Resolve—clearing the obstacles between your sacred intention and effective and powerful action (no matter what)

I am beyond thrilled to have the lovely Sue Kearney from Magnolias West with us today. She is “Inspiration in Bloom” as her site professes and is here to help you move powerfully toward YOUR sacred intention!

I’m so grateful and humbled to be asked to write an article on Resolve. Grateful because I’m a fan of this blog and of Kathy’s work and themes—cultivating delight, what could be better? Humbled because I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours now, dancing with, dancing around this word resolve. I’ve looked it up a few times. And I have issues…

Despite what I see in the dictionaries, I’m going to stick with my own definition, the one that resonates in my heart and mind. We’re talking about Bliss Habits, right? The things we can do to increase our joy, our purpose. The things we can do to make living into, fulfilling our heart’s mission and soul’s purpose accessible, do-able, possible.

Okay then, I’m going to share with you a few thoughts about the word resolve itself (I’m passionate about language), a few ways that I use resolve that I find to be very useful, and a meditation you can use as often as you like, to help clear the roadblocks from your own intentions-to-actions pathways.

Resolve, the word

Resolve/resolution has a hardness and hollowness to it, for me. I’ve been thinking about this word since I started writing my “No New Year’s Resolutions” blogposts a few years ago. To quote myself, “It boils down to this: Resolutions without a foundation of intention and action have little staying power.” Have you ever noticed how crowded your gym gets in January, right after the holidays? You’re seeing the “Resolution” folks. Same thing happens at my AA meetings. January is a crowded month!

And then the attendance dwindles down, back to normal numbers. Who’s left? The same people you saw last March. And August. And November and December.

There’s a secret ingredient that turns resolutions into viable and sustainable actions—commitment to who you want to be and what you want to manifest in today, in your life, in your business. Creating the commitment (intentions), making a sacred contract with yourself and your spiritual source is the first step. Which goes nowhere fast unless and until it’s connected to the second step: creating a livable do-able day-to-day action plan that reflects every intention, a plan that will work for you. In January. In March. And in August.

How I use resolve commitment, intention and action

When I sink my resolve from my head into my heart, and, with the help of Spirit, make a loving, fierce and sacred commitment to, for example, abstain from sugar, and then look at my shopping list and make the revisions that support the intention, and connect with Spirit again as I walk into the market—now I have something workable, something that comes from Love, from Spirit, from Heart, and not from my notoriously unreliable head.

This simple and powerful way of being works best with support, darling. Some of the tools that really help support you as you do this are:

• Get an accountability partner. Or a mentor. Or a coach. Speak your fierce commitments to someone who supports your highest good.
• Write your commitments and intentions down. Or draw them. Or make a vision map (click & scroll down a little to see it). And put the visual representation somewhere you can see it, every day!
• Develop a meditation practice. Seriously. Meditation makes you like yourself and others more. It softens you, opens your heart and reduces stress, making it easier and easier for you to handle stress and the unexpected (which I promise you will keep happening as long as you’re breathing). And it makes you feel connected to magic, and flow, and purpose, and mission, and love with more and more clarity and ease.

A meditation to help you ground in sacred commitment and intention

There are many ways to do meditation. You can fold intention into your own favorite practice. I invite you to give this one a try and see how it feels.

Posture. Sit comfortably, with your feet flat on the floor, and your back straight. Feel yourself grounded; envision your roots descending down to the center of the earth. And feel yourself being suspended by a string from above. You don’t need to stretch to do this. Instead, use your imagination and visualize the string, and the roots. This mental picture will gently add length to your spine and allow for the free flow of positive energy through your body as you do this working.

Breathing. Relax your breathing. Each inhalation starts from the belly, filling from the bottom up, and when you exhale, you feel your lungs empty from the top down. Try to slow your breathing down a bit, but keep it easy. Lips are together. Lightly place the tip of your tongue on your upper palate. And (very important!), relax your jaw, so there’s a gentle space between your top and bottom teeth.

Gaze. Relax your eyelids, so your eyes are mostly closed. Soften your eyes. This way, you can still see, but what you are seeing should be in very soft focus. Rest your gaze about six feet in front of you, and down.

And now the good stuff. After a few relaxed breaths, bring to mind a sacred commitment that you made. Let’s use the abstaining from sugar example. With each breath, for ten breath cycles, repeat to yourself a variation of this phrase that works for you: Today I will eat the healthy foods that make my body feel good and I will refrain from eating sugar.

Then, change the affirmative phrase to something like: My body is the vehicle of my consciousness and I take exquisite care of my body, my temple. Repeat this internally for another ten breath cycles.

Still practicing your relaxed breathing, visualize yourself a month from now, after having lived into this commitment for a month. Then visualize yourself three months from now, in your healthier body. Picture the good results of this manifested commitment in as much detail as you possibly can.

Once you have a clear vision of yourself and the changes living into this commitment have made for you—could be better energy balance, or releasing some weight, or a better result at the dentist, or all of the above—then begin to wind the meditation down. As you do so, make sure to state, internally, This, or something better. Always always keep the door open to the results being even better than you could possibly have imagined!

You can do this practice for one commitment, or for more than one. This can also be very useful to do on awakening. Bring to mind any of your sacred intentions, especially any which are proving challenging, and allow your commitment to imbue your head and your heart and your most precious soul with every breath.

I would love to hear in the comments how you resolve commit to your highest good being expressed in your daily actions, in your beautiful business and in your life. And if you try the practice I outlined, please let me know in the comments how it landed for you.

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Sue Kearney is Chief Inspiration Officer at Magnolias West, a coaching, branding and web design practice. She is a dancer, DJ, artist, gardener, cook, and a maker of kombucha, sauerkraut and herbal medicines. Sue is a student of astrology, tarot, and a practitioner and facilitator of women’s spirituality.