25. Monthly Mantras
September 5, 2023
I’m taking a diversion from the building-a-community-around-you theme of the past two essays to share a newly growing idea. I’m considering this as a potential tool in the Elders-in-Training (EIT) toolkit. The idea is to develop a monthly mantra to focus your energy and attention each month. You may have heard of mantras – it is a word or sound repeated to aid concentration. Sometimes it is used in mediation, it can also be used when you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. Or you can remind yourself of it by putting cues in your life – when I was in college, one of my advisors suggested putting a small heart sticker on your watch, so you’d see it every time you looked for the time. The intent of mantras is to replace whatever message you have playing in your head with something that pulls you towards your goals. You can choose a mantra like “one day at a time” or “I’m stronger than I think” or “I’ll figure it out – I always do.” This idea is to choose a focus that leads your life into what you want it to be in a steady, deliberate way. Knowing that we can’t change our lives entirely with a snap, but we can take one step.
To implement this, I’m going to incorporate it into my monthly review. For the past few years, I have taken time at the start and end of every month to reflect on what the past month was full of, what it was lacking, what I was happy about or proud of, and what I wished had gone differently. Then, I look at whatever plans are in place for the coming month and think about what I can add to it to make it a good month. What do I want more of? How can I incorporate that “thing-I-want-more-of” in the coming month? I’ve always been a planner, so this habit comes rather easily for me. I found a weekly calendar journal that is set up for this type of monthly review and reflection. There are pages space between each month’s calendar to reflect and plan. I do not necessarily use the questions they offer, but I do use the space to capture the reflections and plans that are on my mind. Letting go of what does not serve me, keeping what does.
This monthly process is grounded in the idea that we are always growing, we are always changing, and that we can never be everything we want all the time. One month, maybe I do a great job at my exercise routine, but I don’t spend as much time as I’d like on my relationships. Some months maybe I stick to my budget, but I don’t keep my house tidy. We are each a work in progress. We need to pace ourselves. Work on a small number of things at a time. Decide what is best for now – for this month.
I have been doing a monthly review for several years and tbh they have gotten a little stale. I decided this month to add a new part to this ritual, which gets me to the tool that I will incorporate into EIT. I decided to add a monthly mantra. My thinking is this - we all have characteristics that we admire. Values we hold dear, even if we are not always practicing them in our daily lives. My idea is that as each new month begins, I’ll choose a new characteristic to focus on. When I started thinking about this idea this month, the characteristic that came up was generosity. I want to be a generous person, in practice and in spirit. Generous with my energy, generous with my time, generous with my patience, generous with forgiveness. This does not mean I will give beyond my means or let my well be depleted, but it means that when I have the capacity to share my resources with someone, I’ll do that. I may well have done that even if I had not chosen generosity as my monthly focus, but this way I will be sure to, and I will be aware of it. This practice will move me more towards the type of elder I want to be.
There are so many traits that we admire. If you were to choose a characteristic that you want to cultivate in yourself this month, what would it be?
