
Chrysalis is an ongoing weekly personal development project and practice that I’m starting today, 25th February 2010.
The idea for this project came to me yesterday while I was feeling extremely grateful for my current life circumstances. I also had been thinking quite a lot recently about the power of training the mind to focus on the positive aspects of life. Although my life circumstances are certainly improving, I am also facing new stresses and so I’m constantly looking for ways I can better deal with stress, worry and negative emotions/states in general.
“You aren’t broken, and you don’t need fixing.”
(@stevepavlina)
It seems like most of us are trained to always look at the negative and are constantly trying to ‘fix’ our problems. In recent years I’ve seriously doubted (and in certain moments, outright railed against) this mindset. In my experience, focussing on the negative in life only brings more of the negative. Whereas focus on the positive brings more good!
“What we see is mainly what we look for.”
(via @tinybuddha)

The basic idea of Chrysalis is simple: Instead of trying to ‘fix’ my problems (and thus having a constant focus on the ‘negative’ aspects of my personality/self) and constantly worrying, I’m going to consciously choose to focus on developing a new positive trait every week starting on Thursday. Every day I will post something (no matter how small) related to the topic and at the end of the week I will write about what I’ve learned and anything new or interesting that I’ve experienced during the week.
I’m choosing to do this online for the reasons of personal accountability (so I’ll be motivated to follow through with this since I think people are watching, hehe!) – but also, I wonder if anyone else would like to do this with me? It’s open if you’d like to and have a blog of some sort. If you have any experiences you’d like to share please do so in the comment section or email me or if you blog about it, please leave your link in the comment section! I would love to hear from you, especially if you gain new perspectives or notice any changes in yourself while in the process of doing this.
For this first week I’m choosing to focus on Gratitude & Giving.

The main reason I’m choosing to do this is because I want to focus on my most excellent luck in New York City so far. While there is also a lot of fear (as there usually is when one experiments with one’s life!) about possible negative outcomes, I would rather focus on the great things that have happened so far (and that continue to happen) for no other reason than that it makes me feel wonderful and get excited about life. I just want to feel excellent, happy, motivated and creative all of the time (or as often as possible) because I like how it feels. Being grateful and choosing to focus on good and/or beautiful things usually helps me stay motivated and hopeful.
It sounds like such a simple thing but doing something like a gratitude list every day is actually very powerful. I kept a gratitude journal after scoffing at the idea for years during a rather dark period of my life. It totally worked in helping me shift my focus from always looking at what wasn’t working to what actually was. Eventually your mind gets into the habit and what you can experience is something close to magic – you become automatically trained to look for solutions. You feel creative, you feel powerful – but in a beautiful, quiet way. I would say that you actually become aware of your own power, adaptability and ability for creative thought and action. You gain a deep self-confidence that will carry you through most difficult things in life.

“The right idea has the power to overcome any challenge. We can always find that idea.”
- Ray Kurzweil
Regarding giving, I am at the point where I’m starting to realize that I really want to add value to the lives of others. I have spent most of my life being very angry at what I’ve perceived are injustices and imperfections in the world, which kind of caused me to lose faith in humanity for a period of time. However, my response to the cumulation of my negative experiences now is that I really want to be able to take every opportunity to be kind to others as much as is possible. Simply because it feels good and my ultimate goal in life is to be able to love and give unconditionally.
I think that giving is also very powerful, somehow we actually gain more in giving than in simply taking or focussing on what we should get. I believe also that there is a balance and that it’s important to receive with grace too, though. However, right now, I think it’s important that I focus on giving because I want to make a major paradigm shift in how I interact with the world – I want to truly add value in my work and see how that pans out. Instead of always focussing on what I can get out of a situation, I want to focus on what I can contribute. I want to be an agent for positive change in the world. I really honestly do want things to be better and to experience more love in daily life.
“If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.”
- John O’Donohue (via galadarling.com)
So – I’m going to make a post every day for till next Thursday regarding Gratitude & Giving. I’m not sure of the exact form these posts are going to take, so let’s see how this goes
The idea is to give daily focus and energy in the direction of developing my abilities to be thankful and to give for 7 days while noting the effects of this experiment on my personality and self.