Unity Centers of the Conch Republic has scheduled it’s 2010 Annual Meeting for Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 12pm.  Immediately following the service there will be a potluck lunch (please see/speak with Gioia & Cameron as they are coordinating the food).

This is a very important meeting, and one you will NOT want to miss. Change is on the horizon for our little community and there are decisions to be made. Now, more than ever, we are being called to a higher involvement, greater commitment, increased giving and a more conscious participation.  These actions, taken by each and every member of this spiritual community, shall directly. and macro-proportionately, determine the manner by which we realize the continuity of our spiritual community.  It is our individual and collective responsibility — that is, our ABILITY TO RESPOND — that will be the decisive and determining factor as to the future of this Center.

Remember my lessons about the “80/20 Theory?”   To refresh your memory,  80% of a given group will support 20% of the group’s needs, and 20% of a given group will support 80% of the group’s needs. Another way of putting it is that 80% of the group only does 20% of the work while 20% of a group does 80% of the work.  What’s more is that statistically (as well as experentially), the ones who do the least are the ones who are most vocal about their expectations.

The time is NOW for a more equitable proffer of giving and service. In fact, the survival of any organization is contingent upon this equity, and the sustainability of our spiritual community is predicated upon this call to action, giving and service.  Are you ready?

Start making phone calls, comment on this blog entry, talk to each other, get to the bottom of things, muster your resources, and call upon your spiritual principles.  This is YOUR community!

by Elizabeth Landau, CNN

A new decade is about to start, and you may be tempted to set a copious list of resolutions for yourself in order to broadly “make life better.”

You may be thinking that you’ll jump in on January 1 to reform everything from diet to relationships to personality.

That, experts say, is the wrong approach. It’s great to want to make changes, but in order to actually accomplish your goals, they say, it’s important to be realistic, specific, and accountable.

Here are 10 things you can do to help yourself stay in a mindset to make positive changes in the coming year:

1. Set smaller goals with smaller steps

Gradual small steps motivate people toward larger change, said Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, professor of psychology at Yale University and author of the new book “The Power of Women.”

If you want to lose weight, for example, change small aspects of your eating pattern. Resolve to have a salad tomorrow for lunch, and then do that for a week.

Write down the steps you want to take in a datebook to make it concrete, and reward yourself for making the individual changes, she said.

Let’s say you want to work on being more optimistic this year. Nolen-Hoeksema recommends imagining what you would be like if you were optimistic. Imagine yourself going through a day at work if you were optimistic and confident, then write that down in great detail.

Now, you have specific aspects of that ideal of optimism to work toward. Pick one thing that the optimistic you is doing that you’re not, and start working in that direction, she said.

2. Frame your goals positively

Despite the proven health risks of certain habits, such as smoking, thinking about a habit in the negative will not help you nix it. Studies have shown that it’s hard to get motivated about avoiding cancer, but easier to think about smelling better and saving money as reasons to quit smoking, Nolen-Hoeksema said.

So, if you want to quit doing something, think about the positive aspects of not doing it. And make sure you reward yourself for sticking to the plan along the way.

3. Look at the pros and cons

If you’re on the fence about whether you should make a change this year, make a list of the benefits and costs, said Dr. Nadine Kaslow, professor of psychiatry at Emory University.

Pay attention to what’s driving you, she said. Sometimes it’s pain that motivates people to change, or a new phase of life, or new information, or a possible promotion.

“It helps to get clear about what you want to change and why you want to change it,” she said.

4. Get a resolutions buddy

Knowing that someone else is working toward similar goals, or is supporting you in your endeavors, helps to keep motivation up. Having a new year’s resolution buddy who’s keeping track of your progress helps keep you accountable for what you’ve done.

At the end of every year, Kaslow and her friend review all of their goals from the prior year, examining what the obstacles were to change and then developing new goals for the next year.

Planning for goals with someone can guide you in the path towards change, even if you don’t don’t accomplish everything in a single year, she said.

5. Be specific

It’s easy to get discouraged by a broad goal like “I’m going to improve my marriage,” Nolen-Hoeksema said. Figure out exactly what it is that’s not working for you, and then formulate a strategy for solving individual problems.

In the marriage example, it’s important to get realistic about what it is about your marriage that needs improvement. Then, spend some time keeping a diary and tracking what’s going right and what’s not, and come up with one thing you can do per week that would help the situation.

The process of assessing the small actions you can take in the immediate future, and savoring the positive effects, can take a lot of pressure off and help you achieve larger goals, she said.

6. Know thyself

The start of the year is as good a time as any to take inventory of yourself. What are your passions? What do you want to be doing better? Take the time think about who you are and how you want life to be, said Craig Levine, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco, California.

Real change happens because you yourself want it, not because others want it for you, experts say.

“If it’s something that doesn’t connect to you and truly relate to you, just because someone says you should do something, if it doesn’t resonate with you, it’s not going to be as helpful as something that truly fits you,” Levine said.

7. Examine deeper issues

Sometimes there are problems that need to be addressed before people can move forward with the change they want.

In some cases there are psychological impediments to making changes, Levine said. For example, some people fear failure so much that they unknowingly sabotage themselves. Self-esteem may also play a role — some people don’t feel they’re worthy of being taken care of, he said.

If you think that there are deeper issues preventing you from moving forward in your life in some way, consult a mental healthprofessional.

8. Don’t be overanxious

Having a long list of lofty resolutions can create anxiety, so Nolen-Hoeksema recommends choosing anywhere between three and five overarching things to change.

For Kaslow, the word “resolution” connotes a “pass-fail” ultimatum, so she prefers using the word “goal.”

Writing down your goals and how you plan to achieve them is a good way to beat anxiety, Levine said.

9. Be flexible

Although you should be specific about what you want to do, sometimes it helps to broaden your vision of what you’re trying to accomplish. For instance, if you’ve been laid off from your job in the financial sector, it may not be immediately possible to find a similar position.

But if you are on the job market, the broader goal might be to support yourself or your family, Nolen-Hoeksema said. Having a wider vision of what constitutes success can free you up to explore other options that do help with the central purpose.

“Step back and say, ‘Is there any way I can achieve that bigger goal without getting fixated on the goal I had before?’” she said.

10. Keep your eye on the ball

Changing behaviors is especially difficult when other people around you encourage habits you’re trying to kick, or if you are under stress. For instance, if you’re a recovering alcoholic and having a bad day, it might be hard to resist if someone says, “It looks like you need a drink,” Kaslow said.

Know that there’s going to be some anxiety, but be patient with yourself, Kaslow said. Take it one incident at a time, one day at a time.

“You have to deal with some negative consequences when you change, both internal and interpersonal, and environmental,” she said. “You have to sort of get help dealing with those, and weather those storms.”

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably experienced the sudden burst of motivation that comes in early January, as holiday indulgences make their way to the waistline and New Year’s resolutions force a new look at the figure we see in the mirror.

“This is the year,” so the resolution goes, “that I vow to lose ten pounds and keep it off.” Other common variations include goals to get back to one’s “true” weight, to fit into a size ten, etc.

And worthy resolutions they are. Sadly, New Year’s resolutions are notoriously short-lived, if not completely forgotten by February. The trick to making resolutions work is to follow the same steps required to make any goal work, as follows:

1. Choose the Right Resolution

For all too many resolutions, failure is virtually assured at the offset because the resolutions are not made with serious intent and deliberation. The first trick is to choose the right resolution, for the right reasons.

Give some thought to what you really want and why you want it. What direct benefits do you hope to receive? Is a weight-loss resolution meant to improve your self-esteem? Attractiveness? Vitality? Longevity? Identifying the “why” helps you avoid setting goals for the wrong reasons.

Next, decide how difficult to make your resolution. Aiming high generally makes people try harder. Optimal performance comes from goals that are difficult, but not so difficult that we don’t believe they can be accomplished.

Finally, be specific about your resolution and make it official. Being specific means phrasing the goal in words that make it obvious whether or not the goal has been completed, by a specific date. A resolution “to lose 15 pounds by April 30th” is much more effective than the ambiguously phrased goal “to lose weight.”

Once you’ve decided on the wording, formally commit. At a minimum, write the goal down on paper, enter it into your online journal, or even make a comment on this article and check back every month to see it online. For even more commitment, look yourself in the mirror and state the goal out loud. This may sound corny, but it works. The important thing to remember that a resolution is fundamentally a commitment to yourself. Make the commitment formal. The more ceremonious, the better.

2. Create a Plan

Most resolutions fail because people stop once they’ve made the resolution. It is crucial to harness New Year’s temporary motivation into something that will carry you through an extended period of required effort.

Upon clarifying the exact goal that you are setting, next create a plan for how you intend to accomplish your goal. With any reasonably good plan, you are fairly likely to make significant progress or actually accomplish your goal. Without a plan, you are very unlikely to succeed.

The key to constructing a good plan is to identify the exact steps that you will take toward accomplishing your goal, and assigning due dates to those steps. Coming up with a comprehensive list of steps is not easy for everyone. If you encounter difficulty, the solution is to get help, such as hiring a personal trainer or using this site, which helps people through the planning process by first asking people to identify all of the obstacles that stand between them and their desired goal. Once the obstacles have been identified, it is fairly easy for anybody to generate a comprehensive to-do list for accomplishing the goal.

3. Stay on Track

With a good plan in hand, making significant progress toward your goal may require very little discipline for those who live strictly by daily planners and love nothing more than checking off items on our to-do lists.

But for those of us who can use a little help with staying on top of details, the answer, once again, is to seek outside help. The idea is to find some external thing that keeps you motivated, such as a personal fitness trainer or myGoals.com’s email task reminders.

4. Remain Flexible and Keep on Going

A recent realization among goal-setting experts is the need to continually modify our approach—sometimes even changing or abandoning a goal altogether. The reason for this is that circumstances beyond our control frequently crop up at the most unexpected and inconvenient times. We can also expect our short-term and long-term priorities to change. So long as we build flexibility into our expectations, we can simply adjust things as we go.

It’s therefore best to periodically reevaluate our goals and plans, perhaps once per quarter for a year-long goal such as a New Year’s resolution. First, make certain that the goal itself still exactly reflects what you want to do. If it’s not, adjust it. Next, go through your plan and identify any portions that aren’t working well, even if it simply means giving yourself more time to complete a particular task or milestone. Keep in mind that missed due dates do not necessarily indicate a problem with your performance; it might simply mean that your plan was too aggressive, or that your environment has changed in some unexpected fashion. Either way, simply adjust your plan and continue onward.

Finally, the flip-side of setting difficult resolutions is that you must remember to acknowledge partial success. Losing 15 pounds is cause for celebration, even if your original goal was to lose 20 pounds. If you are just one step closer to your goal, then you are better off than before you began. Pat yourself on the back and keep on going.

I once read that a whopping 100 million Americans make New Year’s resolutions. That means that each year, about one-third of the U.S. population gears up for the challenging work of self-improvement. Imagine all of this effort spent on facing our own stubborn selves, who often have one or both of our feet firmly planted in the mud. To make it more difficult, our culture is efficient and task-oriented, so it’s easy to pick a resolution and treat it as another item on our list of things to do, no matter how big of a change we are seeking. And by the way, have you seen the innumerable commericals, catalogs, and magazines stocked with glossy pictures of happy people with all the latest new products, great families, slick kitchens, and cool friends? No wonder it’s hard to avoid the fast, easy images and get down to the slow business of creating lasting personal change from the inside. Self-improvement pressure is everywhere. How do we put these images aside and resolve to do something based on our own values and interests?

I thought it fitting to weigh in on the topic of resolutions during this pivotal time of year between the holidays and the turn to a new decade, and I’m sure you have noticed the great deal of buzz these days about the equal importance of our body, mind and spirit for achieving good health and well-being. When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, though, do you think spirit kind of gets short shrift? When resolving to do more or less of something, we usually try to get our body and mind to comply to our wishes by mastering them through our willpower — and we keep this up regardless of our spirit, which might be lagging far behind. In the most popular of resolutions, getting back in shape, this means our body and mind were coordinated enough to get on the treadmill, but our heart was still at home on the couch. How do we get the heart and spirit to actively participate when we need it most?
Llewellyn author Richard Potter has a lot of knowledge to share on the topic of personal change. Would you think to turn to his book Authentic Spirituality to help you knock off that New Year’s resolution? Perhaps not, but maybe that is the point I am trying to make. Resolutions wouldn’t be so notorious if there wasn’t something always holding us back. It is possible that on a deep level we may not be aware of, we are emotionally and psychologically closed off and not ready to change anything. Could a little spiritual development go a long way to wake us up on every level and help create lasting personal change?

These questions lead me to the wisdom Potter shares in Authentic Spirituality. Potter takes the word “self-mastery,” a guiding concept behind resolutions, and casts it in a whole new light. To master something, he urges us to stop blindly pursuing what we think we should, ought and must do. This narrow definition relies on repressing our desires and a false sense of obligation, which can choke our spirit and set our resolutions on the course toward frustration or defeat. Instead, Potter suggests we think of mastery as having the ultimate control over what we want, need and value. Self-mastery is about being fully in charge of your desires. Potter says “mastery is not repression of feelings and impulses, but rather the ability to feel fully and yet be in control of one’s behaviors.” He relies on the wisdom of Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan to help expand the definiton of mastery:

“Mastery is power over oneself that is created by three things: an awakened heart, self-discipline, and self-control.”

Did you notice — one of these things is not like the others? You may wonder how something so seemingly abstract as awakening your heart may help you accomplish your practical New Year’s goals. When it comes down to it, though, it becomes obvious — the popular self-help notions of intention, realization, manifestation and attraction of what you want in life are all the work of a heart that is radically open to new possibilities. As Potter says, “An awakened heart is the key to all of the mysteries and depths of existence.” Opening the heart means opening to the possibilities of life in its fullness. You are far more likely to encounter new possibilities in life when you are truly open to experiencing them.

While there is no standard way to open the heart, Potter leads us through a typical progression based on his knowledge of spiritual development. Turn to Authentic Spirituality for a fuller explanation of each of these stages, and in the meantime, clear a space in your own heart and spirit as a fertile ground where anything possible may take root and arise.

1. Find a safe place to heal

The first thing needed by all seekers is to be seen. Whether we are talking about a spiritual guide or other members of a group of like-minded individuals, someone must see the person for the unique and beautiful spark of consciousness that he or she is and somehow reflect that beauty back upon the individual.

Once an individual feels seen and accepted by a spiritual mentor, spiritual group, a lover or a therapist, a safety zone is created. Within this zone of safety, a numinous atmosphere exists. If this atmosphere is honored, the heart of even the most wounded person can be gently opened over time.

2. Take charge of the process

With a safe place to grow, the heart can be guided through a series of experiences designed to strengthen and expand it. These experiences are generally of two sorts. First, spiritual practices can be used as an exercise program for the heart. Meditations on themes that expand or deepen the loving nature can be incorporated into daily spiritual practice. Breathing techniques that visualize the breath working with the heart can also be used (see chapter 12 on breath). Possibly the most effective meditation technique, sound, can be used to work with the vibratory aspect of the heart chakra (see chapter 13 on sound). All of these techniques will have a profound effect on the heart over time, if made a part of daily spiritual practice.

The second and most important factor is the conscious expansion of love, compassion and empathy in everyday life through the use of will. Meditative practices are essential to prepare the heart and the will, but the real work never happens simply by magic. Spiritual practices and techniques are not enough. We must, as human beings, exert our will in order to change.

3. Meet the fullness of life

As the heart opens, we begin to feel more. We do not just feel more emotion. As a matter of fact, sometimes as the heart grows bigger it is able to encompass more emotion, and this has a reverse effect; we feel less overwhelmed by our personal emotions. It might be more accurate to say that we become more aware or more conscious. Without the barriers to awareness that are set up when we block feeling, much more of life becomes available to us. The opening of the heart may be described as opening to life in its fullness. An awakened heart is the key to all the mysteries and the depths of existence.

4. Open psychologically

As we have noted, the heart is awakened, or opened, both psychologically and spiritually. Psychological awakening involves healing of early wounds and freeing up a full range of emotional responsiveness. Spiritual awakening involves freeing the heart to reach out beyond its boundaries to experience and encompass more of the world around it, both manifest and unmanifest. This is a process, and it unfolds over time.

You can order Authentic Spirituality from the Conch Unity bookstore here…

As we begin our celebration of the Thanksgiving season, we acknowledge and give thanks to those who were here in this country before us.  Their spirituality was reflected in everything they did, from their daily interactions with one another to their intricate rituals of song and dance. We are deeply indebted to the Native American people and we humbly acknowledge their sacrifices, grieve their losses, and honor the gifts of their heritage.

During this season we acknowledge and give thanks for the vision of the early settlers of this country, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, and the Strangers. We stand in awe of their hard work and their determination to create a better life for themselves and for future generations. May we continue to learn from their experiences.

  During this season we give thanks for the first Thanksgiving celebration and for the coming together of the Pilgrims and the Native American people.  May their first Thanksgiving always be a symbol of the gift of inclusiveness and generosity.

During this season we give thanks for the gifts of our Divine Creator, the Great Spirit of Thanksgiving Itself.  We acknowledge and give thanks for the creation of the elements of fire, water and earth which enable us to be physical beings; and the element of air which brings us the physicality of Spirit.  These elements form the foundation of physical unity of all people everywhere; and so it is in honor of these people that we offer this Native American Prayer of Thanksgiving:

Spirit of the East, we thank you!  Your blessing of air gives us breath and uplifts us.  Your gift of movement and sun reflects the beauty of the earth. As you express the Great Spirit, so we express the One.

Spirit of the West, we thank you!  Your blessing of water gives us life and refreshment.  Your gift of power and rain reflects the order of the earth.  As you express the Great Spirit, so we express the One.

Spirit of the South, we thank you!  Your blessing of sun gives us warmth and nourishment.  Your gift of light and energy reflects the livingness of the earth.  As you express the Great Spirit, we, too, express the One.

Spirit of the North, we thank you!  Your blessing of the standing people (trees) gives us shade and contentment.  Your gift of fruit and wood for our use reflects the bounty of the earth.  As you express the Great Spirit, so we are an expression of the One.

Thank You, God, for the drumbeat of the People that didn’t die.  Thank You, God, for our ancestors’ strong heartbeat that didn’t die.  Thank you for the music, the rhythms, the tastes, the wisdom and the primal spirituality that incessantly seeks to be the face of the One.

Amen.