Bring Intentionality to Sheltering in Place

May 14, 2020

Bring Intentionality to Sheltering in Place

Are you getting used to this new way of life? A life lived online, any real social life dwindled to a tiny trickle, and getting very up close and personal with your four walls, and those few who share these walls with you? Maybe it’s even starting to feel normal. 

Crisis? What crisis, this is just how we live now!

Humans are pretty adaptable, and yet this is still a phenomenal time on the earth.

And the on-going task is to stay awake.

The same things that put you to sleep before apply NOW - lulling distractions, mindlessness, going numb and disconnected from your inner more authentic self, and how that connection is there to bring us closer to spirit, and a more universal perspective on the world. 

Intentionality is a powerful tool during these times to address the above.  An intention keeps you focused. It helps mark a clear choice, and hence can awaken and harness inner resources towards a positive outcome. 

What is this pandemic time highlighting for you? What’s getting your attention? What needs your attention?

One way or another, we WILL all pass through this time. There’s such a draw to just press the pause button and wait for it to be over. But we’re probably not ever going back to what was. An event like this is meant to be life-altering. And it calls for risk-taking when our more primitive self is screaming, “Just stay safe.”

So often we long for change and yet tenaciously cling to the familiar – but we can’t have both.

Now we’re being thrust into change – not by choice – but we do have a choice as to how we respond. Crisis always holds an invitation to become more conscious. So, what is the invitation for you in this crisis? Once you get clear on that, bring the powerful tool of intentionality to it. 

Quite a few years ago, I wrote an in-depth article about how to use intention as a tool for change. It’s on the resource page of my website.

Let me know how it lands for you.

Next entry: Reflecting on the Nature of Change

Previous entry: Resist the Draw to Inertia

“I had signed up for the workshop with a vague idea of validating whether or not beekeeping was something I wanted to get back into, so wanted the real experience and ‘instruction’ around hive life.  But I also wanted to spend time in the imaginative life of beekeeping – so the poetry, and your story of bees as a significant part of your healing journey was really important.  Sensing into your relationship with them - the calm, the respect, the love – was an important part of witnessing how a relationship with bees teaches those very things.  I loved how the different activities dove-tailed so well into one another.  The ‘energy meditation’ of approaching the hive taught me well about respect for boundaries, and the deep purposefulness of their lives.  We can co-exist beautifully as long as I ‘let them bee.’ “

Jean Ogilvie Leadership Development Facilitator and Coach