Cheers! It's your time

One of my favorite pockets of time throughout the entire year is the week between Christmas and New Years.  I try my damndest to carve out some “deep work” time as I call it—time to clear the space, reconnect to presence after all the going and indulging, and map out a vision for the coming year.  My inner dreamer gets to dance around and color outside the lines a bit.  If I’m lucky, I try to take a whole morning or afternoon to do so.

 This year has been a no-go.  It just isn’t happening—and that’s okay.  I’m learning to give myself more grace and soften into life’s messy edges. 

 However, in the spirit of community, I’d like to do this deep work—this dreaming if you will—together and ease into the new year.  

If you’ve been on this self-discovery journey with me for a while, you may know I’m a huge fan of rituals rather than resolutions.  If you’re new to my blog and this glorious work of deepening self-awareness and transformation, welcome.  You are right on time and I can’t wait to connect with you.  

Here’s why I have a thing for ritual.  I’m convinced, over time, practicing good habits creates this soft light in our lives that draws out potential, undergirds desire, and creates balance where there is imbalance.  They are also built on loving connection with self as opposed to fear-based tactics. 

 Interestingly, I think humans find extremes far easier than balance.  We like to react out of fear instead of responding out of desire.  Marketing moguls exploit this behavior big time, and anyway you slice it, they’re clever.  They know we go off the rails a bit over the holidays and tend to wake up today with a foggy head and a few extra pounds.  Swooping in, they save the day with their slashed gym membership prices and programs promising a new you in just one month.

Listen, if you’ve just given Gwyneth Paltrow a run for her money and spent all of yours on the hottest new cleanse, that’s okay too.  I get it.  Been there and have all the tee shirts and half-used supplement boxes to prove it.  

 Yet with each passing year, as I show up for myself and my community, I’m learning something invaluable: what we really want is to create a feeling, not just a desired outcome.  As a result, this is why we’re rarely satisfied with any level of success or accomplishment—the feeling fades.  We want more.  

 Today, let’s lay some groundwork for the edits, habits, and goals you’d like to see crystallize in 2022. Here are four crucial questions to help you do so.

I hope you’ll join me and carve out some well-deserved time to journal about the picture you’d like to build in 2022.  Come back to it over and over again.  Realign with its truth or tweak it if your course requires a deviation. 

Here we go:

• What do you want to feel more of in 2022? (i.e. energized, awake, confident, accepted)

• Where do you want to go in 2022? (This can be figurative or literal. i.e. I want to explore a new city, yoga class, or I want to go from full-time to part-time at work so I can spend more time writing)

• What do you want to learn in 2022? (i.e. I want to learn to play drums or I want to learn to meditate)

• What do you want to change in 2022? (Reminder: this is desire-driven, NOT fear-driven!  Approach this from a place of worthiness rather than insecurity.  i.e. I’d like to build in more margin for rest and play into my life.)

 I can’t wait to hear your feedback from this exercise. When we give voice and ink to our desires, we take them from whim to intention.  Let’s ease into the new year, listening, noticing, and responding to its inviting call to action.  If you’d like some extra light for the journey ahead,  I’m your girl.

I can’t wait to see all that 2022 has in store for you.

Cheers, indeed! It’s your time. 

The Importance of Celebration

As we move into Christmas week and the final days of 2021, I’m reflecting on the importance of celebration.  And not just from a fun, put on your party dress and dance mindset.  I’m all for fun, yet I believe deep down that celebration is good for the soul and the mind.  

Life is hard.  I’ve learned this with a completely new context this year.  And human beings tend to be “velcro for the negative and teflon for the positive” as I once heard it described.  We come by this dynamic honestly.  We as humans are wired for survival.  Primal man was set on high alert, scanning for danger and foraging for food to score the daily meal.  

The fight-flight-or freeze fear mechanism allowed our species to not only survive, but evolve throughout generations.  

Today, our realities are much different.  Hopefully we know where our next meal is coming from and aren’t running from a drooling beast donning a big appetite and sharp teeth.  

And yet we haven’t necessarily outgrown this negative bias that’s carried us through to our current modern society.  We tend to hope for the best and count on the worst in order to protect us from the vulnerability of joy made manifest in possible disappointment.  Again, humans are wired for safety, not a risky celebration.  I call this the Other Shoe Syndrome.  What if you get your hopes up and then the other shoe drops? Brené Brown calls it foreboding joy. Instead of basking in joyful moments, we self-protect and beat vulnerability to the punch.  This scarcity is part of our human biology and design.  

Now, that’s NOT to say that we can’t work to soften this prickly edge.  Neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to rewire, form and reorganize synaptic connections—basically to create new realities despite conditioning and genetics—proves we can change.   

Do you know how we do this?  

You guessed it…we celebrate.  When we make it a point to consciously celebrate little victories, progress, togetherness, and people in our lives, we retrain our brains to override our brain’s natural negative bias.  When we celebrate, we fire and wire new neural pathways that eventually help us create a more joyful, abundant life.  

I don’t know about you, but I am here for abundance.  I am here for deep and meaningful relationships.  I am here for the joy that longs to be chosen as we bow down to gratitude over resentment.  I’m here for the party.

So, Dear One, I pray this week you will give the precious gift of your time and attention to what IS good, true, and beautiful in your world.  Find just one or two small things and celebrate like you mean it.  

Your Enneagram Classroom Awaits You

This year has been integral for me in so many ways.  I won my battle with breast cancer and started a new business called The Practice.  Neither were by any means easy but I’m so proud of both.  It’s no coincidence that the year I faced the most daunting physical and emotional challenge, I launched my self-care passion project.  As I shared in last week’s blog, I’m 100% certain that my cancer journey was victorious due to years of my own self-care and a multitude of prayers.   I learned first hand, attitude is, indeed, everything.  

As we cross this 2022 threshold, I’m so thrilled to bring you a deeper dive into both self-care and the Enneagram.  I’ve got several opportunities for you to experience both! Over the course of the year, the founding members of the Practice gave us some vital feedback—more Enneagram  content!!!  So that’s what you’ll get.  The monthly subscription will give all the goods of the original program: daily journal prompts, yoga flows, guided meditations, expert interviews, and monthly support sessions PLUS core enneagram content each month.  We will explore concepts like growth paths, subtypes, wings, relationship styles, and more!

To love yourself is to first know yourself—to really understand the why behind how you think, feel, and act.  The Enneagram is the best tool we have for self-understanding and development.  Further understanding how to take care of you in all your glorious uniqueness is exactly what we’ll do! 

I’ll also be offering two exciting in-person opportunities to build your Enneagram toolkit.  Starting in February, I’m partnering with Nashville City Club to offer a monthly Enneagram Mastermind Group.  It’s a great opportunity to meet other professionals in the area and learn how to apply the Enneagram in your work and life.  

Lastly, Bloom groups are back! Bloom group is an enneagram-focused therapy group for women.  For anyone who wants a more affordable therapy option, groups are a wonderful option.  It offers a safe place to process the ups and downs of life and connect to other like-minded women.  It’s also an amazing way to use the Enneagram for healing and transformation.   

I’ve been studying and using this powerful tool for 15 years now and I can honestly say it has illuminated life and relationships in remarkable ways.  No matter where you are on your Enneagram journey, I believe you can find a place to go deeper with me in 2022!  I hope you’ll join…

5 Things Chemo Taught Me

My cancer diagnosis back in April of this year was an unexpected gift in many ways.  Perhaps most glaring was that it forced me to take a forensic inventory of my life—and how I’d been living it up until that point.  It crystalized the things that were and are truly important. It has invited me into more personal integrity—alignment with my deeply held values.  It convinced me there was no reason to sweat the small stuff—adulting means we have more responsibility, more to live for, more to lose, and more to let go of when it ceases to serve us.  

I’ll never forget the day after I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  We attended a friend’s over-the-top gorgeous wedding outside of Nashville.  I  had no idea what the course of treatment would be at that time.  All I held to that day was the certainty that  my story had taken a dramatic shift to the tune of that terrifying “c” word.   

I savored every single minute that day.  I got to dress up (which is my spiritual gift),  hugged and kissed my 2-year-old when we dropped him off at my folks house on the way, sipped champagne, and held my husband’s hand tighter than I can ever  remember.  I even got to slow dance with him.  As my cheek pressed up against his crisp suit jacket, I cried hot tears of joy, gratitude, and fear all at once.  I’d been given another day and the days of taking this beautiful life for granted passed right then and there.  That was another gift I’d been granted: perspective.

From where I sit today, eight months later, the lens I look through isn’t fear, it’s sheer possibility.  I’ve undergone a bilateral mastectomy, a brutal recovery, countless doctor visits, smaller procedures, and chemotherapy.  I’ve lost my hair completely.  I’ve lost the illusion of invincibility.  But I’ve gained so much more.  I’m pretty sure my heart grew.  I know my faith did.

Along the way, especially during chemo, I learned five things that I believe we can apply in the face of any challenge.   I want to share those things with you today.  

1. Guard an open mind:  Keeping an open mind in the face of adversity is necessary.  We will never be able to predict the future and going to the worst-case-scenario is futile as a result.  Though oftentimes we slide right into a fight-flight-or-freeze fear response, practicing curiosity is everything as we start to thaw out. 
   

2. Life is hard—it’s our attitude that makes it a bit easier: At my last oncologist  appointment, my doctor told me something that I’ll always be grateful for.  She told me that in all her years as an oncologist treating cancer patients of every kind, I was in the top one percent whose chemotherapy experience seemed  easy and even inspiring.  She attributed that to my positive attitude every step of the way.  I’ll tuck that away in my pocket the rest of my days and forever swear by the power of a positive attitude.
   

3. Protect your time and energy:  It is totally okay and even necessary to pull back from our normal responsibilities during difficult seasons.  One way we do this is by setting boundaries around our time and energy.  For me, my immunocompromised state required this.  However, it was a lesson either way.  I learned to let my “no” be as good as my “yes” without guilt.  I encourage you to do the same!
   

4. Self-care pays off: It’s no accident I started the Practice, my enneagram-based self-care business, the same year I got cancer.  It was a lesson in synchronicity.  I have been practicing self-care (especially meditation, exercise, therapy, etc. ) religiously for decades.  I witnessed first hand how every single time I showed up for myself over the years paid it forward to undergird me in the most physically and emotionally daunting season of my life.  Practicing self-care will always serve you when you need it the most.
   

5. Let people support you but not always advise you: People are well-meaning. I do believe this.  However, each of us has a unique story and process. There’s no one size fits all. Take the advice of others with a grain of salt and as a gesture of support.  My chemo experience, (that 1% situation my oncologist observed) was not informed by the stories of other’s experience with cancer.  And boy am I glad!  

I suppose another gift cancer gave me was a nudge to return to a lost identity—an artist.  Life is simply too short to dry up creatively.  Writing is my first passion.  Self-expression through songwriting and recording is something I stopped pursuing in my mid-thirties.  This next year I’m making some changes though.  I can’t wait to share some projects with you in January.  

Thank you for accompanying me through this incredibly wild ride.  I hope and pray your journey unfolds in beautifully unexpected ways…and where there is suffering…I pray God’s grace surrounds you.  Life is a constant gift waiting to be unwrapped.  Let’s open it up with childlike wonder this season.

Your Gift is Inside

I want to take a quick minute to say a huge thank you and Merry Christmas! 

Whatever your holiday traditions, it feels so important to me to take time out of all the busyness and hard work and celebrate those things that matter the most.  

After all, I fear as a culture, we’ve lost the art of celebration—and savoring.  

This month, as you may be in the midst of family gatherings, travel, or sneaking that third handful of toffee (I saw that 😊), I pray you take a  moment to celebrate the work you’ve done for you to untangle the false beliefs that have held you back in the past.  Isn’t that what we are tasked with on this glorious and often terrifying journey from the head to the heart?  Unlearning the stuff that doesn’t serve us anymore?  

Well I’m proud of us!  We’ve been unravelling nicely this year and it’s time to do the important work of sealing it all in with love and celebration.  

Something that’s been stirring inside me lately is how to cultivate more faith.  This season, I want to unearth the faith and awe I had as a child.  The simple, yet stunning wonder that was there from the very beginning.  I want to unlearn a bit of the fear I picked up along the way.  Sure, fear helped me survive for a bit, yet it has made my faith feel dim.  

Maybe it’s having a two-year old (or my overall space-cadet-ness due to chemo brain…and yes, it’s real.)  Whatever it is, I love the idea of detaching from some of the “grown-up” fear in order to rediscover the childlike faith that’s our God-given birthright.  

This is good news for you and me!  Why? Because it means we’ve already got everything we need deep inside.   We get to rediscover it this season, and perhaps for the first time.   

If this feels weird and foreign, don’t worry, it should—letting go of what’s familiar in order to receive what’s new can be!  Your brain is not used to it.

We’ll get there, together.  We’re building this supportive community that will only grow stronger in 2022.  

This month, however, let’s celebrate—and savor—how far we’ve already come together.  

Thank you for joining me.  For having faith and putting one foot in front of the other, often blindly, in order to give yourself the gift of time and attention.  It’s important, life-giving work.

You are a gift to me…and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the days ahead.