Be a reflection of what you’d like to receive. If you want love, give love. If you want truth, be truthful. What you radiate will be returned.

Kristen Butler

The concept of reflection is integrated into the earliest writings of our ancestors. The maxim “Know Thyself” – carved above the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi – dates back to 2000 B.C. Apollo, the Greco-Roman god of truth, harmony, healing, music, poetry, and light. This year the new moon marks the beginning of Ramadan, while Passover and Easter arrive with the full moon. Plus Vaisakhi, the new year for Hindu and Sikh observers, is the 14th. All integrate reflection into their observance.

Reflection can be considered in three parts: intention, action, and reconciliation. We may have wonderful intentions that we struggle to sustain and so we reconcile the disparity with a narrative. Intention and reconciliation take place in the mind, but action is embodied in the here-and-now. In the here-and-now, we cook and clean, tend our children and gardens, commute and take meetings. The doing list is long and at the end of the day, it’s hard to find time to address intentions like truth, love, harmony, or gratitude. How we want to feel becomes elusive and fleeting – just another thing on our never-ending to-do list.

Here are four practices to help flip the narrative and embody your ideals as you are doing, doing, doing, during this lunar cycle:

• Keep it Simple: Pick the one word that you want to embody for this lunar cycle: truth, love, harmony, gratitude, bliss, kindness, open, peace, grace, etc. Write it on your bathroom mirror in lipstick, post-it note it to your refrigerator and steering wheel, make it the screensaver on your phone, tablet, and computer.
• Set a Wake-Up Call to Intention: Reset your alarm so you wake up to a song, poem, or chant that helps you start your day in alignment with your intention. Don’t hit snooze – drink in and/or sing along with the whole song. I made a collaborative playlist on Spotify to get us started – please add your wake-up call to intention song, too!
  • Go a step farther and make a whole playlist centered around the singular intention you’d like to embody.
• Take Notes: Carry an index card and pen, or use your phone, to take make a note every time you catch yourself drifting from your intention. See if you can establish a pattern and course correct to help you stay on track. Maybe, it’s when you get behind the wheel of a car, or when you’re hangry or over-caffeinated?
• Seek Out the Moon: April 1^st brings the first sighting of the crescent moon and signals the beginning of Ramadan, Passover starts the 15^th at sundown the day prior to the full moon, on the 16th we have a Super Full Moon, and Easter arrives the 17^th on the first Sunday after the full moon. Look for the moon each night during this lunar cycle—and when you find her—contemplate any shifts you are experiencing as you practice embodying your ideals.