I hope you brought your appetite because in today’s video we’re going to be feasting on a powerful life inventory practice: ‘What’s On My Plate?’ As creatures of habit and conditioning, it’s easy to fall into the trap of committing to things we’re not truly aligned with. We keep eating (investing time, energy, and attention into) certain foods because that’s what’s known, comfortable, and presumably ‘safe’. Our life’s dietary patterns gain momentum and ultimately, we become what we eat. This life inventory practice supports us in shifting out of auto-pilot mode and into mindfulness. When we take the time to take a step back, we gift ourselves with clarity, perspective, and discerning power. From this vantage point of awareness, I empower myself to generate a clear relationship with ‘What’s On My Plate’. As we externalize our commitments, we create an opportunity to assess all that we’re consuming in life. From here, we can gain clarity around what is truly serving us. Awareness is the foundation for clarity, clarity is the foundation for upgraded consumption. Are you ready to toss out what is no longer serving you? Are you ready to feast on the abundance of your personal evolution? Yes, you are!

Life Inventory Exercise

This is an interactive video so get out your notebook and a pen or pencil! On a blank piece of paper, I invite you to draw your plate. Draw out a big circle. In this first step, my invitation is to (for lack of a better phrase) brain dump! Get out from inside of you, all that’s on your plate. All that you’re taking on in your life. All that you’re consuming energetically. You could look at it as a consumption of energy or you could look at it as an investment of energy. Begin to externalize all that you take on in your life. It can be big things, it can be small things. These can include your jobs, main relationships, morning practice.  It could be preparing food, it could be taking a walk, it could be hiking in the mountains, it could be reading. Anything that comes up for you in your life, anything that you engage in, put that on your plate now. Disclaimer: let’s not just include the sprinkles and rainbows. Let’s also include some of the skeletons in the closet. Some of the things that perhaps we hold some shame around. Put everything out onto the plate. The value of the exercise is that you’re really getting to externalize and create space so you can see all that you’re taking on. So often we wake up, we live out our day, we go to sleep on repeat, and we fall into autopilot mode where we continue to take on certain things and invest in certain things that are known and comfortable and familiar so we continue that momentum. This exercise is asking us to take a step back and take inventory of all that we’re taking on because when we take something we want it to be a reflection of who we are and who we’re becoming. Ultimately, we want our consumption to be in alignment. It’s just like high-quality food versus junk food.

Brainstorm & Externalize Your Commitments

Begin to brainstorm and just let yourself go non-judgmentally. Write out everything that’s on your plate and now we can begin to create distinctions. We can look at our plate through a few different lenses and if your interest is in your well-being and your progress then that’s going to inform the way in which you’re assessing the quality of food on your plate. Because you’re watching this video I’m going to assume that you are very much interested in your well-being and your personal evolution so we’re going to be taking a look at what’s on our plate through these lenses.

Is This Purposeful/Relevant?

The first main consideration or filter is the following self-inquiry: Is this purposeful? Is this relevant? Does this item support my well-being and my progress does this investment of time energy and intention check the box of being purposeful and relevant both for my well-being in the present and supportive of my growth? number one is is it purposeful so begin to look at the items on your plate what is feeling purposeful you if you want to go deeper into it you can assess the intensity by which a certain item feels purposeful so maybe like maybe uh meditation for me would be a 10 on the purposeful meter. Every so often I’ll get an impossible whopper from burger king that’s not necessarily relevant or purposeful for my optimum health and the vision I have for my health going forward I might rate that activity at let’s say a five begin to look at your items from the lens of is it purposeful

Is This Exciting/Charming?

Number two: Is it exciting? Are you passionate about it? Is it charming? Does this current commitment seem to be calling you? Does it have a quality of soulful attractiveness? This can be hard to describe, but it’s an inner experience of feeling a pull, a charm, a deeper guiding mechanism. Take inventory of what’s on your plate and begin to assess these items through the second lens: is it exciting? Am I passionate about it? Does it seem to be calling me? Charm is not arbitrary and random. Particular things/directions in life will appear to you as uniquely charming. This is one of the powerful guiding mechanisms of Nature’s Intelligence.

Is This A Reflection Of My Future Self?

For this third filter, we want to assess our current commitments through the lens of: Is this a reflection of my future self? Does this contain the nutritional value to energetically grow me into the person I know I’m becoming? Is this purposeful, is this exciting, is this a reflection of my future self? Assess the items on your plate from these filters, with these distinctions, and you’ll begin to see your current commitments with more clarity. Does this particular item check off my boxes? How many? Is this item truly serving me and the direction of my Vision? You’ll also begin to get a sense of those items that only satisfy one, maybe two boxes, that are more a reflection of who you were, of the meals you were eating, and not a vision of who you’re becoming. We want to plant seeds for the future and release the garbage of the past.

Personal Freedom Dessert

If you want to take this exercise to another level, you can also take your large plate and break it down into major life categories: work, relationships, leisure & entertainment, things of that nature. You can assess what’s on your plate in each of those main categories and then look through our lenses of: Does this feel purposeful? Is this exciting to me? Is this a reflection of, a conduit for, my evolution? Is this particular commitment supportive of my evolution? Be mindful of what you’re consuming. Set and integrate a high standard of nutritional value for yourself. What you’re getting out of life is reflected in what you’re putting in. Let’s be ever-mindful of what we’re ingesting in our lives. From this clarity of awareness, we empower ourselves to create and enjoy glorious meals.