Bumping up against growing edges

Have the last five months felt a bit like someone stuck a huge magnifying glass over every area that wasn't working in your life?

Any sort of extreme stress, like a pandemic, will do just that. It's like our "friction spots" suddenly get shoved in our faces so we can't ignore them any more.

For example, say you were used to putting your kids' needs, work demands and household chores ahead of your own self care. Maybe the very idea of taking time for yourself felt selfish, indulgent and impractical. (How many hands are raised here? Mine is.)

Before the pandemic, you might have been able to “power through” your days, knowing you had some time to recharge on your commute or by going to bed early.

Suddenly, you’re cooped up with your family 24-7 with nowhere to escape to, and expected to squeeze a full workday in around homeschooling, cleaning up after everyone and navigating daily meltdowns... I'm guessing there was a point where you felt had Nothing Left To Give because you weren’t "filling your cup", am I right?

It’s clear that in this situation putting our self care first is critical to our survival, but it still feels incredibly hard, doesn’t it? And it feels like we’re forced into a situation where we have no choice but to "do the work" to grow ourselves but don't we have enough on our plate to deal with already?!

This new space of awareness can feel incredibly uncomfortable and painful. This is what we call bumping up against a "growing edge".

Think of a "growing edge" as one side of a box that we're inside - which we now desperately want to make bigger. The box represents a limiting belief we have about ourselves.

When our box feels too small, it’s time to expand!

If we have a tendency to put our own needs last, for example, we might have a deep-rooted belief that we do not truly deserve to be happy, or, that we must earn the love of others by pleasing them.

But as painful as these times are, they can be a gift. We have an opportunity to focus on growing ourselves, becoming more.

So, working with our growing edge means we get to examine old, limiting beliefs and replace them with new, freeing ones. (Woohoo!)

For example, we can replace the old belief of:

"I don't deserve to feel happy."
"If I don't meet others' expectations, they won't like me."

with:

"I matter, and I am worthy of happiness."
"I’m already loved for who I am. And when I fill my cup first, I get to share more of my best qualities with others!"

So, let's celebrate this invitation to work with your growing edges.

What's a friction area you've experienced during these last few months?
What action’s being asked of you?
What skills are necessary to develop?
What beliefs about yourself do you need to let go of to do this?

Writing new definitions of “good”

Ever feel like you’re just not measuring up in a certain area of your life?

I still remember a particular time a few years ago when I was feeling super frustrated and overwhelmed as a mom. As usual, I was beating myself up for all the things I wasn't doing that I believed I was "supposed” to do. I felt I was failing on so many levels - and I was therefore a failure as a mom.

Some wiser part of me must have sensed that my expectations were quite high because I decided to sit down in that moment and write out my definition of the Ideal (aka "Good") Mother.

Here are a few parts of my definition: 

• Highly organized - ie. has systems for everything, including a meal plan and prepping schedule, beautiful chore charts that kids love to use, family calendars that keep track of all dates and moving parts 

• Grows own food and makes most things from scratch - eg. meals, baked goods, clothes, gifts, decorations, etc.

• Skilled at coming up with exciting educational activities for kids on a moment's notice

• Ensures everyone is well fed, well rested, playing quietly and feeling happy - and all household chores are complete - before taking any time for herself.

• Calm, cool and collected. Doesn't lose patience or yell.

Wowza. I was clearly describing some sort of Martha Stewart-Saint-Superwoman!

Writing my definition of the ideal mom was eye-opening. I’d been so deeply entrenched in all these expectations, believing they were just The Way It Needs To Be, that when I got them all down on paper, I realized how impossible they were to achieve. Of course I was setting myself up for failure!

I could also see, as clear as day, "where" I'd picked up some of those beliefs, and I could ask myself if they were really “me”.

And, I could give myself permission to let go of what wasn't working for me.

In short, doing this exercise was enlightening and downright liberating!

Want to try it? 

1. Bring to mind a specific area of your life where you feel like you're not measuring up, or you feel burdened by “shoulds”. This could be your career, finances, parenting, health, etc.
   

2. Write an honest definition of your Ideal version of that. Some ways to frame it might be:

   • An ideal________ would________

   • To be considered truly successful in________, someone would need to__________
      

3. After capturing everything you can think of, especially all the things that cause stress for you or feel like "shoulds", take a good look at your definition and ask yourself:

   • Where did each part of the definition come from? (For example, did you learn it from your parents’ examples? From our culture? Other key people in your life?)

   • What parts are in alignment with your particular strengths, values, lifestyle and season of life?

   • What parts "spark joy" when you consider living them?

   • What parts feel heavy, stressful and "like work"?

4. Give yourself permission to let go of everything that doesn't feel good. And give yourself permission to do everything that remains imperfectly and with your whole heart.   ;-)

It’s time we stopped trying to live up to superhero standards.

How to stop shoulding yourself

We all do it. Sometimes we do it all day long without even realizing it.

I'm talking about using the word "should."

"I should be going to the gym every day.”

"I'm so exhausted, I just want to take a nap! But I should get the laundry done.”

”I should be farther along in my career by now!”

It's so much a part of our vocabulary that we don’t often think about the impact it has on us.

Let's do an experiment right now. Bring to mind something you think you should do but have been resisting…

Now tune into your body. What do you notice about how you’re feeling?

Do you feel tired, unmotivated? Maybe you feel yourself slouch down a little? Perhaps you have the sensation of heaviness, like there’s a weight on your shoulders or pressure on your chest? Likely, you feel constricted in some way. 

That’s because “should” - along with its cousins “have to” and “supposed to” - is the language of our inner Striver, who's always worried “Am I doing enough?", and our Negative Ego, who's perpetually sending us the message: “You’re Not Enough.” Together, they form a Slave-Driver energy that keeps us proving, pleasing and perfecting.

As a recovering perfectionist myself, I know all about the burden of "should.” I’ve spent way too many years burning myself out playing the martyr. Running on hamster wheels getting nowhere because I was following “rules” that weren't designed for me. Beating myself up constantly because I didn’t measure up to unreasonable standards.

The fact of the matter is, using “should” takes our power away. When we use it, we’re allowing our Slave-Driver to "drive the bus", so to speak. And we are judging ourselves, which leads to shame.

And, as a result, we can feel pulled in many directions, confused, full of doubt, stuck, overwhelmed, unmotivated, resentful and burnt out.

So what can we do to stop "shoulding" all over ourselves?

We can ban the words "should", "have to" and "supposed to" from our vocabulary.

When you catch yourself saying one of these disempowering words, pause, then replace it with "want to", "choose to", "get to", or "I will".

This simple switch in language reminds us:  We are always at choice. It strips power from our Slave-Driver and returns power to the parts of ourselves that keep our joy, well-being and fulfillment top of mind and help us show up as the best version of ourselves for others.

Here's to inviting in more of that in our lives!

5 steps to reconnect to yourself

How your summer is going?

Since we're definitely not close to "life back to normal", I can imagine you might be facing challenges that are leaving you feeling stressed out.

For example, you may be feeling overwhelmed trying to sandwich your full-time work - and, heaven forbid, a bit of summer relaxation - into small windows of time between running the entire house and caring for kids who are still at home.

Maybe you're at your wit’s end navigating near-hourly meltdowns by your kids who are SUPER bored and fed up with playing with each other but still don’t have any other reliable options.

Perhaps you're anxiously looking ahead to the fall, trying to figure out how in the heck to re-jig your life yet again to accommodate dismal back-to-school scenarios.

No matter what your situation, there's bound to be moments in your day when it feels like too much, and a part of you just wishes it could scream, "Ahhhh! I can't deal with this anymore!"

It's in these moments that we need to step away, slow down and "unhook" from our big feelings. We need to reconnect to the part of ourselves that's calm, wise & loving, so we can return to the situation feeling able to handle it with more ease, grace and love.

Today I wanted to offer you a quick & easy way to do this.

Whenever we experience that wave of frustration, anxiety or overwhelm rising in us, we can take these 5 easy steps:

1. Escape to a quiet place (the bathroom works!)

2. Close your eyes & put your hand on your heart.

3. Take 3 slow deep breaths.

4. Say a little prayer or intention.
   Some examples:

   “I ask for help shifting out of (anxiety, anger, etc.) and into love”

   "Please transform my energy for the highest good"

   "I invite love into the situation"

5. Take 5 more deep grounding breaths.

That's it. The whole ritual takes about 2 minutes but WOW, is it ever transformative!

When we invite this wise self - our "higher self" - in, we are inviting love in. And there simply isn't any room for anxiety, frustration or overwhelm to exist at the same time as love. We return to the same circumstances feeling calm, centered and able to take action on the things we can control.

Cloudy with a chance of anger?

Every morning, we have a family meeting at the breakfast table. One of the items on the daily agenda is to pick jobs - and an important one is the weather reporter. That person let’s us know whether it’s hot or cold, sunny or rainy, so we know how to dress and what kind of activities to plan for.

A few weeks ago we experimented with sharing “emotional weather reports” from each family member.

We did it on a whim, but it really helped us get a sense of where everyone was at.

Even though we aren't still doing these reports regularly, this idea has stayed with me.

Because emotions are a bit like weather, aren't they?

Weather is a natural response to atmospheric events. A cold front causes a drop in temperature. Lots of humidity causes a thunderstorm.

The same goes for emotions. They are simply a natural physiological response to the circumstances in our lives. Losing something or someone causes us to feel sad. When something unfair happens, this causes us to feel angry.

Today, I’d like to go one step further than just comparing them and offer you this perspective:

We can interact with our emotions as we would the weather.

Think about this: if the weather is unpleasant - and it could be downright miserable - do we try to stop the weather? (My mind's conjuring up a girl in her bathing suit trying her darnedest to push a giant rain cloud away 😋).

No, we know that the weather must run its full course - ie. every rain drop must fall from the cloud. And we know that the only thing we can do is accept it for what it is - a passing storm, for example - and ride it out.

Emotions are also temporary - they are energy in motion. So, it doesn't make sense to try to push them away. We can use radical acceptance and notice them for what they are - eg. merely a passing wave of anger - and let them run their course, trusting "this too shall pass".

The other important way we can interact with our emotions is to make a plan for how we'll ride out the uncomfortable ones.

When we have unpleasant weather coming, we ensure we're safe by taking shelter, right?

When we feel unpleasant emotional weather coming on, we can also take refuge in a safe space while we let it runs its course. This could mean retreating to a bedroom, for example, to cry, silent scream, or punch a pillow. When we've released every ounce of "rain" or "rage", we'll feel our internal clouds lift and know we can safely emerge from our shelter.

It certainly is a different way of viewing emotions, isn't it?

What does it give you to consider treating your emotions like weather?

The next time you check the weather report, will you take a moment to check in with your current emotional weather? Will you notice if you're feeling truly “sunny” or if there might be a few clouds of anxiety or frustration present? Will you consider whether “rain" or "thunderstorms" feel imminent and where you might go to find refuge?

And who can you share your weather report with so they might offer support?

Kai, age 7