Day 5: Map Out Priority Intentions

Besides the values you listed in Week One, you also listed your top 4 - 8 priorities for daily action - the activities, good deeds, responsibilities, people, and disciplines that matter most to you right now. Today you will use the essential intentions you wrote yesterday as inspiration to make a Mini-Map for just one of your priorities, and a list of ideas that will help you to write intentions for that priority.

• Get out your Base Map, and locate one priority that connects to a value that you defined and wrote an intention for yesterday. (I chose Home, which connects to my value of Simplicity.)

• 
  On a plain piece of paper, start a Mini-Map with this one priority in the center.

• Looking at your Base Map, follow the connecting lines to all the other values (and other priorities) that relate to this one priority, and add them to the Mini-Map.

• Have a little chat with yourself in your journal, or just make a list of the values (and other priorities) that lead you to action for this one priority. My list looks like this:

Home:

1.     Simplicity - lifestyle, simple and ecological.

2.     Earthcare - grow food, forge a connection to the earth.

3.     Love - Friends and Family - create safe, calm sanctuary.

4.     Integrity - maintain my property with honor

• If you can manage it, write an intention, or a series of intentions, for this one priority that speaks to your core values, and reminds you of your deepest, most essential, most passionate reasons for living. Or, if that's too complicated, write an intention for ONE ASPECT of your priority. Write your intentions in present tense, using the action + deepest reason model. Example:

"I intend to care for my home and my little piece of earth with integrity, maintaining my property with honor, and creating a home that is a peaceful and well-ordered sanctuary for those I love.

I intend to grow plenty of food for ourselves and to share, because home-grown food is a blessing for my family and a balm to the planet, and working the soil keeps me connected.

I intend to manage my home with simplicity, using only my share of the earth’s resources, because each person and being in the world, and future generations, and the earth itself, deserves to live with basic needs met."

• Extra effort: Over the next weeks and months, write intentions for each of your top priorities. Take it slow. If you want, you can print these out and put them into your Map Book.

Next Week Schedule, Step 1: 

Thursday- Adjust your Priority Grid for the month: Check off what you have completed, add new items you have thought of, and move anything down lower that no longer fits.