Right relationship is about balance, health, and sustainability. It’s also about service–how we help the world with the power we have.

I’m talking about our personal relationship to money–not how the world economies should treat money, but how we personally can come into alignment with the spiritual nature of money.

Money has a spiritual nature?

The truth is everything has a spiritual nature. What makes money magical is that it’s a unique form of condensed energy. As such, it can serve as a mirror, a teacher for us on our spiritual journey.

Beyond “Think and Grow Rich”

Getting in alignment or right-relationship is NOT a way to get rich overnight. “Think and grow rich” and the “Law of Attraction” are often ways to avoid looking at our deep fear of scarcity.

It’s true that as you grow in your understanding of money, creating it becomes much easier. As you learn to charge appropriately, market to the right people, and own the value of what you do, your business becomes much easier to run.

But that part’s not magical. That’s just about learning a system and getting better at it.

Right-relationship is about something deeper. It’s about that subtle inner tension we carry about money, which relates to our sense of power and security in the world.

Right-relationship means accepting that we don’t control everything about life.

Right-relationship means living in gratitude for what we have, being willing to use the power we have to do good, and the cheerful acceptance that we are not ultimately in charge of the Universe. Including our money.

Now this might sound funny coming from someone who advocates a weekly accounting practice, designing passive income schemes, and generally is known to fully enjoy the game of business.

All these things are true. I like the game, I love the game. But I know, in my heart, that I am only a player. Right-relationship to the game means knowing that you didn’t create it and you can’t control it. You can only play it, and play it well.

Is this getting too esoteric? Here are some practical ways right-relationship shows up:

How to get in right-relationship with money.

Stop avoiding. Face the reality, the truth of your present relationship with money. Stop looking for salvation. Stop spending money on overpriced programs that are going to solve all your money problems. Start accepting that the only way anything changes is by facing it on the internal plane.

Forgive yourself. Some people’s issues show up in relationships. Some show up in reckless behavior or addiction. Some show up in money. There is nothing wrong with having issues. We all have them. You’re just where you’re at.

Relax the grasping. Grasping is an instinctual response to fear. Think of a baby, latching on to its mother. Take a deep breathe. Notice when you get in sticky situations with clients and money, or overspend. Somewhere in there are attachments, deep unmet needs for safety and security that you are unconsciously trying to meet through your use (or avoidance) of money.  Get mindful. Breathe into the places that are afraid and dialog with them.

Start owning your own power. Money is a powerful thing in our culture. Knowing how to use it, knowing how it works, having practice and experience–these lead to real power. Let that be OK. Step out of the fear that you can’t, or that you’ll be corrupted by it. You won’t if you take responsibility and own your own choices.

Start using your money, your power, your will…for good. Right-relationship ultimately describes the relationship of the small and personal to the grand and majestic. To be in right-relationship with Source/God/etc means owning your power, and then letting that power be used as a tool for the larger good. Do what is right, regardless of the money. Play the game, but don’t be the game. Be a player in service of good.

These steps are roughly in order. The important thing to notice is you have to own your power before you can truly serve the world. Otherwise, you have nothing to offer. Without a solid vessel, you are useless as a tool. So work on yourself. Then let go of yourself.

Process: the internal work of uncovering something personally meaningful through creative output.

Product: a finished, cohesive work that other people can access and find value in.

Process and product are two sides of the same coin, and yet if you focus just on one or the other you lose something.

If you focus exclusively on process, you won’t produce something that others can access – your creation will hold personal meaning, but not universal meaning. The packaging is the bridge that lets others access it.

If you focus just on product, you will lose the heart of why you were creating in the first place. You will be selling just for the purpose of selling. You will be creative in order to be liked or rewarded, but your creations will be empty.

The fear of “selling out” is a fear that success will create a pull for product over process–and you won’t be able to stay true to your work.

Imagine if your internal greed or other people’s needs and desires pulled you from your authentic desire to serve or create. Imagine if you lost touch with the “process” side of creativity–the heart of what you have to offer.

That’s a scary thought.

For some people, it’s so scary that they never learn how to package their work and market it. They view all packaging as “selling out”, and have no discernment about which is serving the work by making it more widely accessible and which is hollow.

They solve the problem of having to be responsible with power by not having any power at all. In doing so, they fail to reach the audience they could have. The world doesn’t see what they had to offer.

That’s a real loss, for both the creator and the world.

The fear of selling out is a fear of owning your power in an ethical way.

Fear of selling out is one form of “fear of success” – the fear of losing touch with oneself. For people who have big hearts and big visions, this fear can be especially poignant.

It can also be unconsciously limiting you without you realizing it.

How to not be afraid of selling out:

Admit that there is part of you that is greedy, and afraid. There is part of you that wants to be liked and needed and rewarded, and is afraid of not having enough. It’s there. Be aware of it. Don’t make it wrong. But don’t pretend it’s not there either. Denial leads to unconscious behavior.

Make a conscious decision that you are going to work with your inner greediness, need for approval, and grasping when it comes up. Decide that you are opting for conscious awareness, not avoidance. Take time with your dark side–get to know it. Have fun with it. Laugh about it. Be OK with being human (and grounded in the knowledge that you have values). Having an ongoing and healthy relationship with this part of you means you’ll be in no danger of it taking over.

Discern greed from the desire to grow. Humans want to grow and create and serve in ever-expanding ways. It’s natural. That’s not greed–it’s your heart reaching for the stars. Learn to discern the difference between expansive desire and constricting fear-based greed. Cultivate that expansive desire–that comes from an abundant place of pure love for creating. It’s magnetic.

Package your work in ethical ways. Examine your marketing decisions both in the light of who they might reach, and if they are truthful. Base your business on openness and respect rather than fear, hoarding, and competition. Opt for developing quality and eschewing hype. Forget what other people do with their marketing. Decide that you package your work so people will be able to access it, not so they’ll like you and make you rich. Don’t market some way just because other people do it, if it doesn’t feel right to you. Create ways of speaking about what you do that feel right to you.

Don’t undersell yourself. Show up fully, honestly, and authentically in what you do. Cultivate a solid center in yourself that you market from–a center that knows your worth and doesn’t need to either undersell or oversell.

Relax. You are a good person. Trust yourself.

There is often a voice that says something like, “I need to beat myself up to keep myself on track. If I don’t, I might become lazy or worse and then I’d REALLY be in trouble.” So you whip yourself more and are afraid to stop.

It doesn’t help. And here’s why: fear and constricted energy like this squeezes the connection between you and your Source of creative, juicy, aliveness energy down to a trickle.

Fear and forcing limits your creative thinking and spontaneous excitement, which is exactly what you need to get where you want to go.

It can be tempting to think that if you just punish yourself enough, you’ll get the thing done.

We see examples of this kind of thinking everywhere–there are plenty of movies of self-hating, drunk artists and insanely driven executives, where the implication is that all this pain and torment was somehow necessary to produce extraordinary results.

I think this is B.S. And I really wish they’d stop making movies like this.

I believe that everything truly beautiful and good comes through us, not from us. It is inspired. To be inspired, you have to keep your channel open. And keeping the channel open is entirely the domain of self-love and self-care, not self-abuse. It’s about relaxing and letting it happen–letting is an opening, allowing energy, not a closed-down, forcing energy.

When we can really own that we are beautiful and good, that’s when we start to create in ways that are beyond our own skin–we allow ourselves to become part of something larger. For co-creation to happen, we need to stand up and be proud of who we are, and also give ourselves a break and let ourselves be human.

If you are in the habit of driving yourself with fear, it will take practice to change your brain pathways.

The first step is to fully get on board intellectually that it is better for you and more productive to love yourself and trust that creative solutions will arise naturally.

If you have any doubt about this, mindfully start to just notice in yourself how you feel when you are nice to yourself and give the creative process time and space vs. mean and berating yourself about what you have done wrong or haven’t yet accomplished. Study yourself and see for yourself if this is really how you want to be with yourself.

One thing that helped me identify with this new concept of allowing was to think of nature. Flowers and trees grow on their own schedule; yelling at them does not help. Nourishing them helps them grow fuller and stronger…and, they still need time to reach their own potential, which they have within them the whole time.

When you are sure you want to create a new relationship with yourself, then it’s time to practice, practice, practice shifting your attention and thoughts and consciously relaxing and letting yourself be where you are.

You can practice by putting “and that’s OK” at the end of every internal sentence. For instance, “I can’t think of a clever thing to write here…and that’s OK”. See how that relaxes you and lets your creative channels open and a new solution presents itself. So it’s a combination of mindfulness, trying new things, and seeing what works.

Start playing with creating processes where you actively ask to receive guidance outside yourself rather than looking only to your own brain to come up with a solution every time.

Try journalling – ask a question, and then open your heart and mind and write an answer.  Or let your mind wander…see what comes through. Or write down what you want an answer to on a card, hide it under your pillow, and see what solutions present themselves over the night or the next few days.

The key is to let go of the question, and let the solution come through….without pushing or forcing…and trust the timing of your internal rhythms and nature.

As you experience more and more that this allowing and receiving works, you will start to be able to really rely on it, and the need for the self-criticism will fall away. After all, that voice is just looking out for you…it’s not bad or wrong, it’s just missing some vital information: that you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. The Universe is supportive, and when you open yourself to receive from it, the answers show up.

Write a credo, a manifesto. Why are you in business? What matters to you?

And then demonstrate it.

For example, let’s say you do massage.

You credo might sound like this:

I believe massage should be empowering. People should feel completely at ease to speak up and ask for what they want during their massage. It’s THEIR time, and it’s most beneficial when they give feedback, know what they want, and ask for it.

Your stand could be anything, but it has to be you. It has to be something you truly believe.

The best credos make you cry. Or expand inside. They feel vulnerable and real.

You don’t have to share the credo itself with anyone. It’s for you. It’s what gives your business heart.

When you have it, then you can demonstra

te it through your website content and processes. For example:

I believe massage should be empowering. Before our first massage together, I’ll have a short form for you to fill out that asks you your preferences—do you like feedback about your muscles as I work, or do you prefer a quiet no-talking space? Do you prefer light pressure or deep? Which body parts would you like me to focus on?

Feeling unsure about disrobing, tipping, etc? I created this FAQ specifically around the questions people are often too shy to bring up.

You can also share your credo with your designer. Make all the parts of your business reflect it. Build y

our brand around what you truly believe.

Be a bigger presence by being different—and expanding on that difference.

Write articles about your stand. Make

your business about more than just getting customers and getting paid. Make it about saying something. Make it about changing the world in some small way that you care about.

For our massage example, start with the question:

“How can I help my customers feel empowered during their massage with me?”

Then expand the question:

“How can I help everyone on the planet feel empowered during massage?”

“What information might help people feel empowered during massage? How can I provide it?”

“What articles might I write that would help transform people’s relationship with massage?”

When you take a stand, you become part of something larger—the larger truth you are standing for.

Your presence becomes larger and more attractive, because you are not just you—you are part of that truth. You are part of an inspiring, cool thing. That makes you and your business attractive.

Bonus: you get more inspired about your marketing. You’re not just selling yourself anymore. You’re being a stand for healing the world in a way that matters to you. There’s a lot of energy in that.

All good. Really.

But you MUST take care of your human ‘vessel’ to do this. That means self-care, self-love, self-nurturing, etc. It means resting, eating nourishing food, having fun, being nice to yourself, and meeting your human needs.

The vessel can’t be full of holes.

If you are running yourself ragged or neglecting your human self, you are just not going to be effective in your mission.

There’s no way around it.

We are here on this planet in human form, and that form has to be respected, honored, and care for or it will not be functioning like it could. Your vessel-ness will be ineffective.

The idea is co-creation. The “co” part matters–half of that is us, the human half. That half matters. That half needs the structure, the nourishing, the health, the time, and the self-love to really show up as half of the equation.

And the Divine half? That is there, that will always be there. It’s through honoring our human selves that we create the conditions where we can be present to that Divine presence.

So if you want to be a conduit for truth, healing, and beauty in the world, get a good night’s rest.

Say no to overwork or busy-ness. Say nice things to yourself in your head. Pay yourself first. Take the time to make dinner and call a friend. Be a friend to yourself. Wear sunscreen. Floss. Create beauty in your workspace and your home. Take a walk and take in the sights, smells, and sounds. Slow down. Stretch.

These things are the foundation and support for everything else you create in the world. They are the structure within which God/the Universe/Spirit/Source can do magic, create miracles, and heal. They matter.

We often live with daily emotional and spiritual scarcity. We don’t feel like enough.

We don’t feel good enough. We haven’t got enough done. We aren’t accomplished or important enough. We don’t feel like we are enough.

This scarcity runs through every sector of society. It infects us with doubts and stops us from pursuing our dreams and enjoying the dreams we have created.

It pushes us to achieve, overwork, and pretty soon we don’t have enough sleep, enough downtime, enough non-business social contact. It’s a constant nagging feeling of trying to catch up, trying to earn our place, trying to be good or do good.

At heart, it’s a spiritual scarcity.

The only true source of abundance, of the feeling of OKness deep in our bones, is in our connection to Source/God/etc, whatever you call it.

Spiritual scarcity means your connection to Source/God/etc is cut off or blocked or has just atrophied through disuse.

It doesn’t matter how much money or security you have, if you don’t have this connection on a daily basis, you will feel not enough. It’s just the way we are built. We can’t be fully satisfied except through that internal connection to Source.

When you try to create outer abundance, but you are doing it to shore up your inner sense of scarcity, it won’t work. Not really. You’ll create more and more evidence that you aren’t really worth it.

The only way to truly heal is to:

1. accept your faults, accept your neediness and mistakes and all your feelings and pain
2. let that connection to source grow anyway

Our connection to Source is the most abundant thing in the Universe. It never goes away. It does not judge, it does not withhold, it does not punish, it does not care who or what you are. It’s there. It’s there and you can access it at any time. You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to deserve it. You don’t have to pay it back. You just have to accept it.

All you have to do is ask (and let in the response).

The hardest thing for most of us to do is ask for help. To truly admit that we cannot make it on our own. We cannot do everything. We cannot make ourselves feel OK. We just can’t. We rely on something outside of ourselves. Humans are never truly happy until they feel part of the larger Universe and feel they are in tune with it and here for a reason. We simply cannot be happy as islands.

When we try to do it on our own, it’s out of fear. What if we ask, and there’s nothing there? What if there is no answer? What if you open up your heart and then get burned? What if you find out that the world is an empty screaming void after all? What if God wants you to do something you don’t really want to do?

I can’t really answer those objections. Except to say that it’s not like that. Those objections come from a consciousness of fear. Accepting grace comes from a consciousness of love. When you are in that space, the objections no longer make sense.

And it’s kinda beyond words. But it works. Sincere prayers are answered. The answer comes, somehow. I’ve seen it happen over and over. If you pray to win the lottery, it doesn’t work. But if you sincerely need help and pray for help and hand it over, help comes.

But don’t stop there.

Praying only in emergencies is like staying at the Ritz Carlton and sleeping in the bathtub.

Many people, even ones that don’t “believe in God”, will pray when they are panicked. And they get solace from it. But then they go back to their “normal lives”. The ones with the nagging sense of not-enoughness.

To live a truly abundant life, you need to depend on Source.

That means recognizing that all abundance received from the Universe is received through this channel.

Receiving from Source/God is a blueprint and basis for every other kind of receiving.

The outer world reflects the inner world. Your material abundance depends on your spiritual abundance. It all starts inside.

And that’s where you start to build that connection.

How?

It’s a muscle. You exercise it. You change your mind, you change your stories, you change your beliefs. It’s a habit, a practice.

The bottom line is that it’s a choice.

You allow it to happen. You allow yourself to be enough. You allow yourself to feel OK. You allow that feeling of scarcity to disperse. You stop clinging to it. You find that inner stream of OKness and you nurture it and feed it. You find the things and people that help it grow. You choose every day, who you want to be and what you want to believe. You set your sights and you start walking.

Being OK with yourself in this day and age is a radical act.

It’s worth it. You are already OK. You are already enough. Believe it, feel it, choose it.

And the money?

When you know you are enough, when you know the Universe is on your side because you truly belong to it, it becomes a much bigger game than just making money. It becomes about living as a vehicle for Divine purpose.

And when that’s the game? The money figures itself out. Or you get what you need to figure it out. It works, somehow.

Not that you still don’t have to do work in the real world. It’s still a 50/50 proposition. “God helps those who help themselves” and all that. But it’s easier and it flows, and you have a source of support you can rely on. This isn’t about magic. This is about true support. We are truly not alone in our journey. We don’t have to make it on our own. We are here as part of something larger. And understanding that changes everything.

I know a lot of people don’t like “The Holidays”. They get depressed, or overwhelmed, or burned out, or just hate the whole thing.

I get it. I have my share of family drama stories and I could bitch about a lot of things.

But I’ve realized that I don’t have to do any of it. And what I do can be entirely up to me.

Now it’s true that I had a head-start. My family is a lot less tradition-based than most. I grew up celebrating Solstice, not Christmas. I also don’t have kids that go to public school and demand Santa Claus and all of that.

But still. I live in the world. And I don’t participate in things I don’t like. And you don’t have to either.

But beyond that, I try to create what I want. Which I think is the more fun, enjoyable, and exciting thing to do. Rather than just protesting and griping and resisting, or bowing out.

Because holidays can be fun. They can be sacred. They can be rejuvenating. They have a purpose. A life-giving, holy purpose.

The word “holiday” is short for Holy Day. But what does that mean to you?

I think I look at holidays differently because of my stint with Wicca.

Wicca is all about making up stuff that works for you.

Wicca celebrates eight holidays that most people have never heard of–and because you are consciously choosing to celebrate these days outside of the mainstream, a lot of emphasis is placed on the reasons behind holidays.

Holidays mark the passing of time and bring awareness to it. They are about the turning of the seasons, the flow of life, taking time to pause and notice, acknowledge, and celebrate that we are alive.

And since Wicca is full of people who wear capes and make up their whole damn religion–they make up whatever rituals they want to use to celebrate. Sure, there are traditional things–May poles at Beltane, etc–and they borrow a lot from history. But mostly they make stuff up.

The essence of Wicca, to me, is that we can create our relationship to the Divine, the one that works for us. The one that speaks to us of magic, mystery, and meets the deepest longings of our heart to know the Divine, to know ourselves, and to know each other.

I bring that idea to holidays.

They are my holidays. They don’t belong to anyone else.

They are about my relationship to the season, to my family, to my friends. They are about what I want to celebrate and notice this year.

Holidays are what we make them. They are for us.

It’s hard to do this in a culture that has a lot of prescriptions–and perhaps your family does too. But to the degree that you can make your holidays about what you want to get out of them, you can reclaim the original purpose and enjoy them again.

Yesterday I hosted my first Thanksgiving ever, at my brand new condo. My brother and his wife and son came (Wow. Five year olds have lungs. And stamina.)

When my brother gave me a hug and congratulated me on my first Thanksgiving at my home, and my new homeownership, I felt this deep relaxation in my body. I felt happy. I felt proud. I felt deeply seen and celebrated. And there was something about it being Thanskgiving that really meant a lot to me.

There is something we deeply need in holidays. It’s about acknowledgment. It’s about taking time to pause and notice what is special about life.

And that is something we don’t do enough in our culture. We go from one task to the next, one accomplishment to the next, one project to the next. We don’t stop and say wow, look how amazing. Let’s just sit here and be happy about everything that we’ve done and everything that is awesome about life right now.

And we need that. We really, really do.

I get that holidays can suck. But they don’t have to. Reclaiming your autonomy is the first step.

The problem with “The Holidays” is not the celebration itself. It’s that the human needs that holidays meets have been obscured and forgotten through generations of encouraging anything-but creativity and autonomy and true connection.

Holidays have lost their center, for a lot of people. They have become about expectations and standards and overwhelm and doing a lot of stuff you hate or don’t want to do but feel you have to do because people expect you to do it and you don’t have a choice. Blech.

There is no way to get in touch with Divinity, and community, play, and creativity, if you are coming from I Don’t Have a Choice About This.

Holidays were designed to meet real human needs of community, acknowledgment, sharing, play, and celebration of life.

But our expectations, and our dread of them, make meeting those needs impossible.

So, reclaiming your autonomy is the first step. And whatever helps you do that, I support.

Even if it means you skip holidays completely for a few years. Or skip the family part. It’s up to you. Do what you need to do, to stop participating in life-denying expressions of holiday-ness. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Autonomy is a hard thing to reclaim, it really is. It takes work and courage to say no to things people want you to say yes to. And it might be too big of a leap to go from wherever you are with holidays to making up a whole new way of doing holidays for yourself.

So, start where you are.

But I would encourage you to, in some small way, find an avenue to make something about “the Season” about celebrating your own connection to your essence, to the Divine, to the mystery of being alive, and to noticing how far you’ve come in the last year and how awesome you are.

Celebrate what is Real and True.

Maybe this year it’s about making up an Anti-Christmas. If that is where you are at, that is what you can celebrate.

Maybe it is about Rest for you. Being in the winter, in the season of rest and fallow-ness, creating down-time and relishing it, hanging out in the deep earthy spaces in your soul, letting yourself be there, acknowledging that winter is a slowing-down, turning-in season.

The point is: it’s your holiday. You can make it your own. You can make it about meeting YOUR needs for celebration, connection, community, creativity, and acknowledgement. In the way that works for you.

Healing is the process of grieving and accepting this pain and change, and integrating the information into our lives in a way that supports our growth and wellbeing. Healing is an opening-up process. The ultimate goal is to reconnect you to the flow of life.

Our resistance to pain and change blocks this flow. Our ability to adapt to change, and to grieve pain and loss, determines how much we will be able to taste life as it unfolds before us.

The stages of grief

If you look at the five classic stages of grieving, there are four stages of resistance/contracting/”inner war”, and then one stage of healing/expansion:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

And that’s OK. This model was developed for dealing with death, which takes our bodies and minds some time to adjust to. It’s OK to take however long it takes to go through the grief process. But in each stage, one can hold in mind the idea to open up and to be kind to oneself (this supports opening up).

I believe that all change requires grieving on some level. Our bodies and minds naturally attach to things and it’s up to us to develop the ability to move through change and transformation gracefully.

Acceptance is not resignation

Resignation is a form of closing-down. Acceptance is an opening-up. To cultivate acceptance means practicing opening our heart when it wants to close.

Being open-hearted requires skilled self-protection

Pain is always an opportunity to open up more; but this requires skill, not just ambition. Being a pain junkie will not transform you. It’s being able to learn from pain that helps us to grow.

To do this requires inner and outer boundaries. If we open our heart when it’s dangerous to do so and if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will get hurt more and shut down again.

Part of cultivating acceptance and open-heartedness is developing the skills to protect ourselves in healthy ways. They go hand in hand. Our mind is not going to give up its shutting-down behaviors if it doesn’t have any sense of trust that we can provide protection for it any other way. You have to earn the trust of the scared parts of yourself by learning to care for them well.

Re-parenting

If your family did not teach you grieving skills, or adapt well to change, this is something you will need to learn and coach yourself through.

But it’s well worth it–developing this “grieving muscle” gives you a strength and inner resilience that keeps you steady and centered throughout everything that life brings.

Or the other side: a skilled artist decides to work at a cafe to have free time/brain-space to pursue art. They never build up enough money to buy a house they long for and always feel like they are scraping by.

Some people make compromises like that and are OK with it, but I’m here to say you don’t have to.

The idea that these two are in opposition is a culturally reinforced myth.

It takes skill and planning to create a vehicle (like a business) that lets you have all the security and all the freedom that you want, but it is possible.

But first you have to believe it is.

Why your brain is afraid of creativity

First, we have this cultural story, lots of them, about “starving artists”.

Then, we have our brains. They are hard-wired to want to, uh, eat. Not starve.

So if you feed the average brain this cultural story about “starving artists”, what is it going to want to do? Not be an artist!!

And that’s not bad. That’s it’s job. There is nothing wrong with fear. It’s just important to examine it and correct the stories that it’s based on.

Stop believing the stories are predictive

The stories about “starving artists” range far and wide and cover many types of professions. There is a lot of fear behind them. And a lot of real people played out these stories.

But that doesn’t mean that YOU will, or that it ALWAYS happens that way.

Our brains have a way of making our stories come true. So what story do you want to live? A creative person who always struggles with money? A financially secure person who is never quite satisfied? Or a person who has defied the odds, and created a way to make a good living that supports their deepest creative yearnings?

Feed your brain something more useful

Find some new stories. Find people who have the lifestyle you want – BOTH creative and financial. Find people who didn’t listen to that story, didn’t give up either need, who had a vision for more and followed it.

The beautiful thing that happens when you really believe this is possible – and that neither energy has to be sacrificed for the other to come to fruition – is that these two powerful energies – the will to survive and the will to be creative and free – they combine and become the will to thrive. And harnessing that combination will give you the power to create a life that you truly enjoy.

(This post inspired by Sarah Dopp’s post Feed the Freak)

1. recognizing that you are “done”
2. giving yourself permission to be “done”
3. actually completing the thing

When and why is it hard to recognize and accept when you are done?

1. If you think you ought to not be done yet.
2. If you thought you would or should be doing “it” forever, or that it would last forever.
3. If you don’t know how to physically complete it, and the fear that you’ll never be able to has you push away even thinking about it.
4. If you feel like you are “helping people” and “are needed” at the thing.
5. If your identity is wrapped up in doing the thing.
6. If you have family or partner or economic pressure to keep doing it.
7. If you are afraid you don’t know what you might do next.
8. If you have an idea of what you might be called to do next, and are afraid and don’t feel ready (this might be a sign that you aren’t actually done or ready).
9. If change, in general, is scary (which it is for all of us).
10. If transitions are hard for you, or were hard or scary in your family (for instance, kids of divorce, with the drop offs and going back and forth between parents, and the huge amount of tension and layers of meaning between your parents that you couldn’t decipher, brings a lot of baggage to transitions. Or if your parent lost a job, and the way it went down was awful and you witnessed that).

Why is completion necessary?

We learn and grow by trying and doing new things. You will always get bored, eventually, and need a change. That doesn’t mean you necessarily have to leave your job, you may be able to restructure it, or take on something new at it. But, given how a lot of jobs are structured, this might not be possible and finding a new gig might be necessary.

Everyone has different thresholds at this. Even as a kid, I was always starting new things, burning through them, and then being completely done with that thing. As a kid, it was relatively easy to cycle through hobbies. As an adult, it’s taken me a long time to accept this about myself and what it means for my work (i.e. that I’ll always be reinventing it and that’s OK).

Practicing completion clears the space for the new things to arise. Without clearing the old things, you are forever beholden to them, and your energy is stuck keeping them alive. A portion of your energy flows to old, incomplete projects. Is that where you want to spend your energy?

Sometimes, you want to be done before you really are done.

On the other hand, sometimes I have wanted to be done so badly, because the thing I had Sourced was not that fun. It was something I needed to work through, but not something I enjoyed. This happens.

Our souls want experience. Sometimes they want experiences that are painful. Not because they are masochists, but because they seek transcendence and integration of that experience.

If you find yourself trying to be done, but just not able to complete or shift the experience, try embracing it instead. Try being where you are, and accepting that there is something not complete here. Try being with the ambivalence and discomfort of being where you are, and look for clues for what that is teaching you, or why you are still drawn to it. Study it. Let it be OK that you are here. Examine any judgments you have about yourself for being where you are, and let them go. There are no experiences that are inherently better than other experiences. There is no better place to be than where you are, fully. Judgment blocks integration and inhibits the flow of movement through an experience.

What if I’m afraid of the new thing?

That’s a good thing. It’s a clue. You are afraid you aren’t ready, but deep inside you know that someday you will be ready. You are afraid of all the things you know you’ll need to go through to get to the place that you can hazily sense is next for you. Relax, though. This process doesn’t need to be painful. If you have “new things”/”transitions” hooked up with “pain”, the idea of new responsibilities, new competencies, new possibilities can be scary just because it’s new. Affirmations can help:

I accept that change is inevitable.

I choose to embrace change.

I have the ability to handle new things.

I always wanted a life of unlimited possibility and now I have it.

Fear can also be a healthy boundary. “Hiding” is OK if that is what you need to do right now.

Contrary to what you may have been told, it’s OK to stay still until you are ready to move. I’ve done this countless times in my life, and it always takes a large dose of self-acceptance.

Consider chickens. They grow in their egg for about three weeks. Then they peck their way out. But this is a natural process. They don’t have anyone “should”ing them at two and a half weeks saying hey, why aren’t you pushing your own envelope? Don’t you believe in your potential? Come on!

Sometimes creating a shell is the next thing. Or it’s the preparation for the next thing. This is not always well understood in our culture. So create your own culture. Decide it’s OK to hide in a cave, hibernate, create a shell, until you are ready.

People get afraid that they will never leave their shell. I don’t really buy that. There are people out there stuck in ruts, this is true – people who are truly hiding. The difference is, when you make that shell, create that nest, hole up in that cave – you are going to have an encounter with yourself. That’s the thing to do in a nest. It’s not about hiding from the world, it’s about encountering yourself. It’s about ignoring the external and finding the center.

Sometimes this looks or feels like depression. Often depression is what gets you there – because you aren’t hibernating and you need to be. Your body eventually refuses to run around when what you really need is to be still. Listen to it.

If you are afraid you will get stuck, ask yourself if you are willing to look at yourself, truly look in the mirror, while you are hibernating. If that’s true, you will not get stuck. You might look and feel stuck. But you will be slowly, inevitably, growing.

I’ve learned to trust this process. To delight in this process. It’s wonderful to be able to go away from the world, and find yourself again. To find a new self, to create a new self – to watch yourself grow from the inside out.

I think people have different needs for this at different times in their life. It’s definitely an integral part of my process; it might be different for you. Mine is kind of dramatic, and looks a lot like depression. It’s still pretty hard to let myself “drop out” for six months. In our culture, we just don’t do that without making it pathological. But I do it. And it works for me. I emerge, with this essential vibrancy and trust in myself. I need the cave to get there.

And there are always moments in there where I am afraid I will never emerge. It’s those moment that teach me the most though – because when I do emerge, they teach me that I can have faith, I can believe in myself. Encountering the core of your fear leaves you vitally alive, as you realize you are more than that fear, and it doesn’t rule you anymore.

A major purpose of hibernation is mourning. To create something new, you don’t just need to let go of the last thing you did. You often need to mourn and grieve and integrate a host of old painful stuff in order to become the person you need to be to do the next thing.

So if your transition is calling you to hole up for awhile, let yourself. Don’t be too eager to move on if what you need is to be still and face what is most deeply true in yourself.

Whatever you need, give yourself

Whatever your process is for deep transitions is, notice it. Embrace it. Love it. Document it, if that helps, with journalling or artmaking. Remind yourself it is a sacred process.