Life Mandala Writing Journey: Week Two
The Who, What, Where, Why, When and How of your story.
The first part of the Life Mandala process was to take a few moments to create a little verbal time capsule of the season just left behind. We need milestones and markers to measure growth. It also helps us get clarity on what is ready to shift. Sometimes that big shift is letting go of something that no longer serves us, sometimes it’s about drawing something new into our orbit. This practice of reflection is crucial in establishing how to move forward.
It’s like any time you get in your car and set the GPS. It gives you direction on where to go only after you tell it where you’re coming from. This is step one. If you missed it - you can visit the journal prompts and watch the replay. It’s there for you when you are ready. This process can unfold in your own timing. You can take each week as it comes or snuggle in for a cup of tea and some writing all in one sitting.
Together we’ll go through the next 5 weeks with writing explorations to clarify these five questions:
Where are you coming from now? (replay and prompts)
Who are you becoming?
What are you seeking?
Why is this important?
When is the right time?
How do you feel?
Intro Video: Life Mandala Who are you becoming?
Spend some time this week enjoying this process. This writing journey is a pause, to get rooted in living and not get lost in the blur of days. Instead - be active, engaged, and empowered by the choices you made as you move through with our own rhythm and timing.
There are Pdfs of all of these writing prompts at the bottom of the post. Grab a pen, journal, or the printable pdfs and cozy up for a few minutes…
Who are you becoming?
Read through on your own or be guided through each prompt with this video.
Values Assessment
When out of alignment with your values, like any bad directions - you might get lost and veer off the path. Values keep you steady on track to where you’re heading. They are the mechanics of your moral compass, the cardinal points that draw you forward.
The pivotal word here is your values. It’s important to reflect on who or what contribute to your value system. Many of us operate from the values we learned in our family of origin. It’s like toothpaste, we just keep buying the same brand we grew up with. While these home grown values may be a huge component of who we’ve always been, they don’t always serve who we are becoming.
Are your values intrinsic to who you are OR are you under the influence?
We live in a time when there is a career called “influencer.” There is another one called “marketing psychologist.” The world (ie capitalism) is very persuasive. Comparison culture distracts us from the depth of who we are as we abandon our core human values for another shiny object. It’s easy to get manipulated into believing that certain things are important to us. Our values become economically informed rather than intrinsically.
Take this assessment to help prioritize your values in alignment with who you are now becoming. As you go through, you may feel a connection to many or all of these values. They represent the higher ideals of being human. It’s natural to want to mark them all as very important.
Mark 5 only where you have an immediate “yes” gut response. Go through twice to refine, as you need to. If it makes it easier to decide, think about the top characteristics you would want in a partner.
Look through and choose your top 4 values. These are your cardinal directions.
Returning to the heart of what’s truly important is how you get your power back! Armor in your integrity. Invest your energy, money, and time in alignment with your values. Use these top four ideals as your compass, the guiding forces that bring you home to yourself time and time again.
Belief Brainstorm
Another extension of who you are becoming is your belief system. Beliefs are the underlying current that feed and direct all of your experiences. Every belief creates a mental gate that opens or closes your perception to what you recognize or reject. This might be conscious or unconscious, however, our beliefs run the show.
Caltech researchers have quantified that our senses take in one billion bits of information per second, but our brains process a thought at only 10 bits per second. This means that the mind recognizes and grasps only the most familiar ego serving information, which usually tends to reinforce a belief we already hold.
To change our behaviors and experiences, we have to evaluate our beliefs. We can get stuck in old belief patterns, sometimes also not really ours. A new approach or intention, may require a curious investigation into what beliefs may be limiting the momentum of our life.
Try engaging with your beliefs in this brainstorm. These are commonly some of the most deeply rooted, but the categories are many and varied. It might be beneficial to distill down the broader category to something a little more focused and detailed. Pick just one or two to work with right now. You can always work another category later.
Start with asking yourself “What do I believe about…?” - write stream of consciousness for a few minutes to get out all of the beliefs you just may hold about something. THEN - write for a few minutes about “What else could be true?” - give a voice to other possibilities.
Other belief inquires: My body, My Health, My Spirit, My Circumstances, Truth, My Country, Life, My Family, My Relationship, My abilities, My Career …
Let yourself spend time with the challenges to see where the mind has become too narrow around a certain belief.
How could use your newly prioritized values to inform a belief?
Does the original belief turn you toward your values or away from them?
This kind of investigation can deepen your relationship with who you are becoming right now.
Being and Becoming
We are in a constant state of flux and flow between Being and Becoming.
Being is a state of presence as we are absorbed in the moment. It’s the steady stable part of who we always are. The purest of moments when we are in awareness, we ARE awareness. In this state of existence our nature is unchanging. There is no need or drive to become anything else, we are able to be who we are - as we are.
Becoming is a state of unfolding as we evolve. It’s the alchemy of our changing nature -the evolutionary part of living through experience. It is a state of existence that thrives through growth. It is who we are as we live into the potentiality of all that we are becoming.
This matter of who we are becoming is realized as we carefully gather our values, beliefs, intentions, priorities, attitudes, and behaviors. We live these out in every experience. These are the fuel for every goal and dream we have. The key is to move slowly with a rhythm of being and becoming - until we ultimately know that who we are becoming is who we always are.
“We aren’t seeking awareness. We are awareness.” - Vasant Lad