Create your Initiatives
What is an initiative? An initiative is an action you take with a clear purpose and passion. Typically, initiative is associated with a strong desire and a will to achieve or change an outcome. It is common to hear, for example, about passionate people starting an 'Initiative' for something that they feel would better serve the whole.
A good way to think about initiatives is to think about them in the context of creating habits. Through executing small changes in habits and collecting a series of small wins and tiny breakthroughs, supports progress to achieving your aspirations as defined in your Arena.
In his book, Atomic Habits, the author James Clear points out that the most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. He says: “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
Reflect on your initiatives and receive apples of awareness on the home view! #habitawareness
Embodiment and Inspiration
The following process is powerful and will help guide you to surface quality initiatives already present within your intentions, and to discover new ones.
- Use your own self-awareness about your values, beliefs, personality, the way you think and the way you feel to inform your initiatives.
- Consider the personal characteristics you already have or want to cultivate to fulfill your intentions ascribed to a particular Arena. Initiatives can be relevant characteristics that you want to mature or nurture in yourself to achieve your intentions.
- Think about who you need to become to fulfill your aspiration and what are the qualities of being are that you'll need to embody to fulfill your dream. If you need to be courageous for example, to fulfill your intention, then courage can be an initiative.
- Consider the skills, knowledge and experience you currently have and what skills, knowledge or experience will you need to develop to fulfill your ambitions. Then link these to your initiatives for a particular intention.
- Consider what effective behaviors will contribute to making you more capable in a particular area. Then link these to specific initiatives that will allow you to cultivate aligned and effective behaviors.
This example shows how initiatives are wide ranging and cover all domains mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Initiatives can really be anything that relate to your intention. The key is to connect to your vision, contemplate and feel what are the most important elements for you to focus on now.
What makes this tool so unique is that YOU create and discover the pathway to accomplishing your aspirations in any or all Arena’s. Each element of your Arena of Life will reflect who you are, what you want to achieve and the things that you currently value.
This experience is really an invitation for you to explore these things as well. It's not about getting it right or trying out someone else's formula. It is a process of self-discovery and Arena of Life empowers you to discover your own formula for creating the experience what you want, what's working, what needs to change and continually moving toward fulfilling the purpose of the creativity! And that is for you to discover greater and greater truths about who you are capable of becoming. This sits at the heart of the design of the Arena of Life.
Adding initiatives to intentions is like watering and fertilizing plants in your garden so they grow and fruit.
Initiative Examples
What's next? A big congrats and then Reflect on your Initiatives!
Once you've successfully created an initiative, the next step is to reflect, but first, celebrate! A big congrats for creating your vision for this Arena and providing both clear intentions and actionable initiatives. This is such a huge accomplishment!
Once you have fully designed an Arena, and added initiatives, you are ready to start the reflection process. Reflecting is how you track your journey and watch your Arena come to life. For detailed steps on the reflection process, click here. Or, start now by double-tapping any initiative.