I wish I'd had this 5 years ago

I’ve heard it said, as writers, our ideal audience is us, five years ago.  So at 42, I’m writing to my 37-year-old self.  After all, we write what we know.  I suppose the lessons of life take a solid three to five years (at least!) to really get into our bones.

Five years ago, I was on a tear, hustling in about 20 different directions all in the name of productivity—worthiness I suppose.  I had one speed…fast.  Even though I’d come a long way on my journey of healing and wholeness, I was swinging hard in the direction of impossible expectations for myself and my life.  

In fact, I was so worn out, my body started to slowly break down, manifesting all sorts of back, neck, and jaw pain.  Even though I didn’t feel depressed, my body began calling out for some attention as there was still some work to be done deep inside.  Sure, I’d been a therapist for a while, yet needed to take my own advice and stop ignoring parts of me that desperately needed some love.

Let’s just say, I was seriously confused about the whole self-care thing.  I worked out hard, I enjoyed time with girlfriends, I went for the occasional mani/pedi, I journaled here and there, but I never fully stepped off the treadmill of what I’ve come to call my internal split.  By this I mean, my disconnection from myself and the present moment.  I was always somewhere else,  “out there.”  Self-care felt like a detour—a delayed pit stop or something.   

Fast forward  to today.  A lot has happened.  I got married, had my son, witnessed a pandemic, overcame breast cancer.  And somewhere in there, I woke up to the glaring fact that something needed to change if I wanted to actually show up authentically for my family and my dreams.  My internal  split needed an internal shift.  I knew a different set of circumstances wouldn’t change anything.  For the first time in my life, I quit hustling for my worthiness and started caring for the little girl inside who was flat out  tired.   

I’d mistaken self-care for something to be checked off the to-do list, quickly to return to life as I knew it.  It felt squishy—or weak or something.   It became a way to numb the soreness after a long day, like a glass of wine or a nice long bubble bath.  Whereas those things are lovely, they never seemed  to make me feel alive or more me.  Relaxing?  Yes.  Connective? hmmm…not so much.

I wish I’d known what true self-care is five years ago.  I wish I’d had a  roadmap, or ritual, to practice on the regular that was grounding, healing,  and life-giving.   Sure, I did eventually figure it out by the grace of God and some hardcore burnout. Maybe this was exactly as it should be.  However, I’d like to break the fall for anyone who’s curious. 

I believe we get good at whatever we practice.  Resilience in life is really about practice.   True self- care is simply nurturing resilience and compassion through practice in our everyday life.  It’s about bringing our whole self online—integrating mind, body, and spirit. 

Want to go deeper into that space with me? Join me in the Practice.

How to Reclaim Your Power Every Day

Almost one year ago, I got an unwanted phone call.  On the other end was Dr. Lisa Bellin, the breast specialist at St. Thomas West hospital here in Nashville, TN.  She gave me the grim news that the biopsy she performed two days earlier was in fact, cancer.  

Talk about an absolute loss of power.  It was one of those crystallizing moments in time that mark the boundary between life as I’d known it and a life that was unknown…and scary as hell.

Because if it’s not a breast cancer diagnosis, it’s a pandemic, a tornado, systemic racism, the stock market, or the bleak mid-winter of loneliness.   

Now more than ever, we face an unfolding uncertainty.  We must learn how to respond rather than react.  There’s a difference. 

I suppose we could decide on any given day that life is just too hard, and not worth the time and effort to make sense of any of it.  We could give up.

I’ve been there more times than I care to admit.  

And yet I go to work every day and meet with courageous souls who long to show up for themselves and their loved ones despite the chaos spinning around them.  

They are in pain, yet they don’t want to suffer.  Again, another difference.

We will inevitably experience pain in life.  Some more than others.  Pain is undemocratic.  It’s  part of life.  Suffering, on the other hand, is the story of defeat we believe about our pain.  This is optional.  

If you want to read a book and be transformed by a story of overcoming in the face of dire circumstances and pain, read Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning.  It’s the original  playbook on reclaiming personal power.  He survived the Holocaust and harnessed that pain  to pioneer a life-giving approach to psychology called Logotherapy.  It’s not about avoiding pain.  It’s about finding meaning in the midst of the pain.  

This is what I’m reminded of today: our personal power is not contingent of our circumstances.  Our personal power is contingent on the wink of a moment that separates our circumstance from our response.  Our personal power lies in the ability to slow down that moment and stretch it out.  The space we create in that moment is everything.  It gives way to the story we will live out of moving forward.  

Your power is in your choice.

Oh, if we could bottle up this beauty and drink just a tablespoon every morning as a part of our  personal narratives.  

But wait…we can.  

How will you wield it today?  

An Enneagram Approach to Mind, Body, Spirit

The Enneagram is not your average personality test.  In fact, that’s not even how it was originally intended to be used.  There have been evolving iterations of this powerful tool.  Some say it goes all the way back to the 4th century.  Whereas there is some controversy over the exact conception of the Enneagram, I think we can all agree that it is pretty dynamic—providing endless opportunities for personal growth and development.  

Especially the modern Enneagram of personality, the system we know and love today.  It helps us identify our personality type (1 of 9 core types) so that we can learn and understand the inner workings of our patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior.  It doesn’t just leave us wanting for more, cold and hungry, on the doorstep of personality type.  It goes much deeper, inviting us into the warmth and shelter of deeper self understanding and compassion.  It leads us into wholeness, mapping out a distinct route for holistic well-being—and greater freedom.  

How does it do all this? 

In many ways, but the easiest and most accessible for you and I at every given moment is this: simply by bringing balance where there is imbalance.  

The Enneagram teaches that we are dynamic, three-brained beings.  You heard me.  We have brain cells not only in our brains, but in the lining of our hearts and stomachs.  That said, we have more than one center of intelligence and depending on what your Enneagram type is, you connect most readily to one of those intelligences.  Eight’s, Nine’s, and One’s are in the body center, Two’s, Three’s, and Four’s are in the heart center, and Five’s, Sixes, and Seven’s are in the head center.  

This translates to holistic well-being in that when we discover our type, we also discover our dominant center of intelligence so that we can bring more balance into our everyday experience by turning up the other two. 

For example, as a type 4, I am very well acquainted with my emotional landscape.  Perhaps too well acquainted!  My job isn’t to turn down this accessibility, but to dial up the others.  To connect more to an analytical, cognitive, fact-checking intelligence as well as a body, instinctual, doing intelligence.  I like what Helen Palmer said, (though perhaps a bit simplistic):

Body types need to get into their hearts, heart types need to get into their heads, head types need to get into their bodies.  

Bottom line, we all need to balance out our relationship to all three!  And this is the ongoing, self-awareness work of the Enneagram.

Want to go deeper?  Check out the Practice, my Enneagram-based self-care program!

Loving What Is

What if the real way of personal transformation is more about subtraction than addition?  

What if, instead of white-knuckling our way through life, straining to gain more and more self-worth, meaning, and fulfillment, we could find a release in letting go?

When we use the Enneagram for deepening self-awareness and understanding, part of the  special sauce includes unlearning—unbecoming the conditioned self or ego.   

Sounds a bit whacky, right?  I know, but doesn’t it also bring a bit of relief?   

Part of the reason we get stuck in the first place is by living out of old, broken narratives that don’t fit and aren’t true for us anymore.  Sure, they may have made sense to us early on in life when we were trying to navigate how to show up and be accepted in this world.   Yet, as we mature and become adults, life becomes more complex—more nuanced.  

The black and white stories of our youth won’t suffice in a world full of grey.  

Consider this, the Greek word for “personality” is persona, meaning “mask.”  Isn’t that interesting?  This helps me understand just how much we wear our masks of personality in order to protect our true identity, or the more vulnerable parts of ourselves we aren’t too sure about.  

I mean, what if I were to truly be seen for who I am?  I could be rejected, found out, for the  fraud I really am?  

As an Enneagram four, I’ve had that thought more times than I care to count.  

The great news is our Enneagram type actually helps us identify the personality story we’ve been living out of for better or for worse.  By learning and understanding what that is, we bring  more self-awareness into our moment-by-moment experience, allowing us to slow down our process and respond to life’s curve balls rather than reacting to them.   

As we slow that process down, we can choose something novel, something different—and better.  We can un-become the limiting parts of our stories that were written a long time ago and desperately need editing by our adult selves.  We can….wait for it…. Love what is underneath all that hustle and exhaustion. 

What parts of your personality story keep you stuck?  What areas in your life do you long to unlearn—to release?  

Simply start there.  And ask yourself,  “what would my life look like right now if I didn’t believe this story?” 

Want to dig a bit further?  I’dl love to be your guide….

Going Deeper Into the Enneagram Community

Something I get asked often is “how do I use the Enneagram for personal growth and transformation?” And I love it!  

Why? Because I often fear folks misuse the Enneagram and use it to weaponize others (“Oh, Katie, you’re such a 4!), or as an excuse for bad behavior, (i.e. “I can’t help isolating when I feel misunderstood, I’m a 4 on the enneagram after all!”).

I get it.  Part of discovering our type is identifying with its tendencies and patterns. But if we stay in that space, never progressing to the transformational power of the tool, we sell ourselves short.  

Sure, there are lot’s of helpful enneagram tools out there online and on social media to deepen our knowledge and understanding, but again, there is SO MUCH MORE!  

A big part of growth and development is community.  We don’t heal in isolation, we heal in relationship.  Having a safe (very important) place to commune with other(s) (safe people) and explore the beautiful complexity of our Enneagram type and how we use the tool to create dynamic, impactful lives and relationships is key.  

But where can we find this?  

Ahhh, I’m so glad you asked!  I’ve been waiting to share with you the details of this special opportunity for a while now.  Beginning at the end of this month and going through the end of July, I’m hosting an Enneagram mastermind group in partnership with the Nashville City Club downtown.  It will be an intimate, closed group of 10 likeminded people journeying through a detailed curriculum I’ve been creating for some time.  It will be a time to make new friends, practice newfound personal insights, and put the enneagram to its incredible use.  

The best part of this group?  It happens on a Wednesday evening in a gorgeous space with delicious food and drinks and a view of Nashville to die for.  If you’re interested, click here for all the details.  There are a few spots left (and a waiting list you can join for our next one!) 

I can’t wait to go deeper with you into this creative enneagram community so soon!