeling more assured at times. It wasn’t like I was consciously trying to feel this way, I just felt better about myself and my abilities, which felt great. Interestingly, I was able to be more vulnerable and authentic when I felt better about myself.
Week #47 – Surrender
I wanted to experiment with the concept/value of surrender for a week. There were some situations that I felt I was pushing against and resisting and that wasn’t helping me. What if I did the opposite and just surrendered, I wondered.
I had an unexpected situation come up where exercising this value was very helpful. On Tuesday, I was PMSing heavily and my thoughts were spiraling out of control. The next day, I woke up feeling nauseous and sick. I could do little else other than surrender. That was really helpful in uplifting my spirits and getting me out of my spiraling thoughts.
I had a breakthrough with an approach to work I was vehemently resisting. I did not recognize how hard I was pushing until I decided to just – stop. When I did so, I could almost feel space opening up in my mind and a solution began to emerge. Within a few days, I had completely mapped out a better, more aligned, joyful approach which I’ve already started implementing.
This got me thinking that we often see surrender as a passive thing that doesn’t lead to real results or solutions. At least I did. But that’s not true at all. Surrender means stopping the energy drain that goes into resisting something. When you do that, it creates space. The saved energy can then be channeled into things that don’t have as much resistance.
I also surrendered to my yearning for travel and booked flight tickets to Sri Lanka for a vacation. I’ll be traveling from the 2nd until the 13th. I feel so excited just thinking about it! I already know what my value for that week’s going to be! 😉
Overall, the week was a great success. It was one of those values that came along exactly at a moment I needed it the most.
Week #48
Until Thursday, I hadn’t ever paid attention to the word moxie. I wasn’t sure what I wanted the value for the week to be and I set the intention for it to present itself in a way I’d instantly know it. I was listening to an interview of Whitney Wolfe Herd with Tim Ferriss and she said that she’d initially wanted to name Bumble ‘Moxie’. I was like, that’s it. Moxie. It’s not an oft-used word and it can either be used as ‘energy or pep’ or as ‘courage or determination’. I love it.
As I’ve been going about this values challenge, I’ve been thinking about my top 3-4 values for every area of my life. It occurred to me that moxie would certainly apply to who Ranjana is, at a personality level.
In terms of how I want to apply this, I am going to embody this value in whatever way feels good or right to me. I’ll share the different ways this value showed up in my review!