💌 WITH LOVE, DOMINIQUE

Bringing meditation, mindset and spirituality down-to-earth to empower your authenticity & greatest potential.

 📚️ VOL 05 / 🕖️ READ TIME: 7 m 17 s

⏰💥 LAST 48 HOURS TO APPLY TO: THE MUSES PROGRAM 💥 ⏰

In honor of that, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to share some REAL insights that get me jazzed about meditation and why you’ll always catch me saying it’s a life changing, transformative practice. 

These are topics we’ll be covering more in depth and applying in THE MUSES PROGRAM, which is taking application until July 17th. 

Lucky for you readers, I love ranting about meditation — so below you’ll find your own mini-coaching session on how to use your meditation practice to TRULY acknowledge & full-chest feel how f*cking amazing life is!

IN TODAY’S ISSUE:

• 🧠 TODAY’S LESSON / Life Is Good and There’s So Much to Celebrate!: Wire Your Mind to Truly Full-Chest Feel It with Rejoicing

• ✏️ WORK IT / TIPS FOR YOUR PRACTICE

• 👩‍💻 MORE DEETS / THE MUSES PROGRAM

 🧘🧠✨ TODAY’S LESSON: Life Is Good and There’s So Much to Celebrate!: Wire Your Mind to Truly Full-Chest Feel It with Rejoicing

Okay lovies, this lesson is an amazing build off of our last post where I talked about how to apply the Law of Least Effort to your dreamiest life. 

This practice will help you super-charge those intentions in your attention (hehe, see what I did there?) and hopefully, support you in getting off the hedonistic treadmill of basing your self-concept and self-worth solely in external successes. (Aka how “good” you’re doing in life — which btw is totally based off perception.)

So to start off, the biggest misconception I think most of us are made to believe is : Once I get “there”, I’ll be happy.

🙃 Once I get into a relationship I’ll be happy.

🙃 Once I lose this weight I’ll be happy.

🙃 Once I secure funding I’ll be happy.

🙃 Once I leave thing job and get a new one I’ll be happy.

🙃 Once this busy period calms down, then I’ll be happy. 

Now lemme ask you this…has any external “success” brought you a lifetime of happiness? (No, I know - I hate calling myself out for it too 🥲)

If you feel like this, you’re not alone. I work with clients every week who have secured some seriously EPIC successes for themselves and are living inside a life they once dreamed of and yet, when they reach their goals they don’t necessarily feel “happy” more-so a moment of relief until “okay, what’s the next thing I gotta do to be happy?” pops into their mind.

In fact, researchers have been recently studying (what Buddhist have been saying for millennia): how pleasure derived from external successes is short-lived and how we can program our mind to find it in everyday moments.

Rejoicing: is a meditative practice I recommend to them, and is one that has radically changed my own life - finally getting me off life’s highs & lows I constantly felt “stuck” in.

Similar to modern day gratitude, rejoicing requires a daily‼️ celebration of:

• Your own “merit” (i.e. the strengths / talents, unique perspective, inspiration, “goodness”, kindness, joy) you bring into the world.

• Others “merit” (i.e. the strengths/ talents, unique perspective, “goodness”, inspiration, kindness, joy) others bring into the world & your life.

These moments are available to us each day, every-time we get out of our past or future-focused minds and really come into presence. 

Noticing the “merit” in our lives can mean celebrating: 

• That good cup of coffee and the dozens of actions + people it took for it to be brewed.

• The bodega man who remembers your name + order which brings you ease.

• A meme shared with you that brings a moment of lightness in an (otherwise) stressful day.

• That check in call / text you made to a friend going through a tough time.

• That check in call / text a friend made to you because you’re going through a tough time OR just because they love you. (Let yourself receive love too, okay!!)

• The emails & excels you share to make life easier for anyone helping you create your ultimate vision.

• That convo you have with someone where you feel like you’re just sharing your perspective, but it gives them a POV that breaks them out of their own mind.

• The kindness you share everyday in small and big ways that have a ripple effect on everyone you meet.

• How people complimented or supported you in the day. (Instead of just noticing the criticism.)

• People’s unique “vibe”, their strengths, kindnesses or moments of joy they bring into your day.

• How you share your voice, talents and gifts because they can positively impact others.

No, like really let yourself get into the nitty-gritty details of celebrating. The way you might typically FBI-analyze every detail when you’re fear-based overthinking thangs.

Beyond being an antidote to the negativity bias our minds are evolutionarily conditioned to live through, rejoicing is one of my favorite practices to share, mostly because the act of intentional daily gratitude has so many research-backed benefits, like:

• improved sleep 

• lowered blood pressure 

• improved outlook on life as a whole 

• strengthened immune system 

• improved confidence

• improved resilience 

• improved patience 

• reduced jealousy and envy 

• reduced attachment (to the short-term gratification of external stimuli)

• improved relationships 

• stronger social circles

• enhances productivity 

• improves decision making skills

• And many more......

When we apply it to our habits and goals, it can get us off of the highs-and-lows of a result-focused mindset and onto the joy of continuous improvement. 

Which as James Clear highlights in Atomic Habits, supports us in increasing our chances of succeeding long-term because instead of just rushing to the end goal (missing the many details and daily improvements we can make), we instead learn to bring (a celebratory) awareness to each “win” of the process.

As he calls out:

“Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

What I love most is that rejoicing breaks the misconception that our “purpose” is tied to an external success — and rather fills our life with many purposeful moments we can notice, celebrate and act upon each day.

The fact of the matter is, we are more than the labels we give ourselves or whatever the identity we’re trying to “succeed” at in any given moment.

Our Ego will try to convince us of that and keep us clinging to that, our Inner Wisdom knows that we’re learning, growing, expanding and impacting others through many different “purposes” in each experience of our life.

When we bring our focus to internal and intentional expansion vs. just external-results, not only do we increase our brain’s capacity to experience joy despite challenges or difficulty - we also end up with better, and more well-rounded results.

In order to really see, experience and reprogram the perspective of our mind to that: we rejoice and share gratitude as a daily practice. (Not just one we do when sh*t gets tough!)

Okay!! So don’t sleep on gratitude, okay??? I swear it’ll change your goddamn life!!

More tips on how to apply below.

 🧘✏️ WORK IT: TIPS FOR YOUR PRACTICE

This (obviously) runs deep and is what I’ll be covering in more depth in THE MUSES PROGRAM for my female visionaries. But if you’d like to implement this into your meditation practice, here’s what you can do:

COMMIT & GROW YOUR PRACTICE: Like mentioned above, our brains are naturally programmed towards a negativity bias — meaning it’s inclination is to hyperfocus on the stresses, struggles, criticism or “negative” stimuli. This is a mental habit that stems from evolution, and at one (really long ago) point kept us safer in matters of life and death. However, now our mind is used to this subconscious pattern to the point where a weird look from our boss can create the same fight-or-flight response that idk…..finding safe shelter in the cold wilderness may have triggered for our ancestors. The point is - its programmed, but not necessary, in-fact it can negatively impact our decision making by shutting down our mind to new information (aka opportunities.)

Use your daily meditation practice as a way to strengthen your awareness to these mental tendencies as outlined in the previous posts and end your practice celebrating some of the things you have to be grateful for from the day before.

START A DAILY REJOICING PRACTICE: Use the guidelines above (celebrating your own merit and others merit) and start your own rejoicing practice! I typically recommend journaling because its tactical and really makes you realize how much you have to rejoice in. Each day reflect on the day prior and jot down the things that come to mind. Allow yourself to really feeel it as much as you can, rather than running through it mentally and checking it off your to-do. They say you don’t know what you got until it’s gone — don’t let these hundreds of things pass you by when you can appreciate them in the here & now!

BRING REJOICING WITH YOU: If a co-worker lightens your load or offers support, notice it. If a friend sends you a funny meme, tell them how much you appreciate it. If there’s a stranger sharing their passion and joy (for example in NYC, theres always those subway entertainers) instead of tuning it out, recognize it as an expression of their merit. If you get stressed out in your day feeling like you’re not doing enough or falling behind, notice how many amazing things you’ve already accomplished to get to this point. And if you notice someones merit powerfully, TELL THEM! APPRECIATE THEM! LOVE ON THEM! It grows the things you have to celebrate exponentially when you actually bring rejoicing to the IRL. Try to mentally notice and note these moments in the moment, and let that feeling come with you throughout your day.

 👩‍💻💌✨ MORE DEETS: THE MUSES PROGRAM

Rewiring your mind + body to actually experience the long-term impact of rejoicing requires consistency, repetitions and (honestly) alotta accountability.

Which is why the frameworks of meditation and lessons I teach in The Muses Program will share different, deeper ways for you to get the most out of this practice and incorporate it into your life!

Not to mention the program also includes:

• 12x, Weekly 90 Minute Zoom Sessions

• 3x 1:1 Coaching Calls Throughout the Program

• A Personal Power Plan & Lessons — to break down even your biggest visions into approachable steps in the program & beyond.

• 5x Frameworks of Meditation — that you’ll be able to guide yourself through by the end of the program to unlock intuition, embrace personal power & release anything that stands in your way.

• An intimate container of 8 like-minded visionary women to inspire, empower and support your journey.

• Homework, reflections and group chat support to ensure the most impact, attention and personalized support.

SO MUCH to rejoice in 😉

For more information or to apply, check it out: HERE.

APPLICATIONS CLOSE: on July 17th, PROGRAM BEGINS: July 30th / Aug 1st.

MORE WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER:

1:1 Alignment Coaching: For Founders, CEOs, or Executives who are looking for more personalized sessions, I currently have one spot available for July.

Reach out to [email protected] with more details on why you’re interested in coaching to start the conversation!