Today’s Mandala
Winter
“After the longest night,
— Dacha Avelin
tomorrow we sing up the dawn.
There is a rejoicing that,
even in the darkest time,
the sun is not vanquished.
As of tomorrow,
the days begin to get longer
as the light of day grows.
While the gentle winter sun
slowly opens its eyes,
let us all bring more light
and compassion into the world. ”
“Winter is a season
— Paul Theroux
of recovery and preparation.”
“Kindness is like snow.
— Khalil Gibran
It beautifies everything it covers.”
Today’s MotD encourages us to hunker down for contemplation about the current year ending and the new one starting. Some consider Winter Solstice to be Mother Nature’s New Year: a time for celebration and a time for intention. Our challenge becomes reviewing the past year through the eyes of kindness and compassion: rewarding the successes, determining what needs improving (without condemnation), and reminding ourselves that slow progress is still progress.
Our other challenge becomes approaching the new year with honesty and simplicity. Instead of creating all sorts of new goals and objectives, it might serve us better to pick the top 3 or maybe pick one goal for each area of our lives (health, work, play, rest, hobby, etc).
For some of us figuring out what we want can feel daunting especially if we have so many different directions we could go. A great tool for gathering, organizing, and prioritizing our thoughts and ideas is creating a mind map. From Brandi Gratis on Nulab.com she offers this posting: Mind Map Your Way to a Successful Year. Granted it was written for upcoming 2020 (oh what a year that was), the method still applies.
On Nulab they offer a mind map app however we really only need a large piece of paper and different color pens, markers, or highlighters. In the article she provides helpful prompts, categories, tips, and examples. Essentially we write down all the major areas of our lives and then write whatever thoughts or ideas or intentions we have about it.
Here’s a sample one from CNBC written by Marguerite Ward from her 2021 article “…figuring out what to do with your life”
So on this Winter Solstice 2022, we are encouraged to kindly review how these past 12 months have gone: what were our successes, what could we improve upon, and what have we learned about ourselves? Then we’re encouraged to eagerly move forward, setting intentions that support, improve upon, and simplify our lives in 2023.
“One kind word
— Japanese Proverb
can warm three winter months.”
Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
btw…started with this:
Mandala of the Day 