I Developed Compassionate Focus Through Mantra

A flexible, customized approach worked, not resolutions and hard goals

Setting intentions for my feelings changed my life.

Guilt, failure, indecisiveness, overwhelm. These things constantly stood in the way of me and my goals. Then I simplified my whole process of goal setting.

I love making plans. Maybe too much sometimes. New Year’s Eve was my favorite holiday as a kid. My cousins and I would stay up late at my aunt and uncle’s house. We’d clink glasses, write resolutions and watch the music performances on TV.

I grew up constantly making goals for myself, writing them down and whittling them down to phrases, but I started out reading my goals to family members. I started out editing myself for others’ approval and for what was societally acceptable. I was automatically limiting myself and focusing only on the outcome.

I’ve used mantras over the past decade to get me through most days: through my yoga and meditation practice, up in the morning, to sleep at night, to do the things I don’t want — but need to do. This is counterintuitive to how I grew up as a people-pleaser. Now I use mantras to allow space for my goals to grow authentically over time, to take on new meaning and to appeal only to me; not my ego but my soul.

Life has been a struggle for me for a long time.

All the simple things, like eating, sleeping and even communicating troubled me since childhood. I’ve been diagnosed with depression, migraines, endometriosis, bipolar disorder, anxiety and finally PTSD anxiety. I’ve avoided likely diagnoses of chronic pain, respiratory and digestive disorders, partially because of the inaccuracy of some of my former diagnoses.

None of these issues are new, I’ve learned to live with them since childhood. I’ve stopped worrying about getting diagnoses. I’ve always had issues. Insomnia is one of the biggest, stemming back to the need to wake-up early for pre-school after going to sleep late at night.

I went the medical route and learned what I could from there, but for me, something more needed to happen. I needed to make an indent in my own soul. I had to bring intentionality and mindfulness to living my life one step at a time. Trying to overcome everything at once, only made things worse.

I bio-hacked before it was a term. My health was falling apart and I was only 19 years old. I was dismissed, dictated to and hurt by many doctors and used medicines my body didn’t process and it made my pain worse. I followed my intuition and changed my nutrition, relationships, relationship with myself and my way of relating to stress.

I’d create or focus on a mantra each year. It’d be easy and top-of-mind for me all day, every day. If I felt I’d moved on from one before the year was over…I felt it deeply and would intuitively dive back in, pull back the floral veil and find another set of words to grab hold of. Words are powerful.

Pictures may speak a thousand words, but a few words, phrased perfectly can also describe or represent a complex concept or make a goal more tangible and actionable.

I used these mantras in my internet passwords and to start each of my journals every day. I immersed myself in the feelings of my goal, rather than the outcome. I first came to this when working through my intuition, when feeling bombarded by psychic stimulation.

The joys of being a highly sensitive empath.

Because these are old I’ll let you in on my first couple:

I am nourished in the divine: I told myself this every day to stop fearing my spiritual sensitivities. I came to this by addressing the fear first. “I’m afraid of supernatural, spiritual feelings and I get them too regularly. I feel like these things are making it hard for me to live a “normal” life. No one relates to this, I have no one to talk to this about.”

I ended up working as an intuitive, connecting people to their intuitive inner knowing. Then I moved on to work as a spiritual teacher, occasionally offering intuitive offerings because I don’t prefer to be connected to that all the time.

I immersed myself in the dreaming community via Connie Kaplan’s Turtle Dreamers and journaled through intuition development activities. I questioned everything, because that is my personality and came to a place of comfort.

I found a way to embrace my strengths without inauthentically forcing myself into something I felt uncomfortable about. I slowly gave myself permission to learn how to control this, explore it within myself and then quietly offer it to a few clients.

I am nourished in the divine

Another was “fierce me”: I moved back to my hometown as a single mom and needed to fight with my family for my children’s wellbeing. It wasn’t easy for me to do this so I needed a mantra. My fears were that I was a pushover, that I was letting my family damage my children just because I didn’t know how to fight back.

I’d lived the first 4 years of parenting in a bubble. I didn’t know how to live within the context of my childhood and embrace the many powerful changes I’d made as a person. I didn’t know how to show my family that I was more than educated and certain about how I wanted to protect my children and what I knew about their needs.

I didn’t even know how to tell them I wasn’t Christian anymore (even though there’d been years of this being a fact). My children came into my family dynamic with an innocence that made everything feel raw to me. I could shield myself from the pain and had for years but I didn’t want to just avoid my family.

I knew they cared about me and more-so my children, so I committed myself to appreciate that, despite the fights and disapproval they had of me. I wanted to teach my children to be authentic and appreciate family despite differences. I had to commit to fully representing myself and while stepping back a bit, I did.

I then fully allowed myself to appreciate the poetic depth of many mantras from the Sikh holy book the Guru Granth Sahib. Years earlier (4 to be exact) I named my oldest child Adi Shakti because that mantra got me through my pregnancy. Its focus is on the force of human creation.

Because the first two trimesters of my pregnancy were difficult, I’d just moved across the country (again) and I was having a homebirth I needed this focus. I needed something more than logic to get me into the mindset that I could give birth to another being.

The mantra and chant So Purkh, got me through the period before I moved back to my hometown, due to a toxic relationship with my children's’ father. This is a poem, chanted for pure love, from the idea of spirituality/God.

All the way to my current mantra

I took a spiritual name years ago when I adopted the Sikh religion, but I half-assed it only using a portion of the name. Many of my writing credits and my past business was in this rebellious, conflicted acceptance of my spiritual name. Finally last year I fully accepted it. Typing and saying my name every day is a source of motivation and authenticity to me.

Mera Baid means my body, but with context, it is a part of a poetic rendering that my source of healing is within me, specifically from the divinity within me, the source of my creation. (I love synchronicity, don’t you?)This is massively powerful to me with my background and beliefs. The reason my life is what it is because I lived in that way when it was a true rebellious act to find my own source of healing because no one supported me in it and I was young enough to really suffer from so much disapproval.

I was a trailblazer and everyone in my family thought I was crazy. It was lonely, but now I have younger (and older) family members following in my path. This was another case of knowing something within myself but allowing myself to be voted out of my own decision process.

My fear was that I would be alone or ostracized in my natural, holistic, hippie, woo-woo approach. Even though I’d found clients and friends who were happy to learn from, explore with or teach me. I was still focused on mainstream acceptance, of me, because of one concept I adopted in my life.

Why?

I’d thought the only way to be considered truly responsible was to do things the way the mainstream suggests you must, even though I’d rebelled from that for so many years. I find myself going leaps forward, then steps back, to leap forward again. This is my process, this is me confirming my intentions within myself.

I bio-hacked before it was a term. My health was falling apart and I was only 19 years old.

Now, I’m a year past recovering from quitting my passions and taking a conventional approach to life. I’d lived on the edge for years and finally, it felt too hard, so I did the respectable thing, joining the 6 am–6 pm workforce. I eventually realized how unhealthy I end up without following my own authentic inner knowledge of how to heal myself, then follow up with professionals out of resonance, not desperation.

I started with my own one-line mantras and they led me deep within myself. They led me to some great teachers and resources. After a while of working with my own mantras, I found The Desire Map by Danielle Laporte. This book helps you connect to the feelings that motivate you towards your goal. The core of all goals is desire; is a feeling we’re searching for.

This is how I make plans when I need a transformation or just want a very intentional routine for myself. I highly recommend it, though I also recommend accountability through this journey. I didn’t actually read the book until I connected with other mappers.

I started a Desire Map book club when it first came out in my area (there were many in different areas). The community around this kind of transformation is powerful. I highly recommend the process of thinking about what is holding you back from what you want to do.

Spend several minutes (or hours) with this idea. Write down every possible thing you can think of (even if it’s inaccurate). Then give yourself permission to break this barrier, first with a solution to solve each problem, then a phrase or mantra to solidify the belief that it can be solved.

What would your teacher, God, future self, or mentor tell you to break out of the walls surrounding you? Tell yourself that every day. Allow it to evolve. You’ll know when it has become the perfect mantra for you. If you’re feeling uncertain, keep working on it or get the help of a coach or teacher.

Post your mantra ideas or feelings you’d like to focus on this year in the comments. I also have a list of mantras that work for many situations, sign up below to get the list and audios.