The most important choice you make

This experiment of morning pages is working well and I am definitely seeing the expansion of my creative consciousness when it comes to writing. This is manifest in all the class work for my Spiritual Counsellors course as well as in the ongoing writing for my first book.

It guides me to think about another one of my favourite sayings, "The most important choice you make is what you choose to make important." I heard this first from a great coach, author and wonderful human being, Michael Neill.

What would you love to be, do or have in your life, but which is on a notional 'wish' list, but has never quite made it to the 'will' list.

When I teach meditation I often hear people say, "I can't meditate, I don't have time." My answer is always the same. "If I gave you £1,000,000 for you to make time to meditate every day, would you do it?" The answer is pretty much a resounding, "YES." So we now know that time is not the issue, priority is the issue.

For me meditation is a part of my core spiritual practice. If I have a morning where I don't meditate for any reason I feel out of balance, not quite centred. I imagine some people feel like this if they don't get their morning coffee fix. For me meditation is like caffein for the soul.

This is an easy example for me. On the journey I had to take some radical action to come into integrity with the practice. I would tell people I meditated everyday, but I was really half-assing it. Sitting in the chair and allowing my mind to race, or drifting off in a long car journey, but in truth not really clearing my mind and journeying into the silence. Not making it a priority to connect with the highest part of my being. For ages every time I did meditate in a way that I really made the connection, I would always be guided that I needed to meditate more.

At this point, for some time, my inner teenager would kick-in. "I'm not doing what 'they' say." You may be familiar with this, but there is a definition of maturity:

Doing something you want to do even if your parents want you to do it too.

Eventually the calling to meditate daily became too strong to deny, I re-scheduled my day and I spent 30 days meditating for an hour every morning. That was what I felt I needed to do to really anchor it in me, to create the habit. Psychologists say that it takes around 19-21 days to create a habit, well I can be a slow learner on occasions and I really wanted to get this down, so I took a month and I sat for an hour.
Don't get me wrong, there were moments during that month when an hour seemed like an entire day. The thing I told my monkey mind was that we were sitting in the chair, we were not going to move and regardless of what story I had running I was not going to any place until the alarm bleeped after one hour.

Eventually there were days when the hour seemed like five minutes. Now I meditate for at least 20 minutes every day, depending on my schedule. When time allows I love to sit for as long as my inner wisdom wants.

If you have something on your 'wish' list and you really want it, the only way to have it manifest is to move it to the 'will' list. Once on the 'will' list, you can prioritise it, decide on the actions you can take to achieve it, and move into those actions.

No amount of sitting in meditation at the bottom of a mountain will get you to the top.

I invite you to make those important choices today, there is something calling to express through you that only you can bring to the world. Your unique gifts and talents are required by the universe, if not then you wouldn't be here. So leap, the chasm is not as wide as you think.

Today I boldly choose my priorities. I take the next natural action toward achieving my dreams. I trust that the process of life fully supports and guides me as I express my uniqueness in the world.