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May 09, 2006

Another great weekend- at school

I'm just settling in from a really fantastic weekend at University of Santa Monica where I've been studying applied spiritual psychology this year. The highlights for me this weekend were getting revved up about the second year of the program starting next fall, the fact that I find myself laughing more than in any other classroom (I've taken courses on humor that didn't come close) and best of all this incredible sense of community and connection to my class of 250-some dedicated people. Many of the folks I meet in our classroom exercises have had incredibly rich careers in all different walks of life, and are now so thrilled to be turning towards counseling.

One assignment that I've found so much value in this year is the exercise of creating detailed descriptions of the vision I have for my life, broken up into separate mindmaps based on each Area of Focus. So as I planned out my ideal vision of my health for instance, which included everything from an exercise plan to experiencing regular and deep sleep, I incidentally had a great opportunity to review all of the Areas of Focus/Responsiblity in my life before planning out specific next actions. It's so essential to occasionally pop up above the clouds and get a sense of how I'm doing in the main areas of my life, and USM has given me a great way to do that.

I'm now making it a part of my custom weekly review check-in to ask myself to reflect- Which area of focus has had most of my attention this week? And which one has had the least? Just looking at that often reveals to me some factors that were previously unconscious. This prompts me to wonder, what would happen if we recorded the 20,000 ft. (Area of Focus) level for every single next action step we identify and process? It would be a fair amount of work, perhaps more than it's worth, but I'll bet some interesting information would probably arise...

"What has your attention?"

Posted by Lisa at May 9, 2006 08:06 PM