New Beginnings: The July Intensity Project

Welcome to July! I love new beginnings. Big ones, like the beginning of a new life, new home, new year, new decade, or new century or millennium (how lucky were we to have seen those?!). And small ones, like a new season, new month, new week, new day, even a new perspective after a short afternoon nap.

What will you make of this month? Let me suggest that you make it your month in some way. Claim it for yourself. Use it to travel a little bit further along the road toward whom you want to be.

The month of July was originally the month of Quintilis (“fifth”), but was later renamed to honor Julius Caesar who, in 46 BC, reformed the calendar to the Julian Calendar (again, the self-naming), which was converted to the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th century.

All of which brings us back to my question: What will you make of this month? How will you use the next 31 days to add some good intensity and creativity to your life, or maybe just to know where to start? How will you name this month for yourself?

Please join me on a 31-day journey of thoughts, questions, ideas, plans, and, yes, lists, to begin to answer these questions.

To start, I’m going to borrow and adapt an idea from a fantastic book on writing by Heather Sellers , Page by Page: Discover the Confidence and Passion You Need to Start Writing and Keep Writing. Sellers writes about how, at the beginning of any new project or new venture, after a brief period of exhilaration we always always face nearly debilitating resistance, and a couple of ways we experience that resistance are through comparisons with others and being overly focused on our intentions:

“You will doubt you are as good as the other people in the class/reading the book/sticking their butts up into the air. You will simultaneously feel you are significantly better than the other people. This is your ego. Shine light on it, which will quiet it down, and say: Comparing myself to others doesn’t help me learn anything. I’m going to do my best work, and focus solely on my own self for the next twenty minutes, but thanks for the input!

“You will have great intentions, and truly, when you buy this new writing book (exer-ball, ab-ercizer, diet journal, free weights, self-improvement tapes) you do imagine a whole new way of life, with you diligently working a new program. Intentions are good, but let’s not focus on them, because their evil twin is resistance. You will probably have a push-me pull-you relationship with your early writing practice. Successful writers anticipate this. They cultivate the ability to be aware of the mind without being sucked into their mind.”

Sellers suggests that writers begin their first day of their new writing life by making three lists—your ideal writing guidebook, your ideal writing class, and your best qualities as a student—and I am going to suggest you do the same, using her third list idea as our jumping off point:

In a journal, Word document, in a comment to this post, or even on the back of an envelope, list your best qualities as someone who is trying to live with intensity and creativity. Don’t limit the length of your list. Don’t censor yourself. Resist the urge to think that writing something good about yourself means you are egotistical (that is so not what this is about). Don’t be self-deprecating.

You might write that you are open to new experiences, or well-organized, or a lover of the arts. You might be willing to take emotional risks, or have a wonderful sense of humor. While you are at it, don’t limit your list based on my prompt: writing down anything positive about your personality as it is now and the choices you make and the person you are.

We will do more with this list tomorrow, but, for today, every once in awhile, take the time to remember what is on your list. I guarantee you will smile.