What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Important scary question
Sooo . . . do YOU love your body?
One of the things I love best about teaching is the questions. I like the moment of anticipation. I like figuring out what people need to know, what confuses them and excites them. And I love the process of picking through my brain to come up with the most useful, concise and true formulation of information to give an answer that is useful but also provokes at least twenty more questions.
There is one question, though, or type of question, that I’m always waiting to be asked. And it never comes.
I lead workshops and courses on dissolving procrastination and no one ever wants to know if I procrastinate.
I’ve taught programs on how to love your body and no one ever asks me if I love my body.
I work with clients on how to resolve habits and no one ever wonders if I have resolved my own.
If I were going to sign up for a program on any of these topics — in fact, before I would be willing to take part in a program on any of these topics — you can bet that my very first question to the instructor would be “Do you procrastinate? Do you love your body? Have you resolved your habits?”
And a very specific type of answer would have to be given in order to satisfy me.
“Yes, I procrastinate” or “No, I don’t love my body” are clearly the wrong answers. Why would I want to learn how to stop procrastinating from someone who still does it herself? Why learn to love my body from someone who can’t love his own?
“No, I never procrastinate” and “Of course I love my body” are also no good. Why would I want to learn from someone who doesn’t personally understand my issues, my concerns and my pain?
The only answer that would satisfy me would be either, “I used to have this issue, but using X, Y and Z techniques I resolved it” or “I still have my moments occasionally, but I also know now how to recognize what’s going on and give myself the support and help I need to pull out of this moment and get centered again”.
In other words, someone who on the one hand is enormously capable and who on the other hand is willing to be imperfect. Someone with knowledge and skill who can be at home in his or her imperfection without being self-satisfied about it. That’s the person I like to learn from and this is the person I try to be.
Here’s the #1 thing that keeps you from making changes
One of the many fun points we covered in the “untangling your financial patterns” workshop last month was how to be open to learning how you operate without defaulting to blame, criticism and self-recrimination.
Here is the thing. It often happens that you begin a process of self-work or self-learning (whether this is therapy, journaling, using affirmations or just practicing mindfulness) and it doesn’t work.
In some cases you just tune out. You have the best intentions to use a certain technique or to meditate before bed and you just don’t. In other cases, you start the process and it works “too well”. What I mean by this is that, as you go deeper into the process, you start noticing things about how you interact with yourself and with the world around you. You don’t like some of these things. In fact, some of them are uncomfortable and even kind of off-putting. You think, “I’m like that?!” On some unconscious level you decide you would rather not know these things, and you start sabotaging the process.
When mindfulness triggers fear, resentment or annoyance, you’ll always opt out. And if you aren’t in a regular habit of noticing and learning about your patterns, you can’t choose new ones.
The good news is that there is a way to approach the self-work process from a conscious place where you adopt an attitude that can make the process work for you.
Today’s technique is all about how to cultivate the attitude that can help you to stay engaged in the process and keep learning. Because the more you learn about who you are with yourself and how you “work”, the easier it is to take this useful information and use it to rewrite your patterns and change the way you do things. Enjoy!
Technique of the month: Being Philip Marlowe
Did you know . . .?
1. Every moment — every single moment, no matter how mundane or seemingly devoid of meaning — is an opportunity for you to learn something about yourself and how you interact with yourself and/or the world around you.
2. If you are resisting being in the process, you aren’t going to enjoy being present and you aren’t going to learn from being present.
This means that you need some sort of conscious approach to help you be– and stay — in the process so that you can reap the benefits. One of the best roles to adopt is that of the detective.
Think of the hard-boiled gumshoe who is always on the case. Think Philip Marlowe on the path of self-discovery. The detective is intrigued by the story, driven by the mystery, eager for clues. And even when he’s off-duty, he’s on-duty.
The case doesn’t cease to exist when the work day is over. When he is sitting at the bar nursing his pint of low-fat milk, he still has his eyes peeled and his ears pricked. And he finds stuff. Clues fall into his lap.
When you are a detective everything is interesting because everything is potentially of value.
Noticing and observing, analyzing and double-checking, allowing everything to be potentially significant; all of these abilities help the detective figure out how people tick, why they work the way they do and what it all means in relation to the patterns that he (or she) is trying to resolve.
The reason that this attitude is so important is that it creates focus and perspective. It demands mindfulness. If you have just observed that you bite your nails when you are anxious, you might forget to be in the process and instead go straight to berating yourself for being such a loser. The detective, on the other hand, says: “Aha! A clue. How very interesting. I will keep watch to determine what more I can find out! “.
Start noticing. Instead of blaming yourself for not noticing, noticing that you’re blaming yourself for not noticing. Clues are everywhere. Start collecting.