Happy 2021 & Introducing The Live Simply Monthly Mantra Calendar!

January 1, 2021

 

Welcome to 2021, and the Live Simply 2021 calendar!

Each month of this year, in addition to a delightfully on-brand illustration (created for us by the illustrious Ariel Markowitz), we’re giving you an intention word and a mantra to accompany it. Read it every morning. Read it multiple times per day if it resonates with you. Take a sharpie and write your own above mine. The point is to purposefully direct our minds through the power of language and thought.

For the first month of the new year, following the most disruptive, chaotic, and challenging year many of us can remember living through, the word that felt most appropriate was Focus.

 

 

“I AM FOCUSED ON WHAT MATTERS MOST TO ME.

MY ATTENTION IS MY MOST PRECIOUS POSSESSION, AND I INTEND TO BE DELIBERATE ABOUT WHERE I DIRECT IT.”

 

The kids are whining because they’re hungry and bored (always bored). The dog has seen the mailman and his full-throated bark fills the house. You’ve had to pee for the last fifteen minutes and somehow haven’t managed to find the time to attend to the emptying of your bladder. Your spouse is asking you about appointments, and insurance plans, and the locations of various items only they use.

You’ve been adding to your mental shopping and to do list for the past five days and the anxiety about forgetting what will certainly turn out to be the most crucial item on the list is waking you at 2am. Your screens are beeping. Buzzing. Beeping and buzzing. Chirping and singing. When you pick them up, you’re barraged by a wave of messages (sans warmest regards, some of them) from people urgently requiring your response. And let’s not even get started about the assault on your attention that are the apps. The social ones lure you into virtual eddies that you can only hope to emerge from hours later, disoriented and defeated.

The entities competing for dominion of your focus at any moment are endless. You have to choose where you most care to direct your attention. If you have any larger personal or professional goals–if, for instance, your goal in 2021 is to cure your clutter–your only hope is to decide to carve out chunks of focused time. Define the segments of your day (focused windows and frittering aimlessly) so that what needs your attention receives it. Decide where (or to whom) you’ll no longer be giving your attention away freely. Realize that what you focus on expands.

Don’t worry about what the other person is doing.

Don’t worry about what the other person is doing.

Don’t worry about what the other person is doing.

Pay attention to your life.

Pour your focus into your ministry, whatever that may be.

Watch as the recipients of your focus bloom.

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