This practice is about starting to build a picture of how you would like the next year to look for you. It’s about connecting to what your wants, needs and desires are… the ones that are closer to home, as well as some big picture stuff.
What do you want?
It’s a simple question, but one we have trouble answering.
There’s lots of stuff that can get in the way of your true answer; people pleasing, self-doubt, lack of belief or faith… We’ve been taught somewhere that wanting is an undesirable trait to carry. But there is nothing wrong with wanting. It doesn’t make you greedy or any less of a person. It doesn’t inherently mean you’re not happy with your life now or that you’re not living in the present. It just is!
And in fact, allowing yourself to connect with your wants is a really useful tool in understanding your deeper desires, in terms of how you want to feel, be and live.
The vision you have for yourself and your life.
So in this exercise, I’d like you to look beneath all that stuff; the stuff that disconnects you from your wants. To peel back the layers and reveal what’s actually aligned and true for you…and only you.
So, let’s start with that question and see what comes up. Just write what comes to mind; try not to filter or edit yourself, and write until you have nothing left to say.
Journaling Questions:
What do you want, in a very broad sense, in the next year of your life? Think about how you want to be, how you want to feel, how you want to live, the things you want to experience.
What came up for you when writing that/reading through that? How did it feel? (and is there anything you missed out that you’d like to add?) How did it start and how did it end?
Looking at your wants (whether it’s one thing or many), what part do you believe your chronic illness plays in you being able to get/have/create/achieve/experience those things? Do you see it as being a help or a hindrance? Go through each one - the answers might be different.
Where you believe your chronic illness is able to support you in your wants, how so?
And where you believe it’s a hindrance, how so?
Now go back to your ‘wants’ and list out some adjectives from what you’ve written. Keep going until you think you’ve got everything down.
Same questions as before, but for the adjectives you list.
Where you believe your chronic illness is able to support you in those feelings and beings, how so?
And where you believe it’s a hindrance, how so?
We often have a tendency to pin everything on our chronic illness being a certain way - less, healed, in remission, non-existent… - as if it’s a barrier to entry to the life we want to live.
Whilst wanting ‘things’ is absolutely valid, it’s often the feeling and being behind those things that we’re truly after.
I asked you to look at both the ways you believe your chronic illness will support you and how you believe it will hinder you because I wanted you to engage the creative part of your brain; not everything is always as it first seems.
When we connect to the root of how we want to feel and be, over what we believe will get us there, we see that there are many routes to market and that actually, with a little creative thinking, the manifestation of our chronic illness both isn’t the big barrier to entry we think it is, and on top of that, we can even use the wisdom and intelligence of our chronic illness to help us on that journey.
The way we feel and our state of being, on the surface, might seem insignificant into how you live with and experience your chronic illness. But they’re anything but. Living in alignment with those states, acting and behaving from - and in a way that feeds into - those places, is incredibly healing, soothing and grounding.
Keep this journal entry safe; it will come in use in other practices and will also be helpful to refer to throughout your YCIA journey. The adjectives you wrote down could help you form your ‘word’ for the next 12 months.