Enliven, Enlighten and Enjoy! Ten Ideas for an Inspiring Spring

With an understanding of the Two Phases of health – stress and regeneration – META-Health helps us to tune into our natural rhythm of health and the cycles of nature.

After the regeneration of winter, spring marks the beginning of the eu-stress (positive stress) phase. Throughout the natural world, it’s a time of increased growth, activity and enlivenment. This begins with the spring equinox in mid-March and continues until the summer solstice in mid-June.

We can make the most of spring’s incoming and uprising energy and motivation. It’s an opportune time to identify what we want, take action towards it, start new habits and embark on personal growth projects.

Here are our ideas for 10 things you can incorporate into your life this spring; choose those that resonate most with you…

 

1. Set Your ‘New Year’s’ Resolution Now!

What would you like to do on a regular basis, but still haven’t got around to starting? Or what fuels you that you might have given up on?

Too many of us try to form new habits at the beginning of January, which is exactly when our bodies are in the middle of hibernation mode! It’s no wonder that we give up so easily. With the increased light, warmth and energy of spring, it’s much easier to set up and maintain beneficial habits now.

Why not start on 1st May? After all, ‘labour day’ is a bank holiday for celebrating and acknowledging the work we’ve done so far and that we’re going to do in the future…

Taking a META-perspective, when we’re talking about habits and resolutions, we don’t just mean the conventional ones – they don’t have to be limited to diet and exercise, or make us feel bad! They can be in any area of life – body, mind, emotions, social, environmental or spiritual. For example, what way of thinking would you like to encourage? How could you bring more spirituality into your daily life? How could you interact more affirmatively?

Choose something quick, easy and motivating that you can do regularly to benefit any area of your life, and start to do it as often as feels good.

 

2. Recognise What You Really Want

For many of us, recognising what we want is not just the first step but also the first hurdle to setting goals! We can have many blocks to knowing what we want: thinking we’re too busy, we don’t deserve to dream, we won’t achieve, others’ needs are more important than our own, and the list goes on … so when asked what we really want, we don’t actually know.

A good way to start is to mind-map the three categories of ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘having’: envisage, explore and elaborate on everything you want to ‘be’, ‘do’ and ‘have’ in your life. You could do this as mind maps, lists, images – whatever suits you! Find out how to do this along with four other activities to identify your desires on our blog post Spring Activities to Get Inspired

 

3. Take Baby-Smart Steps

Even when you’ve identified what you want, another hurdle arises: ‘How am I going to achieve it?’ Often our goals seem so big, we don’t know how we’re ever going to realise them. As infants, we learn so much so quickly not by looking to the future but by following mini feedback loops: taking step-by-step actions in the moment and adapting to the feedback we receive.

So the key with our goals is to start small and straightforward – what are the very first steps you could take? What easy actions can you do immediately? Keep each step SMART – simple, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed. Once you’ve achieved these first steps, and noted any feedback, then look ahead to the next steps… and not before!

 

4. Get To Know Your Inner Self

You may have a more pressing question than ‘what do I want’, which is ‘Who am I?’ With so much conditioning around who we think we ‘should’ be, we can be out of touch with who we really are.

What are your innate strengths, qualities, gifts and strategies? What are the archetypical challenges you face in life? What are your natural modes of interacting with others? What are the working and living environments most suitable for you?

A powerful way to uncover your uniqueness is to create and explore your personal 64keys chart. All you need is your birth details (date, time and place of birth). You can create your chart for free at www.64keys.com, and explore it in more depth with 64keys Expert Dr Kwesi through a talk, workshop or 1-1 consultation.

 

5. Dare To Be Different

I was thinking about how to summarise this section whilst out for a walk just before dark. The inspiration reached my ears then my eyes: a man mowing his front lawn in the twilight. Well why not? We often think we have to do things in the same way as ‘everybody else’. Instead it can be useful to start thinking: If you weren’t worried about what people would think of you, what would you do differently? If you weren’t concerned about what you’d think of yourself, what would you try?

Many of us are programmed to try only the things we expect to be good at. Indeed, a common question in coaching is ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ Yet this was effectively turned around in an article I read recently in Womankind magazine. It asked ‘What would you do if you knew you would fail?’ Then you wouldn’t be doing something to gain success; you’d be doing it for love, enjoyment, experience, learning or another reason that could be far more fulfilling.

 

6. Discover the Meaning Behind Your Symptoms

If you want to use the energy of change to uncover and work on your specific and individual blocks to personal and spiritual development, your symptoms are a very useful way in!

META-Health reveals how all symptoms are highly meaningful in the context of your thoughts, feelings and life experiences. For example, musculoskeletal symptoms (including aches and pains in the muscles, bones and joints) are correlated with the brain area of the Cerebral Medulla, with the overall meaning of self-devaluation.

The areas affected reveal the specific nature of self-devaluation, for example, knee issues indicate self-devaluation about moving forwards or feeling held back, while neck pain indicating feelings of intellectual or moral self-devaluation.

Rather than viewing them as unfortunate irritations, our symptoms can be our guides to where we’re blocked and what needs to change for us to grow. There are opportunities to uncover the meanings behind your symptoms on our talks and courses, or 1-1 sessions with qualified META-Health Practitioners or our students. An Awareness Consultation can be a good place to start once you’ve read some of our articles!

 

7. Get Your Light Fix

Whatever symptoms we have (and these can be mental and emotional as well as physical), daylight is of a general benefit to us. As the days lengthen and warm up, it’s a great time to get outdoors and experience the sunshine! This boosts our mood, and if combined with movement, such as walking, can improve our self-esteem by strengthening our musculoskeletal tissues, as these are Cerebral-Medulla directed.

Vitamin D helps to build our musculoskeletal system, and is synthesised from sunlight in the summer months. We also take in much of our vitamin D through our eyes, so Ophthalmologist and META-doctor Kwesi recommends getting an hour’s natural light each day, which is so much more appealing at this time of year!

 

8. Learn for Enjoyment

As Spring is when we feel most active, it’s the ideal time to embark on a new learning journey. What are you inspired to read, study, learn about or develop? What would benefit you in different ways?

It could be that you’d benefit from bringing more creativity into your life, through art, music, movement or words; more stillness through meditation, mindfulness or spiritual practices; more fun through socialising, activity or movement… what appeals to you?

There are many benefits to learning something new – from the challenges we meet, opportunities to learn more about ourselves and the confidence that grows from gaining new skills, which is a good counter to the self-devaluation most of us experience!

Many of our courses start at this time of year, offering opportunities to develop advanced skills with the benefits of gaining personal change as you’re learning!

 

9. Make Connections Meaningful

While much of the personal development journey is about going inwards and connecting with ourselves, we are also social beings living in community with others. One feature of the active eu-stress phase is that we’re more outward-looking and interactive at this time. We can make the most of this by focusing on making our connections and communication more fulfilling.

One of the skills we study on our META-Health Practitioner course is effective listening. This involves letting go of internal listening, where we’re focusing on ourselves within a communication (such as ‘what are they thinking of me?’ and ‘when can I say my bit?’), and instead practising focused and global listening, where our attention is on the other person and what they’re really communicating, both verbally and non-verbally.

Going further, we can help our connections to feel more meaningful by letting go of the expectations and habits of being stuck in the role of ‘giver’ (‘how can I help them?’) or ‘taker’ (‘what can I get from them?), instead seeking to create more equal, balanced and potentially interesting interchanges.

 

10. And Be Open to What Happens…

The last tip applies to all of the above – whatever actions you choose, it’s important to maintain flexibility and inner freedom. It can be too easy to set a goal, then immediately look for how we’re failing at it and want to give up – rather than appreciating the journey and what we’ve learned along the way.

So whatever happens, notice what you’ve learned. If you don’t achieve what you were hoping for, what positives can you find in the unexpected outcomes? What have you gained from your experience? In what ways has new experience enlivened, enlightened or encouraged the creation of more joy?

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