New Year’s Intentions 2008

I did indeed carry out all my Mid-Year’s Intentions. So here we go again — my intentions for the next six months:

1. Love as many as people as possible, as much as possible, as often as possible, in as many ways as possible, openly, generously, without restriction or restraint, in ways that matter to them. Be appreciative, attentive, responsive, caring, useful. Show (don’t just tell) the people I love that I love them, every day, by being for them what they want and need me to be.
2. Live simpler. Buy less, use less, consume less, owe less, need less. Live lighter on the land. Love Gaia, the community of all-life-on-Earth. Be a part, connected, aware, alert. Know what she needs, what needs to be done, and act accordingly.
3. Engage in more conversations and practice to become a better conversationalist. Listen better. Articulate better. Pay attention better. More conversations with more people I love will require a better parsing of my time, more effective use of that time. More listening and watching and sensing and responding to body language. More relating stories that further understanding. More helping and suggesting and supporting. Less talking, less texting, less criticizing, less one-way writing. Less wasting time on conversations about things that are unactionable. Wasting no time at all with any of the mainstream information and entertainment media.
4. Create community. Find and connect and facilitate the people who can, collaboratively, understand what needs to be done to make this a better world and who can then, individually and collectively, freely, act on that understanding. Participate fully in community activities.
5. Breathe, be present, be still, in those moments when I am alone. In my zeal to spend more time in love, in conversation and community I must remember to allow some time for quiet, for reflection, for regeneration. Through meditation and other attention skills I intend to learn to be in the moment, every moment, to stop time, and to expand it.
6. Move more. Run, hug, dance, hike, cuddle, perform, swim, climb, caress, inspire, play, make art, make love. Our bodies are meant to move, to express, to connect. I must get out more, into places with room and time to really move.
7. Be more self-sufficient. Learn to do 20 things in the next six months that I currently rely on others to do for me. In the process, learn more about myself.
8. Be bolder. This is my ‘intention to intend’. Goethe said “there is power and magic in boldness”. Know when to stop talking and do something. Experiment. Make it up as I go. Take the first next step. Just begin.
9. Help entrepreneurs more. Part of discovering and creating better ways to live is discovering and creating better ways to make a living. I have learned a lot about how to do this, what works and what doesn’t. I need to share this more, person-to-person, principally through telling stories, and by talking more with entrepreneurs to learn even more.
10. Have more fun. Laugh, mostly at myself. Use humour and render stresses harmless. Play with children and animals to remember how to play, and then show other adults. Improvise. Flirt. Be silly. Make love a lot, joyfully, in all the different ways there are to ‘make love’. Smile at strangers. 

The biggest challenge I will face with these intentions is finding and making time for them all. This will require me to stop doing a lot of things I do now. That means I need to understand why I do these things now. Things are the way they are for a reason, and I need to appreciate that reason before I can start spending my time differently.

When I put this list together I originally started with ‘be a model for others’. After all, that’s the advice I give everyone else who asks me ‘what should I do to save the world’?  But I concluded I am not yet ready to be a model for others. Maybe in another six months, after I’ve realized these ten intentions, I’ll be ready. Or perhaps, merely by intending to do things that are useful, helpful, generous, and by doing everything I intend, I will become a model in the process.

That’s my list. What are your intentions for the first half of 2008?