What do you want to create, experience, or accomplish this new year? We’ve seen how New Year’s resolutions generally fall by the wayside within a couple weeks or months. In lieu of unmet resolutions, we’d like to share something more effective than “resolutions”: manifestations! One of our favorite and bliss-inducing pathways to manifestation occurs along the road of self-care. The best part is you don’t have to be a self-care enthusiast to join along. The very same tools we’re sharing in relation to self-care can be applied to any area of life where you’d like to create a big magic.
From Hard Work to Easy Play
The keys to accelerating easy manifestation require practices that nurture a sense of trust, reliability, and kindness. There are certainly many pathways to manifestation, like the prevalent and tired stories we learned from our parents or the surrounding culture that “you have to work hard to get what you want” or “I will sleep when I die” or the “no pain, no gain” mentality. Sure, we succeeded, but we were also exhausted and sometimes hurt. There has to be another way. We wanted a new choice, and that’s when we discovered we can also succeed in creating more of what we want with “easy play.”
We now regularly choose the road less traveled, and it’s filled with ease and flow! We continue to be challenged, and life happens, but we recommit to easy play by getting curious and favoring questions like, “How can this be easier and simpler, and have less moving parts?” And it’s working! Would you be willing to let go of old belief systems that no longer work or serve your best interest? We invite you to let go of the push-pull friction of hard work and absorb from our experience a lifestyle of easy play.
“The most important question you’ll ever answer in your life is this: Is this a friendly universe?” —Albert Einstein
The Friendly Clause
Try this easy play approach right now. Choose an intention and then add the “friendly clause” to your declaration, such as “I commit to experiencing (healing, abundance, love, etc.) in friendly and gentle ways.” By adding the friendly clause, you establish the environment where your intentions can be lived into. True, we can learn from trial and tribulation, attempting to move heaven and earth—or we can establish a friendly clause as we create. Notice the difference in your body, your breath, and how you are feeling as you combine your intention with the friendly clause. It is our commitment to give exquisite loving attention to ourselves in ways that are simple, easy, and fun.
Building Trust
While the practice of friendliness enhances our joy factor, dedication and commitment are what create long-term palpable changes. We commit to making self-care a daily practice. Every time we practice, we build a track record of trust. As a result, we then get to amplify out into the world that we can trust and rely on ourselves to do the things we say we’re going to do. For both of us, this is relieving and rewarding. We find that the same feelings of trust and reliability we are nurturing within ourselves are then carried through into all our relationships. We become trustworthy, trusting, and reliable. We also build our inner and outer confidence (derived from the Latin con- and fidere, meaning “with trust”).
It’s been our experience that trust is not something that happens automatically in relationships, even in our relationship with our self. Rather, trust is something that must be earned and cultivated over time. And we realize building self-reliance is a personal journey for each of us. Do you have a trustworthy practice you can rely on to bring happiness, relief, joy? What is the simplest and most pleasurable action step you can take toward trusting yourself? Maybe you add the bonus feature of smiling to yourself, or affirming, “I choose to be kind to me.”
Practice Makes Predictable
At first, the two of us would have to schedule self-care time. Now it is infused as an inherent part of our day. Just like trust, self-care is not an automatic event. It is earned with a track record of practice. Sometimes it’s a solo thing and sometimes it’s in the company of friends and family. Self-care doesn’t have to be a big production or an organized event. It can be a walk around the block after work or as simple as three conscious breaths while waiting at a stop sign.
Everyday Self-Care
We are constantly looking for ways we can include self-care in our lives, and ultimately have forged a self-care lifestyle. We ask ourselves, “How can self-care fit into wherever we are, with whomever we are with, and with whatever it is we are doing?” Below are some of the regular ways we infuse self-care into our regular daily routines. We hope they provide inspiration for you to find space where you might include your own signature self-care moves.
Brushing Your Teeth Self-Care
Heath has a history of chronic ankle instability, so he practices one-legged squats while he’s brushing his teeth. Then, when he’s flossing, he adds some tai chi walk. It’s a medical qigong move that builds strength and power from the ankles to low back. Meanwhile, Nicole offers herself gentle calf stretches to help wake up and get her body ready for the day.
Driving or Riding Home Self-Care
On the way home after sharing bodywork, you can often find Heath with one hand under his hamstring, stretching his wrist flexors and wrist extensors. If you’d like to try right now, orient your fingers lateral or posterior, and place your palm down (extensors) and then up (flexors) under your leg for a minute or two on each side.
Doing Dishes Self-Care
In our kitchen, we have a couple sets of “foot wakers” and “foot savers,” which are basically half-cut spheres we can stand on when cooking or doing dishes. This is especially beneficial for releasing the plantar fascia and stimulating foot reflexology points. You could also use a tennis or golf ball or something similar, but be careful not to slip.
Invest in Simply Choosing
Nelson Mandela said, “Change one thing and you change everything.” Is there one self-care move you can add as you do the dishes, brush your teeth, or drive home from work? Imagine one simple, easy, and pleasurable self-care move you can offer yourself while watching TV, waiting on the pickup or drop-off line at school, between clients, or throughout your sessions. It’s been our experience that you don’t have to do big things to have big impact. One of our teachers said, “The simple is sacred,” and we notice it is the simple things done regularly that have the longest lasting and most profound impact.
Commitment is the initial step toward experiencing big impact, but success is more often the result of hundreds and even thousands of recommitments. Our strong recommendation is that when it inevitably becomes time to recommit, do so without self-criticism. That is, don’t waste your energy on wondering “when will I learn,” or “why do I keep doing this or forgetting that?” Negative reinforcement and punishment will not help you learn or grow, and you wind up wasting one of your most precious resources: your attention. Instead, invest in simply choosing again. Yes, it’s that easy. The secret formula to manifestation is to recommit without criticism. And with that being said, we commit to a New Year full of friendly, easy, and loving choices for ourselves, for you, and for all those we touch! Happy New Year!