of thinking helps you to move beyond your current emotional state and challenging life situation. Then you’ll get specific about what type of person you want to become, what character traits you want to develop, and what new focus you want for your life.
As you begin to set specific intentions for this time in your life, you’ll start to notice a greater sense of control and agency despite being in the middle of difficult and uncertain circumstances. Although what we’re doing is essentially setting goals for ourselves, it’s different than making New Year’s resolutions, which is important because hardly any of us keep those! This intention-setting work is deeper; it’s soul work. We’re creating a lifeline to your future self, shifting your perspective about what this time of suffering is all about, and creating new meaning and purpose for it. You’re setting yourself up to be more than you could have been had this pain not happened. As you write, dream big and dig deep!
WRITING PROMPTS
Expectations and Harvests
•What are you expecting during this dark season? For yourself, for others, for how it all turns out?
•What harvest do you really want?
•What expectation or intention would lead to the harvest you desire?
Everything Is Possible
Let’s play for a few minutes. Imagine that you were visited by an all-powerful and loving being who silently presented you with a beautiful gift wrapped in gold foil, just big enough to fit in the palm of your hand. The being disappears as soon as it hands you the gift. Warm light seems to emanate from the small package. You open the gift carefully and inside, wrapped in layers of golden tissue paper, is a little slip of paper. On the slip of paper written in gold ink is the following message: “From now on, there are no more limitations in your life. Everything is possible for you.”
What would this message mean for you? What would you allow yourself to believe, to expect, to hope for that you haven’t been allowing yourself? What limitations would end? What is the first thing you would do? What’s the second thing?
Setting Your Intention to Bloom
While you are still in the germinating seed state, this is the perfect time to set your focus and intention to be in full bloom. In order to set the intention to bloom, you need to first define what blooming in the dark specifically means to you. Take a good twenty minutes to respond to the following prompts:
•In a few sentences, describe your darkness (i.e., your pain, suffering, loss).
•What does blooming in the dark mean to you?
•Who do you want to be at the end of all this?
•If you were to become that fully bloomed person, what would that look like? In other words, how would you or I know that you had bloomed in the dark?
•If we thought of the petals of your bloom as character traits, what would your petals be?
•When I was in the dark, I used to say, “I didn’t ask for this hell, but you better believe that if I have to go through it, I’m going to come out better on the other side.” What’s your intention statement?
Your Blooming Word
For the last few years, instead of making New Year’s resolutions, I have chosen a word for the year. The word represents my theme for the year, who I want to be, what I want to attract into my life, what I want my life to be about for the next 365 days. It’s been remarkably effective and a lot of fun. It’s a simple way to set an intention for the year. My goals then revolve around achieving this word. One year, my word was Joy, and I focused my daily efforts on creating and cultivating joy in my life. It was one of the most joyful years I’ve ever had.
Instead of choosing a word for the year, I invite you to choose a word for your blooming process. If you were to choose one word to represent what you want your blooming process to be all about, what word would you choose? Try brainstorming a long list of words and then choose the one that resonates best.
To help you choose your word, consider these questions:
•Who do you want to be when this is all over?
•What do you want to attract in your life?
•What do you want to embody during this time?
•What would be the greatest treasure or ideal harvest as a result of this time in the dark?
•What word inspires you?
Once you’ve chosen your blooming word, answer the following questions.
•If you were to live this word daily, how would your life be different one year from now?
•What are three habits that will help you to live out this word?
My Blooming Home Run Story
In this final prompt, write the story you want to be able to tell about yourself and your life once this dark season is over. In other words, write your home run blooming year.
Date your page one year from now. Now, describe in detail what happened, how you feel, what you accomplished, what you manifested, what types of thoughts you had, what type of person you have become, and so on. Write your best-case scenario year for blooming—write BIG! Be sure to write in the Present Tense (e.g., I have, I am, I feel, and so on).
BLOOMING CHECK-IN
1.What came up for you as you completed your writing prompts in this chapter? You might have noticed certain thoughts, emotions, themes, insights, or even resistance and doubt. Did anything surprise you?
2.In what ways did you grow this week, even just a little bit? Did you make any changes? What are you proud of?
3.How will you continue to apply this blooming principle in your life?
BLOOMING TIP
Congratulations on working your way through the first principle of blooming in the dark! Like our beliefs, our written words (which are just our beliefs and intentions translated onto the page) have creative power. To keep yourself moving in the direction of your intentions, it’s important to continually remind yourself of your intentions. Take a moment now to think about the best way to do this for yourself. For example, you might read over your journal entries from this chapter once a week. Or you might write a blooming intention note to yourself and post it on your bathroom mirror or put it in your wallet where you’ll see it every day.
If you’re finding it hard to believe this new way of thinking about your pain and suffering, that’s okay. For some of us, the perspective shift comes quickly; for others, we need more time to marinate in it and to make it our own. If you’re finding yourself struggling with the idea of you blooming, try setting a timer for ten minutes. During those ten minutes, allow yourself to suspend your current reality and let your mind play with these ideas. Think about it like dipping one toe at a time into this new perspective. You don’t need to be fully immersed yet. The important part is that you start dipping in and allowing your mind the opportunity to think about your situation from another perspective. We can’t experience something until we’ve brought it into our realm of possibilities, and we do this by allowing ourselves to first believe that something is possible. After the ten minutes is up, you can go back to your former perspective. Every day, you might set the timer for a little longer, write a little more and a little deeper, and allow yourself to play with your blooming possibilities.
Creating a blooming vision and intention for yourself not only begins to build your hope, but it also provides an important container for the grief work that comes next.