Morning Affirmations

I try to journal every morning, and by “journal”, I mean that, in keeping with Julie Cameron’s direction in The Artist’s Way, I write three pages of long-hand, stream-of-consciousness, brain dump into a 99-cent (sometimes half that at Back-To-School sales) composition book.  On good writing days, I am journaling at my writing desk with my morning coffee before ever setting foot into the office or even looking at the computer from the doorway. And at the end of my 3-page (or more if there’s a lot going on) daily entry, I choose one or two affirmations to write out, five times each.

My primary affirmation, one that I’m really trying to fully incorporate into my on-going inner dialogue is:

I act on my intentions.

I have lots of ideas, lots of things I would like to do, but I am not skilled at turning ideas into plans and then plans into goals. The bigger things I really want to do get smothered under all the little day-to-day things that I have to do just to make a life. Eating. Grooming. Cleaning. Working. Interacting with human and canine housemates. Unwinding at the end of the day. Without intending, the days just all seem to drift away, not unhappily, but unremarkably, and with no concrete representation of their passing.

I set up this blog over a year ago, with the intention of blogging a book from it. And since then, I’ve thought about it a lot. Thought, considered, internally composed, made chapter lists and sample outlines, and pretty much everything but actually writing blog posts here. But today, when I have less writing time than I normally do due to morning meetings, I have come into the office with the express intent of really getting started here. After mere months and hundreds of repetitions of this affirmation, it seems to have finally taken hold.