Author: Amanda Viviers

10. Write a message on a mirror

One of the greatest ways that I engage in my now, is writing scriptures or quotes in places that I can see them every day.

I have written them on post-it notes and put them on the dashboard of my car. I have a blackboard in my home and I write large messages to myself on it. I have written scriptures on mirrors in my home.

What I am asking you to do is write a message to yourself, somewhere that is very visual. to remind yourself to remain in the moment this month.

Remind yourself that you are Brave, Strong, Courageous, Kind, Beautiful, Worthy of Love.

Whatever words you need to encourage you now, write them in big fat letters and remind yourself that you are loved.

Remind yourself that you are worthy of respect.

Remind yourself of your purpose.

Go do it now.

Go on.

9. Have a coffee with a pensioner.

I believe some of the saddest corridors in our communities are the retirement homes in our local area. Lounge rooms where volumes of stories and seasons of wisdom remain untold as senior citizens sit waiting to have tea with someone, anyone…

Do you know someone in their eighties or nineties?

How long has it been since you sat with them and asked questions about marriage, relationships and growing up?

One of my favourite dating books is by Elisabeth Elliot, ‘Passion and Purity’.

She wrote this book in 1984, based on letters she had written to her husband forty years earlier in the 1940’s. Years and years of maturity and lessons learnt, holding her in good stead for the advice she was to write. Notice how I am not writing a book about marriage? I have only been married for four short years, but singleness, I was single for about thirty of them and still, I have much to learn.

My challenge is to find someone older than eighty and join them in a simple cup of tea while they talk.

Let them tell you some stories while you listen.

7. Go spend time alone, somewhere in nature.

George Santayana said, “The earth has music for those who listen.”

If you struggle to find time to be alone, maybe you struggle with the whole notion of your thoughts and the way being by yourself makes you feel.

Maybe you don’t, maybe you are just busy.

Whether you’re just busy or whether you struggle with the thoughts that arise as you sit in a space of silence and aloneness, we all need to settle in a space where we are okay with just being.

The habit of contemplation, the habit of simply being, is not an easy skill for our tech obsessed and over stimulated senses.

I live less than twenty paces from the ocean, yet I struggle to walk out into nature and allow my thoughts and life to breathe.

Will you commit to finding an hour and going into a space of nature and allowing the thoughts to just come?

To soak up the view, to bathe in the beauty of nature and make a habit to just be.

To rest.

To love your messiness.

To be.

6. Arrange dinner in the city with a group of people.

I know I kind of believed that my husband would knock on my front door someday, or I would have this crazy story where we both meet randomly and he would be instantly amazed by me.

The reality is, we just used to hang out with each other, in a group with many different people. After church, we would go to a restaurant and we would eat. We would chat. We slowly got to know each other, with no expectation from either side that we would eventually become an item.

How often do you hang out with groups of people?

How often do you meet new people?

Do you go to work, come home, hang out with the same people every day, each weekend?

Old ways won’t open new doors!

You need to step out and create opportunities to meet new people. Organise a dinner and get everyone to bring a plus-one, somebody who is not already taken. Organise a barbecue for no reason other than just to hang out with people.

That is your task for today; create opportunities to meet new people.