The Fall Edit: 2022

Fall is undoubtedly my favorite season. I feel a bit like Mr. Fitzgerald in that life seems to offer a second, and equally romantic, Spring, or new beginning when early October rolls around. Yet I’m also well acquainted with the struggles and temptations that come along with the changing seasons. The days get shorter, schedules mount up, self-care tends to wane, and I often feel a dank, subtle chill of loneliness sneak in.

Have you struggled much with seasonal depression?

I have…big time. That said, I’ve learned the hard way how vital it is to intentionally manage expectations and routines in order to stay connected to daily hope and healing. In light of this, I like to send out a Fall Edition of sorts—full of new ideas and opportunities to stay on top of our self-care game as we head into the coming months. If you follow fashion, it’s a bit like that thick, bounding, September Vogue edition boasting fall’s most delicious offerings. Pure magic.

This year, I’m more excited than ever to explore some new opportunities to connect to yourself and your community in life-giving ways.

All too often we’re tempted into autopilot—that sleepy trance of contained chaos—and end up just going through the motions. I don’t know about you, but I want to feel alive and awake in my experience this fall, savoring each moment like a gift—or that inaugural pumpkin spice latte.

Here are a few ideas to support you in this pursuit. I think you’ll find something you can enjoy despite the hectic demands of the season.

1. Virtual Group Enneagram Coaching: I’m thrilled to get back into the classroom, so to speak, this fall as I am now offering Group Enneagram Coaching from the comfort of your own laptop. The Practice is a self-development toolkit that combines practical ways to use the Enneagram, mindfulness, writing, and yoga in your daily experience in order to truly thrive and create the optimal life and relationships you desire. I created this self-care tool kit for clients who needed an extra nudge in their work outside of therapy. The constant drone I’d hear in my work with clients is simple: I need tools! So I developed the Practice to serve as a therapeutic tool kit combining meditation, writing, yoga, and of course, the enneagram, to support you in your ongoing self-development work. Sign up today and be a part of this powerful enneagram community.

2. Infrared Sauna: Need a detoxification boost? I sure did after going through chemotherapy last year for breast cancer. I decided to do everything in my power in order to support the highest immunity possible. I joined Pure Sweat Sauna Studio. Pure Sweat Sauna Studio is a space for wellness, rooted in community and connection, offering state-of-the-art, full spectrum, infrared saunas.

Acclaimed by the world’s leading health experts, elite athletes, and people just like you, Infrared Saunas deliver an abundance of clinically tested and research-based health and healing benefits, including detoxification, pain relief, weight loss, reduced inflammation, and deep, mental + physical relaxation.

3. Self-Care Workshop: When it comes to self care, you need a plan.
This weekend workshop will help you create a self care plan that gets you where you want to be. Join Ally Fallon, Koula Callahan, and myself, FEBRUARY 25, 2023 in Nashville, TN for a restorative and inspiring day you won’t forget!

Do you feel like you’re just ‘winging it’ when it comes to self care? Honestly — I get it. It’s hard to know what to spend your time on and what will actually contribute to your personal growth.

But self care doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to guess anymore.

The Self-Care Workshop will help you create a simple self-care plan you can use daily to create lasting, positive change in your life. With a daily self-care routine you can practice on your own, you’ll gain clarity in your life and pave the path towards growth.

It’s simpler (and cheaper!) than you think.

Deepen your self-awareness with the EnneagramUnderstand why you think, feel and act the way you doDevelop healthier relationships with yourself and othersReduce anxiety and improve your mood

Don’t leave your self care up to chance. Come learn how to nurture yourself in a way that creates positive change in your life. Stay tuned for registration details coming soon!

You deserve this.

4. Breathwork: Breathwork is an active meditation technique that facilitates powerful emotional+energetic release. It can change emotional default settings, lifetime patterns of depression, anxiety and addiction, connect you to your intuition, and open your heart to increased gratitude and self-love. It is an efficient and effective way to emotionally detox. We receive 90% of our daily energy from breath alone and 70% of our bodily toxins are meant to be discharged through breath. What are the benefits? Release tension and everyday stress that makes you feel anxious, burned out, and overwhelmed.

• Creates a renewed sense of vitality

• Supports healing on all levels—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual

• Brings balance to your life, allowing you to tap into your inner peace and joy

• As the energetic blockages are cleared, you are able to manifest what you want in your life effortlessly

• Leaves you with a deeply relaxed and calm state of being

Breathwork engages the nervous system to release tension and distress that negative thoughts and traumas cause in the body. Over time, healthier new neural pathways are developed and the nervous system is re-calibrated to bring optimal well-being.
For more info or to book a Breathwork session, contact the lovely Sarah Richey and take your wellness journey to a whole new realm.

5. Holiday Meditation Challenge: This Holiday season starting in November, I’m inviting you into an eight-week meditation challenge. You’ll receive a (free!) meditation each week with a specific grounding focus. For example, gratitude, self-compassion, presence, creativity, expectations, rest, etc. Meditation is an incredible way to deepen self-awareness, foster a sense of calm, as well as build out resilience in the midst of chaos. Plus, there will be a fun surprise give-a-way at the end of the year you WON’T want to miss!! Follow me on Instagram at @katiegustafson.co to join the party. :)

That’s a wrap! I can’t wait to hear how you’re taking care of you this fall…and hopefully see you at the Practice or in early 2023 for the Self-Care Workshop!

 

The Long Player

I’ve never met a single soul who made a New Year's resolution and stuck with it.  If you are that person, I’d like to shake your hand.  However, as a rule, resolutions typically don’t stick. Hence my lack of buy in. They seem reactionary and extreme...like damage control or wishful thinking...or both.  The psychology is flimsy, a bit like elimination diets.  You tell me I need to cut out everything delicious in my life and replace it with cabbage soup and kale, and I’ll laugh in your face to mask the panic attack happening inside. 

I need a gentler, more realistic approach to avoid the stress of such a drastic shift and ensure I’ll commit for longer than half a day.  

Again, if resolutions are the way you roll, my hat is off and this post may not be for you.  However, if you’re like me and desire lasting transformation in your life yet often lack the follow-through necessary, keep reading.  It’s deflating to see yet another year pass by and remain in the same place you were this time three years ago.  My theory as to why this happens is we are working with old flat programming.  The thoughts you had about yourself  three years ago are what lead you to who you are today.  

The problem with resolutions, or any type of short-term goal, is they focus on tactics rather than strategy.  They tend to advocate behavior change without accounting for the mindset–or belief system–necessary to support them.  

For example, you decide you’d like to learn to play the cello this year.  You’ve always loved its hauntingly beautiful sound and every time you listen to Yo-Yo Ma, you weep.  This is your new calling in life and 2019 is the year you own it.  You hire a teacher, buy a cello, set up a space in your home office to practice, apologize in advance for the ruckus about to be made to anyone living in close quarters, and get right to it.   

Three months in, deadlines at work are foreboding, the kids are struggling in school, and your precious sleep dwindles as you lie awake in bed playing mental Tetris to rig the next day’s schedule together.  What gives? Your dream of playing Royal Albert Hall next February.  

Why? Because your identity allows you to opt out.  You’re a working mom learning to play cello as opposed to a practicing cellist.  

When dreams are challenged by circumstance, it’s dig deep time.  We must practice our beliefs about the goal rather than just strive to reach the goal itself. If I stretch my identity and think bigger about my goal, I’m not thrown off course when my day(s) gets hijacked by unexpected interruptions, and they will. 

What is the transformation you long to see this next year?  Is it your health, finances, relationship status, or entrepreneurial success?  Here’s an idea: set longer term goals if they are really important to you.  Zoom out a bit and practice seeing yourself as the cellist with the supporting thoughts and beliefs necessary for that desired outcome.  Consistent action will follow and sustain only if your belief about yourself can support it.  Otherwise, you’ll act out of urgency instead of desire—scarcity instead of enough.    

January one is right around the corner.  Let’s do it differently.  Why wait? 

Today—and everyday—is your stage.  Be the long player, not just the stand in.  

Love & Gratitude,
Katie

 

Finishing Strong

Last week, a dear friend said something so profound in conversation.  I’ve been marinating in it since.  She said, “I’m struggling to find my now.  I’m either stuck in the past or out somewhere in the future.  I desperately want to find my now.”

Can you relate to this?  I sure can—especially in this eleventh hour of 2018.  It’s tempting to camp out in what “could have been”: more productivity, success, health, passion, what have you. This temptation is then compounded by the seductive tendency to run tactics on a fresh new start right around the proverbial bend.  

You know the drill.  The diet and exercise folks join forces and broker a zillion dollar deal every fourth quarter counting on you and I to wake up January 1 after sipping on the stiff and steady cocktail of two parts bloated, one part foggy, and a heavy shake of shame.  We buy-in to the ultimate extreme makeover our resolution(s) of choice promises only to throw in the towel a week later hangry, and with the selfless support of your dearest pint: Ben & Jerry, or Stella Artois.   

It’s so predictable, right?

I believe it’s high-time we outgrow this brand of insanity. Thankfully, there is another way. Conscious living invites us into self-awareness. If we accept this invitation, we immediately enter a room full of freedom—and responsibility.  

Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist, Logotherapy creator, and Holocaust survivor, said it best, 

“Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space.  In that space, there lies your freedom and power.”  

The month of December presents us with a vital passageway—a sacred space.  Incidentally, it’s one of the tightest spaces in which to remain present and self-aware.  If we consciously choose presence, that powerful space of the here and now, as opposed to the sugar-laced trans of consumerism, I believe we will finish strong.  

“Buzz-kill much?” you ask. 

Fair enough, however, I wholeheartedly believe our most powerful, abundant lives are built with consistency, brick by brick, and experienced moment to moment.  Why?  Because if I am present in each moment, I hold the keys to reality and relationship.  By this I mean, I live in wakeful presence and respond truthfully to my desires, to my needs, and to those of others.  I also forgo the trap of extreme, reactionary living. 

Speaking of the needs of others, the Holiday season is often one of deep pain and loneliness in the hearts of many.  I’ve known this pain well.  Yet at the same time, there is this massive expectation to shine up the shell of appearance and ignore the voice of pain that hums a haunting cry for help.

When you and I narc-out in trance, we are unavailable to those needs all around us.  Likewise, we silence our own.  Needs such as connection, compassion, and rest get overrun by the loud liturgy of commerce and consumption.  

These next several weeks, give yourself and others this gift of presence.  Enjoy the heck out of them, consciously choosing to come back to the moment, no matter how often the drone of chaos calls.  Each time you make this choice, you step into your freedom...your power.  Don’t bother eliminating the noise. That’s an isolating crap-shoot. Simply cultivate an inner peace amidst the noise as you loosen the grip of control and soften the lens of extremes.  

Finishing strong looks more like staying soft than hustling hard.  

And so we celebrate the end with a conscious awareness of now’s beginning….

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

 

Upper Management: How to Lead your Life

If there is anything I've learned from my own winding journey of emotional and spiritual  integration, it is the importance of ritual—or practice.  How do I take full responsibility for my experience, and in doing so, create the life I desire as opposed to a life I settle for?  It’s the difference between leading your life and merely managing it. I believe we close this gap by developing self-awareness through simple practices.

Chances are, if you’re reading blogs about emotional health and wellness such as this one, or have sought therapy at some point, you’re a leader.  Why? Because you are actively participating in cultivating the hidden potential in your life.  You’re finding your edge and sharpening it.  

I like Brené Brown's definition of a leader in her latest book, Dare to Lead: “Anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.” 

Sounds doable, right? Within reach?  Without a doubt, I believe it absolutely is. 

Hold up though.  If you and I are going to be leaders, developing and speaking into the lives of others, don’t we first need to lead our own lives fairly well? Otherwise, we prop up a flimsy facade of ego and lack the deep roots of character and credibility necessary to sustain leadership from a place of truth and integrity.  

So here we are, headed full-throttle into the glorious blur of the Holiday season.  For me, this time of year resembles a dialed-in dance with Upper Management.  By this I mean, the steady samba of forgetfulness—losing touch with all those grounding practices and rituals that keep me connected to presence and structure {read: sanity} throughout the months leading up.  I start managing my life instead of leading it, like a crazed Sugar Plum Fairy twirling to Tchaikovsky on repeat.  Can I get a witness?

How then do we slow down that dance and lead from a place of intention instead of reaction? I’m convinced the unsexy truth is we get really good at practice.  

Practice what??

I’ve got three uber simple rituals for you to practice this week. Feeling frisky? Commit to six weeks that will carry you, soaring high right into the new year.

1. First thought: When your eyeballs pop open first thing in the morning, guess what? A first thought also starts to percolate.  That first thought has the power to steer your day either north to Mt. Abundance, or south, to Lake Scarcity.  You have creative license to craft that thought, coloring the trajectory of your day.  If that thought is, “I’m just so tired and didn’t get enough sleep.” Guess which direction you're headed? Yep… straight south to scarcity.  You’re in the driver's seat though, so take one minute first thing in the morning, to carefully choose the thought that will direct your day in the right direction.  The scenery is much better on this route, I promise.

2. Gratitude: Throughout the day, take three one-minute breaks and identify at least three things you are grateful for in the moment.  Meal times are ideal to practice this as we (hopefully) slow down and hop off the treadmill of our day.  The goal here is to keep them simple (i.e. lungs that work, food to eat, a new day, a job or hobby, a dear friend).

3. Belly-breathing: It’s fascinating to me that as a culture, we largely suck at breathing.  Our overall vitality and quality of life immediately improves when we practice deep, steady breathing.  But guess what?  We’re just. so. busy.  I’m calling BS on busy.  For at least one minute each day, practice slow, belly-breathing.  Breathing into our belly, or body’s center of intelligence, brings a tangible feeling of groundedness.  Place your hand on your belly and feel it rise and fall, like a cashed-out kid at naptime.  We’re often so disconnected from our bodies, which stunts us from experiencing the fullness of each moment.  Belly-breathing is the quickest way to connect us back to presence and the intelligent knowing of our bodies.

If these seem too pedestrian—or basic—as you step into CEO of YOU, guess what?  Get over it.  Tough love, my friend.  The best musicians in the world got that way because they nailed the basics, and still practice them. We’re all guilty of getting in our own way by not practicing what we preach. I’m pretty sure I wrote the book on self-sabotage.  However, now is the time to return to the basics and start leading a life that inspires hope and desire.  My challenge to you is this: have the courage to do the small things that lead to big change.  Inspire yourself so much that others start to lean into your light and see themselves in a new, empowered way.  I’m pretty sure that’s called an icon.  Greatness starts off small and grows in that light. 

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

 

The Hospitality of Emotion

I love hosting dinner parties– the planning, shopping, prepping, pairing, cooking, connecting, eating, lingering– hell, I don’t even mind the clean up so much.  I’m pretty sure my most domestic moments happen in the kitchen. (Laundry? Not my gig, much to my husband’s chagrin.)  For me, cooking has always been a creative as well as a therapeutic outlet for me.  For a hot minute in my mid-twenties, I toyed with the thought of culinary school.  In my short-lived career as a sous chef at a local wine bar/cafe, I found that cooking on someone else’s watch for people I couldn’t actually connect with was a deal breaker. It hijacked the joy for me. 

I eventually discovered two real driving passions behind my love for all things culinary: the connection that happens around it and the creativity had in the process (oh, and there is that eating thing as well).  Hence, this favorite past time of mine—throwing dinner parties.  I get a buzz just thinking about it.  

We live in a world on crack–a world jacked up and in a constant crazed state of busy, exhausted, immediacy, devices, and traffic–all set to repeat.  Hospitality has become a lost art because it forces us to slow down and do things that can't be automated and/or bypassed by hitting the nearest Chipotle or even the newest foodie hot spot on the scene.  As a result, we lose out on a beautiful process that facilitates good old-fashioned, real-time connection, intimacy, and laughter.

This past Saturday evening, myself and five other ladies hosted a wedding celebration at my house. Having an outdoor sit-down dinner party in the young days of November in Nashville is like betting your life savings at a craps table in Vegas. It’s risky, if not ludicrous. 

Much to our amazement, God flexed his creative muscles and painted the most magical fall scape one could possibly ask or pray for.  The wind, cold, and rain came to a precise halt.  The sun-drenched rolling hills popped with a smattering of brick, gold, and orange.  The burn your-eyes-out blue sky held on patiently all the way up to sunset.  Between the outdoor heaters, cozy blankets strewn on every other chair, and the roaring conversation and laughter, we stayed warm well into the night.  It was delicious and lovely complete with clinking glasses, a stained table runner, and hours of clean up the next morning.  Perhaps my favorite part of the evening was the interesting mix of friends who came, both new and old.  Stories were shared, intimate toasts given, and wild connections were made.  It was truly a magical evening.  

As I sat back contentedly and observed conversations happening across the table, glasses being filled, fall flavors offering up their glory, something occurred to me...something big.

Why can’t we learn to practice hospitality internally with our own full cast of emotions? What if, we welcomed them openly, leaning in to the complex story they are trying to tell instead of handing them the keys to our misery?  I’ve been intrigued by this idea ever since, playing around with it in my head and heart…and I like it.

Emotions are a gift if you can believe it.  I sure didn’t for long stretches of my existence.  I always thought emotions had all the power, dictating the success of any given day from the moment my eyeballs popped open in the morning.  I used to feel totally powerless over my emotions, especially anxiety, she was a loud and clumsy beast.  What I have come to learn and embrace with open arms, and a big fat sigh of relief, is that my emotions are not who I am.  I am not my anxiety, sadness, hurt, depression, etc. 

They are also not against me.  Of course, there are more enjoyable ones we feel such as glad and excited; we tend to coddle them like spoiled children.  Then there are negative feeling ones such as guilt and anger we attempt to avoid like loud, messy roommates. However, the truth is they all invite us to the greater wisdom of our needs and desires.  Our emotions are a gift nudging us towards a more colorful, expansive experience.  

Just as the generous practice of hospitality beckons deeper connection and understanding of our unique perspectives and experiences across a dinner table, the inner landscape of our feelings long for a space to be heard.  How will we host these voices, facilitating a curious exchange, an open conversation?  Here are a couple of questions to ask them when they chime in, with their often abrasive tone.

What am I feeling?  Sad, hurt, fear, anger, lonely, guilt, glad?  Naming it identifies and externalizes it.  

Where do I feel this feeling in my body?  (Our body’s center of intelligence houses emotions just as our heart’s center does.)

What is the story you are trying to tell me?  i.e “I am afraid I don’t have what it takes to succeed, I'm not enough”.  “I am guilty because I spoke harshly to my co-worker”.

What is the need attached to the emotion? i.e. “I need some encouragement and affirmation, ” or “I need to apologize for reacting at work. I was pretty fried and took it out on Sarah.”

How will I meet that need?  i.e. Reach out to a trusted friend or have a conversation to set the record straight, etc…

Emotional hospitality removes unnecessary shame from our internal experience by letting light and air into dingy, dusty corners of our beings.  It swings wide open the door of our heart and places a fresh mix of flowers on the table, welcoming deeper connection and cohesion.  It nourishes our beings to live with presence and generosity.  When we are willing to curiously experiment with each and every emotion, engaging it like we would a stranger at a dinner party, we gain new insight and perspective.  We hear a new story.  If we listen closely enough, we may even hear our own story.  

Love & Gratitude,
Katie