Are You Following Your Own Star?

Who are you?  Why are you here?  What is the purpose of your life?  Some deep questions for a Monday morning, but one's I too, am asking myself this very day.  But the truth is we all need to ask ourselves these questions as we go along.  Not every day of course, that would indeed be too much navel gazing and we would not get anything done if we did that.  But every so often we need to take some time and reflect on our lives and make sure we are following our own star and not simply going along to get along.  Because if we don't we can get caught up in the swift current of mainstream culture.  You know what I mean - we live in a world of technology which will tell us what to do, what to think about, where to go, who to go there with and what to think about when we get there.  You name the question and the media will give you an answer.  But only you can answer the question, are you following your own star?

Do the Love it, Loath it, Live With it Exercise

Here's an idea for you.  For the next week use a notebook to record everything you do.  From getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, what did you do?  Break it down into one hour periods - if you are an average person in terms of your schedule then that would break down into about 16 hours - I'm using a 7 am to 10 pm time slot.  You will need a spiral notebook to record your days.  Use one page for each day and put the date at the top.  Then put the sixteen timeslots, for the entire week from Monday - Sunday.  Each night before you go to sleep jot down what you did in each of these time slots.  Just write it down - don't make any judgments about what you did.  Just write it down.

Then on the next Monday night instead of continuing to write down what you did - look through your week and put a notation by each thing.  Put an L1 for everything that you did that you loved doing.  Then go through you list and put an L2 next to those things you loathed doing.  Then go through your list again and put an L3 for those things you can live with, in other words you don't love doing them but they are necessary tasks that simply have to be done and you're okay with doing them, in other words you can live with them.

Now count up all the L1's, L2's and L3's.  Make a heading for each and put the actual number of hours under each heading.  By the way, your total hours for the week should be 112 hours.  If you are following your own star then the L1's should add up to about 80% and the L2's another 10-15% and the L3's should be no more than 5%.or less.

But what if your numbers are not even close to this ideal?   The first question to ask yourself is how typical was this week? We all have weeks, no matter how much we might be following our own star, when life is just a messy, messy, mess.  If this the case for you for the week you recorded, then start over. Use a week that is typical. for you that you remember well.  Go back through your memory and pick one or you can simply do the exercise again the next week.

What If My Numbers Are Only 50 - 50? - Time to Do a Trade Off 

If your numbers are off - that is, it's more of a 50-50 deal - you love 50% and hate 50% of what you are now doing with your time and energy.  Or even worse, it's 20% you love and 80% you loath?  If it's the first - a 50-50 deal then you might begin to think about how you could change this.  Maybe someone else could do a trade off with you to do the things you loath.  Remember, we are all different and have different skills, talents and gifts and what I hate to do you may love to do.  Maybe you could do a trade off with someone in your family or work group.

If You Loath 80% - Then it's Time to Reflect and Come Up With a Plan

But maybe it's more like 80% of what you do in your waking hours you loath and only 10-20% you love or can live with.  If this is the case then you have some questions to ask yourself.  One of the questions you can ask yourself is can I, at this time, live a life following my own star?  Be honest with yourself - maybe you have obligations at this time that simply prevent you from making a big change in your life.  If you have children still in the nest and have to work at a job that provides for the family but is not ideal for you, then what could you do now to put a channel in place to change this down the road?  How can you begin to plan for a different kind of life in the future?  Is there someone in your life now who could help you with this?

We All Need to Be Able to Imagine a Rainbow

What I know about human nature is that without the promise of a rainbow, if we live in a dark and wet place all the time, or a dry and desolate place and believe me if you loath 80% of what you do each day, then that is not going to be a place of rainbows and sunshine.  What you need is the promise of a rainbow and the only way to get that, if you are in the place of not being able to change your life right now, is to begin to plan for a better deal down the road.  In the movie, An Officer and a Gentleman, the main character is telling a woman he just met that he's not sure he'll make it through the basic training to become a pilot and she tells him, "You have to see it to believe it". .The same is true here - you have to come up with a vision and then a plan hat allows you to see this vision, in order to make yourself believe you can change your life so you can follow your own star.

Do Something Everyday to Put Your Plan in Motion

Regardless of what it is that you want to do to follow your own star, begin today to do something to get that going in your life.  Here are some ideas:

1. Do some research into your star's focus
2. Join an organization that supports your star
3. Find like minded people and create a Mastermind group
4. Begin taking magazines related to your star
5. Go online and find a supportive communitiy and join the discussion
6. Find someone doing what your star wants you to do and interview them
7. Create a treasure map - this is a visual image of what your star wants you to do
8. Begin to talk about yourself as already doing your star's bidding 
9. Post affirmations around your home and office about your star
10. Act as if you are already doing your star's bidding by putting down the foundation

Meanwhile keep the faith - we must have faith that we can follow our own star and in the process of believing, it will happen.

Blessings, Lorraine