Is your true work something that hasn’t exactly been done before? Do you want to learn skills in helping people, but don’t know which model to use – teaching, coaching, therapist, etc? Maybe none of them feel quite right? Do traditional trainings feel boring, too structured, or not adequate to prepare you for what you truly want to do?

I was in this place a year ago. I was simultaneously attracted to and repelled by many different training options. I knew I wanted to learn more about helping people, but nothing was exactly what I wanted.

I really wanted an apprenticeship of some kind. But even that didn’t seem right, because nobody was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. Heck, I didn’t even know what that was.

The answer I came up with (after working through considerable fear) was to just jump in to trying different things.

My self-made apprenticeship has included:

• Half of a life-coach training, which made me feel more confident starting…
• Several trades of one-on-one business coaching over several months, which led to…
• Teaching a class with one of my trade partners, which turned into…
• A lot of curriculum building and a group-coaching atmosphere (this was the most fun so far!)

Here is what I’ve learned:

It’s a process, jump in.

It’s really scary to start something brand new and be a beginner. It’s tempting to want to find the exact right type of training that will perfectly prepare you for your work and give you a structure to fall back on. But if that’s not happening, you have to just pick one direction and go in it. Trying one thing leads to the next thing which leads to the next thing. So just start.

Move forward when it’s time.

When you’ve gotten enough out of one phase of your training, let go of it. For example, I quit my coaching training half-way through. I can always go back if I later decide I want the certification aspect, but in my body I felt done and I wanted to move on to the next phase of my learning. I realized in the training that I didn’t really need as much formal training as I thought, and I just needed to start doing it. The training helped me realize this; that was it’s job. Each stage’s purpose is to move you to the next stage, until you find something that is so fun you want to keep at it. If you don’t keep moving, you get bogged down. Stay in tune with yourself. You’ll know when it’s time to move on to the next step.

It’s more fun with friends.

In a formal training, one of the aspects that makes it safe for learning is that everyone practices on each other. You can set this up for yourself by doing trades with people who you know and who know where you are at. If you don’t have a strong business community around you, start building one, but also just put it out there on places like Facebook and Biznik. Be honest: I’m learning this thing, and I want to offer sessions for trade, low-cost, free. Make sure you feel OK with whatever you are asking in return, whether it’s low-cost sessions, free sessions, or trade sessions. Often there is a progression where at first you just want to do it for free, and then as you learn your skill you want to at least do a trade, and then you want to primarily be paid. Honor each stage and let yourself ask for what you need to feel good about doing it.

Honor your panic zone.

The learning zone is in between the comfort zone and the panic zone. Don’t push yourself so far, so fast, that you shut down. Let yourself learn gradually, at the pace that is right for you. One of the top benefits of creating your own learning program is that you get to honor your self-hood at every single stage of the journey.

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.

The biggest struggles I and many of my clients have had are around setting and navigating boundaries in business. The client that asks for extras–and you feel queasy inside as you say “Ok…I guess that wouldn’t be that big of a deal”. The person who wants to trade with you and you say yes…even though you don’t really want what they are offering all that much, but you don’t know how to say no. The person who asks for a discount and you reluctantly agree and then kick yourself later. The project that just keeps growing and growing, and you charged a flat fee. The client who always shows up late and you end up giving them a full hour session but part of you doesn’t want to but you didn’t know how to navigate the situation.

These situations all involve boundaries.

In every relationship, boundaries are what make it healthy and functional. Business is the same; you have to know who you are and who you are not, what you will do and what you will not. You need to know how to set, reset, and negotiate boundaries. Boundaries serve to keep your business functioning smoothly, and keep you from burning out.

Don’t underestimate how hard setting boundaries can be. A plan helps.

The clearer you can become internally, the more solid and clear you can be with your clients. I suggest writing down your boundaries in a “Boundaries Plan”.

Here are some examples of business boundaries:

• My minimum project fee is $2000.
• I customize Wordpress blogs, but don’t work with other blog software.
• I’m not open to trades at this time or I only take on one trade client at a time.
• I see people for a minimum of six visits.
• I fix bugs in my software free for six months and then charge my normal hourly rate of $X.
• You must notify me 24 hours in advance to cancel, otherwise I will charge you for the session.

Your boundary plan can include more subtle boundaries as well.

• I will turn down clients who want a rush job; my project turnouround time is 4-6 weeks.
• I will turn down clients who ask me to sell myself to them; I let my work samples speak for themselves.
• I will gauge where people are in their process and suggest X if they are not at least at stage Y.
• I won’t work with people who communicate only via phone or who can’t provide a written spec for their project.

Your boundary plan can also include boundaries you make between your business and your life, such as:

• I don’t work on Sundays.
• My max client load is 3 active projects.
• I won’t answer the business phone line after 6pm, or if I’m eating lunch.
• I don’t do trade shows.

Some people will test your boundaries. Most just won’t know where they are until you tell them.

Most of the trouble people get into is not actually from someone pushing their boundaries. It’s the fear that comes before you even set them. That fear can keep you from spelling them out clearly enough to be understood. It can also lead to defensiveness when you state them–which muddies the water and makes people uncomfortable.

Sometimes people will push, but I’ve found that the stress and awkwardness of that is directly proportional to how clear you are in yourself. If you can stay neutral when you communicate your boundaries, then they will nearly always be respected.

Writing them down and really owning them for yourself will help you stay neutral and communicate them clearly without defensiveness or other sticky energy.

For tricky boundaries, create procedures and policies that you lead clients through.

When I did web design, I had a “Designer’s Readiness Checklist”. It outlined everything people needed to have in place before they contacted me. Then I had a worksheet people filled out that asked them key things about their project. In essence my boundary was, “I don’t take on strategy or organization, I just do the design part”. What my clients saw was a clear procedure they were led through that helped them get organized and think strategically.

My clients appreciated the structure and it served to weed out clients who were not organized or didn’t yet know what they wanted.

For in-person situations, practice your replies.

I spent several years learning how to say no to people who wanted to work with me but I didn’t for whatever reason. It was really hard for me, and then I got really good at it. What helped me the most was finding the right wording–the kind nobody can argue with and I didn’t have to explain:

After reviewing the details of your project, I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together. I recommend …

I had a few different wordings and list of recommendations for different occasions and I kept them stored as snippets in my email program.

Another area I practiced was not giving off-the-cuff project quotes over the phone. If someone asked how much they thought I would charge I would give my standard range (the same one listed on my website) and say I would have to review their project in more detail before I could give a more accurate quote. If they pressed, I would state that I made it a policy to not give quotes on the phone because I know from history that they are not accurate.

When you use the word “policy”, people usually get the hint. If you say in some way, “This isn’t about you, this is for everybody”, then it becomes much harder for them to take it personally.

Pay attention to queasiness, dread, procrastination: these can indicate a need for a boundary.

The more aware we are of what is going on, the more we can do about it. If you are not aware of your boundary, your unconscious will follow its usual patterns–procrastination and avoidance. These are not usually very clear or effective, and take a lot of energy.

Sometimes you have to find boundaries from the outside in. For example, I learned to notice that if I had a client inquiry email that I was procrastinating for more than a week on replying to, that meant that I probably didn’t want to do the project for some reason that wasn’t immediately obvious to me. Procrastination became an indicator to check in with myself , validate that it’s perfectly OK to be choosy, and make a decision that worked for me. (This was a much better strategy than letting it sit there for another week and have my subconscious struggle with it while I started to feel guilty about not getting back to them.) I learned to notice the early warning signs that I was feeling uncertain about setting a boundary, and then just get it over with.

Set boundaries early and often. And don’t hesitate to renegotiate.

When appropriate, work your boundaries into your website and client emails. Don’t assume people will know where they are, and don’t get offended if they assume a different boundary: just educate them in a calm, neutral way. Usually their response will be, “Oh, I didn’t know!”.

And if you forget or slip or are just having a bad boundaries day (stress can cause us to get weak about our boundaries), it’s always OK to say, “Hey, I apologize, I made a mistake when I said …. What I should have said was ….”.

Your boundaries are yours alone–they are what fit you.

Every industry and culture and family and human grouping in general has standards of behavior, and most people tend to assume they are shared. If you don’t share them, feelings of being wrong can get in the way of asking for what you need and setting up clear expectations.

It doesn’t matter what works for someone else, or what someone else expects. What matters is what works for you so you can serve your clients and stay happy. Get really honest with yourself–what do you need to feel nurtured and healthy in your business? What do your clients need to know so your work together goes smoothly and serves you both? It’s OK to ask for that.

Outer boundaries stem from inner boundaries.

Before you can clearly state to another what you want and need, you have to validate and own that your needs and wants are OK. If you don’t have that internal validation, you will not be able to communicate clearly to others.

If you struggle with this, invest in self-care, and evaluate your beliefs about what you have the right to ask for and expect from your life. Is it OK to be 100% happy and satisfied with your life and your work? Or does that make you selfish? What do you really believe, and does it support you?

Having clear boundaries will save you money, stress, and time.

Having a good niche is the first step in finding perfect customers: it’s the attractor.  Boundaries are the other side of the coin. They redirect the “not a good fit” customers and make it clearer who your ideal customers are. They provide your business with integrity and keep everything running smoothly. And they take care of the human vessel that is making all of this happen.

Boundaries also make your business more appealing, because you come across as professional, “together”, and have some structure for people to interact with. Think about interpersonal relationships–we are all wary around someone who is not clear on their boundaries. The same is true in business–the more clear, communicative, and neutral you are about your boundaries, the safer your clients will feel. They’ll know what to expect, and be able to make clean choices.

What kind of boundaries do you need to set?

Sometimes I just can’t go full speed with the socializing, online or otherwise.

Part of why I created my own business was so I could spend long stretches of time doing my own thing. Alone. No contact with people, not even email contact. Not even Twitter. Perhaps especially not Twitter.

I really prefer a few in-depth friendships to small talk, and I struggle with a perceived expectation of availability or consistency or constant productivity online. “Show up and be cool.” Every day. Ack!

I recently joined the Third Tribe private forum, so I posted about this pressure I feel to be social and engaged and productive online – Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc more than I might actually want to. I say “might” because I’m still sorting out my “shoulds” and comparison jackals from my fears from my true desires.

Through the discussion I’m beginning to discern some points to work from.

How to Create a Sane Relationship with Social Media

1. Become aware of the difference between a natural need for alone time vs fear of being rejected publicly, both of which could show up as not wanting to be social or create content online. The former needs acceptance and permission to log off, the latter needs whatever you personally do to work through fears.

2. Find (or create) the size of room you like to talk in. That could be a small core group of Twitter friends or the world stage. Or some combination of both, and different conversations in each. Find the conversations you naturally want to keep up with. Think of blogging etc as “keeping up your end of the conversation”. You may not always want to, but you know that it works best when you are engaged on a fairly consistent way.

3. “Shoulds” indicate standards or expectations. Notice them and then pursue awareness of what naturally works for you. Release comparisons between yourself and others–they create unnecessary pain. Appreciate and honor your uniqueness.

4. Let yourself change as your needs and interests change. Give yourself complete permission to find what works for you and let it evolve over time.

As social media becomes more embedded in our lives, we will all need to find our own right level of engagement in it–just like we currently do for our in-person socialness. Find out what works for you–and let go of the guilt.

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.

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.

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.

Feel your feelings.
All of them.
All of them, feel them, as much of the time as you can.

But, don’t identify with them.
Don’t loop around in thoughts that make them worse.
They are messages, they are flags.

Feel them in your body. Not in your head.
Feel them and let them go.
Listen to them, heed them, and let them go.

Listen to them, but remember you are not them.
You are vast; your emotional brain is limited.
Whatever the feeling, you can handle it; you are bigger than it.

It will not kill you.
Really.
It just feels that way. So feel that too.

Lately the feeling I’ve been processing is anxiety. I never thought of myself as an anxious person before, but now I realize that’s because of all the unconscious patterns I had in place to avoid feeling it. Lovely.

I don’t have much to say on this topic that hasn’t already been written, except to just encourage you to do it.

This is what is on the other side of that feeling you don’t want to feel: freedom. Ease. That soft relaxed feeling in your belly. (There is nothing better really than a relaxed belly.)

10 reasons to feel your feelings:

1. When you suppress a negative feeling, you are suppressing your ability to feel positive feelings like joy, aliveness, happiness.
2. Suppressing emotions is courting depression.
3. It’s not fun, I won’t say it is, but all the antics we do to not feel aren’t fun either. Is your favorite habit or addiction really fun? At this point? Really?
4. There is a wonderful you on the other side of those feelings that you haven’t met yet. The you that can handle whatever comes her way.
5. You stop projecting so much and  become a much nicer person to be around.
6. You get the energy back you were using to suppress your feelings.
7. You get the acceptance you always wanted from everyone else – from yourself – and realize you can give that to yourself any time you want to. You gain emotional independence. Which is fabulous.
8. You feel worse for awhile, but then you feel SO MUCH BETTER. After all that work to avoid it, it’s such a relief to have it over with.
9. You grow and mature as a person as you integrate all the messages those feelings were trying to get to you.
10. You have more access to your intuition as the channel between you and your inner self clears up.

(Note: I’m not disagreeing with the post, I’m just adding another voice. Different people need different messages.)

I write periodically about the machine we call the education system and how it breaks many of us in one way or another such that we need to work hard to repair (i.e. deprogram) ourselves. I think for some, the message was that they were not good enough, not able enough, not special enough. Grading people will do that.

But getting good grades isn’t a blessing either: the message I got was that I was supposed to be great. I had all this “potential” that I was in constant threat of not living up to.

It’s taken a long time for me to embrace the smallness of having one body, one life, and for that to be OK. I don’t have to be great. I don’t have to be epic. I don’t have to change the world in every breath.

I think of all the people throughout history, all the cavepeople, peasants, serfs…nameless people who just lived their lives, cared for the people and animals around them, and died without having accomplished anything great at all – except completing one lifetime on Earth, which is a pretty big accomplishment in itself.

America in particular emphasizes achievement; but it’s not the only path in life worth talking about. Sometimes the spiritual path is an inward one – sometimes it doesn’t look epic at all. I suppose “epic” is in the eye of the beholder, but I think words have power, and I want to say this: it’s OK to be small. It’s OK to be just you. It’s OK however that looks. What matters is that you follow what is in your heart, whether that is to be bigger or smaller than you think you ought to be, or just exactly what you already are.

There is no destiny written in the stars that isn’t also written in your heart. You are the only one who knows what you need to do to be happy – and it could be that you don’t need to do anything much. Happiness could be more a matter of being than doing – of seeing the world a certain way, of letting the world wash over you, of watching, of letting God/Tao/whatever move through you in large and small ways. It doesn’t have to be epic. Most people just live, and that’s OK too.

And you know what? That’s OK.

Winter is supposed to be slow.

Taoism is a lot about following the natural rhythm of things. And the natural rhythm of winter is to hibernate. Many species do it in various forms. Bears and many other animals either hibernate of go into other kinds of reduced metabolic activity. Plants have different growth cycles and usually slow down or stop during the winter.

Our culture has this always-on mentality.

You should blog consistently. You’ve got to do marketing constantly, keep your numbers up. Keep in touch with your customers. Keep up on the industry. Stay informed, be on top of your game.

Blah. That’s not what winter is about.

That’s fine for spring or summer. But in the fall or winter, the natural order of things doesn’t support that kind of go-go-go energy.

It’s normal to get sluggish. Let yourself have it.

Fall and winter are Yin months. They are about slowing down, reviewing the growth of the past year, grieving and letting go (Samhain, Day of the Dead, Yom Kippur), pondering and considering, letting all the new growth settle in and integrate into your system.

When we push ourselves to go against our bodies inclinations, we court depression.

I wonder how much of seasonal depression is actually our internal resistance to just letting ourselves be slower during the winter.

Slow is not necessarily depressed. But I notice that if my inner-critic is going to town about how slow I am being, then I will get depressed. If I feel like napping and going for a walk instead of working, and make myself work, or jackal myself about how I ought to be working, that is really not going to contribute to a happy state of mind.

Our culture doesn’t get slowness. It’s seriously over-Yangified. That means you’ve got to take matters into your own hands.

Affirm winter, embrace winter.

I’m giving myself full permission to move with the rhythm of winter. To go slow, “produce” less, spend more time with feelings of sadness, take my time, adjust to the true pace of the season. (i.e. not the crazy frenetic pace of the “Christmas season”, which is so NOT a season. The season is winter, and the pace is slooooow.

Winter is about reconnecting to something deep and eternal. That takes time.

Death and grieving remind us of the shortness and preciousness of life. Slowing down, we drop what is unimportant or inconsequential. We remember what really matters and reconnect to it. This takes time, presence, quiet. This is the gift of winter. Let yourself have it.