Space to Ponder

If you live in Nashville, you know that it is frozen solid, offering her inhabitants some forced down time, or the chance to bravely (?) slide around those icy streets (not recommended). So, how are we doing? Personally, after a week of being sick, I have traded in my flu symptoms fora case of  good ole’ cabin fever.  Neither is ideal, but I’ll take cabin fever over the flu any day!

It is a curious thing that we often do not welcome the extra rest and space these inconvenient winter storms grant us. My observation is that we actually miss the hectic rat race of our normal schedules. Why is this?  Perhaps when there is stillness and space, we must be totally present and aware of ourselves and our potential. We must go into that place and sit…and listen. Busyness allows us to detach and cruise along on autopilot. What I have learned over the years is that people on the therapeutic journey are extremely intuitive and creative on some level. We imagine more for our lives than autopilot; we want meaning…significance. Creative people do several things well, and one of those things is ruminate. We like to think, and over-think, and think about what our over-thinking means, and then we think about it some more for further clarification. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

Our thoughts can be very beautiful, helpful creatures that bring life and even magic. Consider your favorite movie or song or childhood story book…they all began with a creative little explosion…a thought! Our thoughts can also be prisons, holding us captive as they team up with fear, anxiety, and perfectionism, stunting us from living life to the fullest, or at all. In this respect, I am amazed by how I get in my own way, intentionally choosing to foster toxic thoughts instead of life-giving ones. Is anyone with me?

How can space help?

Most of us want to have some semblance of control in our lives, (says the self-proclaimed control freak!)  So, let’s use this to our advantage.  Whether it is the longer than normal line at the grocery store, or winter storm Octavia (sidenote: I personally thought Frozen’s Anna or Elsa would be far more appropriate names than Octavia…but oh well), we will always have capsules of space to ponder and be one with ourselves; to choose connection. Delightfully enough, this space gives us time to connect with those things that  steer our lives directionally: our Desires. Fear can steer us too, yet, in my experience, the scenery is much less inviting.

I Imagine how different a day can look if we feed hopeful, even excited thoughts instead of dreary, self-defeating ones.  What stands in the way of you connecting with your desires for love, beauty, significance, prosperity, creativity, and connection?  Furthermore, how can we excavate those heartfelt desires, and give them a voice and some air?

Well, last time I checked, this weather is not permitting much unnecessary busyness, so do yourself a favor, and embrace the space. Write down those desires. It’s just you and you. Encourage them in yourself just as you lovingly encourage a friend. It may feel awkward at first. However, you may just discover that after consistently choosing desire over fear today, tomorrow, and next month…each and every choice may just snowball into something very real and powerful.

With Love & Gratitude,

The Power of Ritual (Desire)

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

-Orson Welles

What is it that drives you?  What gets you out of bed each morning?  Perhaps it is a steaming hot cup of coffee, or the inevitable 8am commute to that blessed place called work, or training for a 10k, or… love? I am talking about that thing you love and desire more than anything else.  It’s the thing that makes us depressed and edgy when we ignore it, yet freaked out and energized when we embrace it.

I am still trying to fully define this for myself, so if you are clueless, don’t worry…you’re not alone.  More and more though, I think what drives me on many levels is healing and beauty.  As broad as those may seem, it’s what I keep coming back to.  It seems once we hone in on an area of interest, or the general concepts behind it, we can experiment and tease out the specifics over time.

For example, despite the fact that beauty and healing are pretty nebulous, I have learned that they really do show up in most of my daily focus.  This can look like working with clients in a counseling setting or communicating through writing and/or song, or maybe even creating a space for others to enjoy it while connecting over a dinner table (assuming my cooking turns out beautifully).  Thankfully, I havelearned that our drive, calling, passion, whatever you call it, doesn’t have to look a certain way.  We can get rid of the boxes.  Calling is birthed in desire and nurtured through ritual.  It’s far less complicated than we make it.

A songwriter friend of mine once told me about an interview she saw with John Mayer. Despite his less than glowing publicity throughout the years, he has been a long-time favorite guitar player and singer/songwriter of mine. I am also inspired by his steely will that paved the road to his oozing, effortless talent and style.   In this interview, Mayer shared how he  “locked himself up” for an entire year to focus solely on one thing: learning and loving everything about the guitar. In the interview, he also challenged others to examine their schedules and passions, and to be super serious about committing to their craft.  Now, I don’t know all the details of his ritual and what exactly “locking himself up” looked like (nor am I encouraging anyone to follow his extreme lead), but the concept is worth examining:

What practices do I have in place to further my deep desire for __________________?  

I am always a bit jolted into action when I hear someone challenge me this way: “Well, if you don’t embrace and pursue your passion, someone else will run with it!”  Ouch.  Talk about serious blow to the old ego!  However, it seems to get right down to the point and gaugelevels of committment.  Sometimes fear can be a powerful catalyst if we are clever about it.  By this I mean fear can be an excellent indicator of calling.  There is always resistance around places of truth and destiny; fear tends to be the preliminary symptom of courage leading the way.   We have the opportunity to discover and commit to something excellent, yet in my experience, when the desire or goal loses its sparkle and the honeymoon phase is over, we abandon our work; what was once ablazing pursuit becomes a dim and lonely path.  Have you ever experienced this? 

 These final blazing days of summer  may be the perfect time to examine some  habits.  I believe Ritual is a heavy hitter in the realm of progress, thus I am breaking this entry up into two segments for the sake of being annoyingly wordy.  BUT, what would be awesome is to get your feedback. Take a few minutes and email me your experience as it relates to this stuff.  How have you tackled, accomplished, bombed, and even re-invented your greatest loves: those things that get you moving each day?  What are your daily and weekly rituals? How do you get the most from them and even make them…fun?! I can’t wait to hear from you…

xoxo

katie

The Power of Ritual #2

Happy Summer!

I know.  It’s been awhile.  I will go ahead and confess to you that I have massively fallen off the morning ritual wagon, hence, the silence. Not only that, but I have found that the further I have fallen, the more daunting the distance to get back on track.  We call that the old “all or nothing thinking.”  I am my own study in terms of tackling the stuff we talk about on this platform as well as in a therapeutic setting. That said, I am taking my own insufficiency and putting it on the dissecting table for us all to poke holes in.  (I hope that didn’t gross anyone out.)

A mentor of mine always tells me that casting blame is really just diffusing responsibility.  For this reason, I will steer clear of excuses, yet will partially absolve myself in the name of research.  Is it possible that we have different seasons in the land of progress and productivity?  Perhaps one season looks like heavy writing or creating and another looks more like filling our creative and spiritual tanks.  I have definitely been in the latter season: the filling up one.  I feel like a sponge trying to absorb ideas and insight around this area of creative and personal productivity .  This has NOT been for the sake of being busy and productive, but because I believe personal fulfillment goes hand in hand with progress and growth. I believe this due to personal experience: rituals give me structure and reminders about what I deep down desire which is connection and contribution to something greater than myself.  From what I have observed and experienced, we are most toxic when we are complacent in life.  Complacency kills curiosity and desire; keeping us falsely safe in a state of numbness. 

So, without further adieu, here are a few of my favorite versions of morning rituals to help us keep up our A Game.  I have taken these from several podcasts and books and boiled them down into two types: Holistic Wellness Ritual and Creative Ritual.  I want to also give you the names of these resources because they have been hugely impactful for me lately!  Again, Rituals are meant to serve us in gaining more purpose and productivity on a daily basis.  They help remind us of what we truly desire and are working towards.  Rituals are NOT meant to be obligatory slave labor.  We must find what works for us…clearly I’m still tweaking!  Take these brief descriptions and tease them out to fit your needs.  These will hopefully serve as an infrastructure to provide clarity and fulfillment to your daily journey. help us keep up our A Game.

Holistic Wellness Ritual

(Spiritually/physically/emotionally focused)

• Lasts anywhere between 15 minutes to 1 hour…whatever you have time for!
• Start your day with a brisk walk combining breathing, gratitude and visualization.
• For the first 5 minutes, just breathe.  Intentionally breathe using pulses of four and four.  So four short breaths in through the nose and four breaths out through the mouth.  Take this as slow as you would like.  Pretend like it’s your job in life JUST TO BREATHE.  Helps filter out the distractions.
• For the next 5 minutes, while maintaining natural breathing, bring into awareness those things you are grateful for.  Gratitude is such a powerful way to gain perspective and directly reduce anxiety.  For example, silently or out loud express gratitude for your health or job or a new day.  “I am grateful for my health”…etc…  I like to draw an imaginary circle of gratitude in my awareness to keep me on track.  If you are having trouble thinking of things, repeat the things you are certain of, meditating on even one gratitude for the whole time…This may just grow into things you have been unaware of. 
• For the next 5 minutes, start to visualize your dreams and desires for the day ahead whether this is a specific encounter at work or a performance or a preferred attitude throughout the day.  Our brains don’t know the difference between imagination and reality, so visualization is a game changer as it relates to morning rituals…it literally can reset the course of a day! 
• That’s it!  You can continue to walk or run if you would like.  Even 15 minutes of this combination can really make a difference.

Creative Ritual

• Lasts 30 minutes to an hour
  • • Find a quiet comfortable place to be.  Coffee and/or hot tea make it more awesome!
    • In a journal, spend 10-15 minutes of free writing.  This is an unedited emptying of the mind onto paper…literally.  It can look like grocery lists, nonsense, venting, swirling, you name it.  This is meant to unblock the creative self, freeing us of the critical perfectionist who feeds off of resistance.
    • Spend the next 15-20 minutes reading.  This can be anything that you are challenged or inspired by.  It can be Dostoyevsky, a daily devotional, a comic book, or a cookbook (yes, cookbooks inspire me).  Again, this is meant to serve you! We are trying to fill up the creative tanks here.
    • Reflect in silence/meditation/or journaling.  What insights have you gained?  What observations were made? Where does this insight point you in the day ahead?
    • While the free writing is a non-negotiable, please tailor this to fit your craft. Substitute playing your instrument or sketching in a notebook instead of reading if you would like. The point of this ritual is to nurture and unlock our creative self.  The more time we spend cultivating our craft, the more we see ourselves as “writer, speaker, painter, singer, entrepreneur, etc…” The alignment of identity and behavior actualize our dreams. 

Here are some helpful tools as it relates to this thing called Ritual:

 The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron                          

The Accidental Creative Podcast -Todd Henry

The War of Art– Stephen Pressfield

The Creative Habit-Twyla Tharp

Headspace-Meditation App

Holiday Part 1 (Counseling)

Ahh…the holidays…

Even just hearing the word “Christmas” is bound to bring up all kinds of emotions for lots of different reasons.  Anxiety due to unrealistic expectations of “making the season bright” (read: perfect), stress of extra financial burdens, depression due to loneliness or loss at the supposed “happiest time of the year,” perhapseven some anger or hurt  as we are surrounded by family members who push our buttons or bring up a painful past.  There may even be the occasional and surprising tinge of excitement as you envision a brand new year.

Not Alone…

Whatever emotions you are feeling, I want to encourage you that you are NOT ALONE.  I am amazed by my own tendency to fall hard into the Holiday Blues each year despite “knowing all the stuff” that we talk about in therapy.  Last night as I lay in bed wide awake at 2am, I was reminded of so many goals that have yet to be met, all of the dreams that are still just dreams, so many people that I love and long to connect with…and probably won’t for whatever reason, the family members I care about but am estranged from, not to mention the fact that I have bought a total of Zero (0) gifts.  And so the treadmill runs.

Still Worthy?  Yes…

If you have worked with me in a counseling setting, you probably know that I am a huge Brene Brown fan. If you have not read her work, run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and pick up a copy of The Gifts of Imperfection now!  Absolutely brilliant and life giving work…

She gives voice (and lots of research) to the core human need for Connection and the efforts of her conniving  stepsister,  Shame (think  Cinderella’s… Drizella or Anastasia…whichever you disliked most).  Shame feeds us the lie that we are not enough and in fact, unworthy of love and connection.  Shame tries to dupe us into thinking that, if we make the grade,  earn the salary, have the relationship, wear the dress size, then we are worthy of love and acceptance.  Expectations at Christmas tend  to hold up a big megaphoneto that voice of shame. But  underneath the guise and glitter of the season, what I want more than anything is to be truly known, accepted, heard and loved…right where I am.  Stuff is fine, joy is better.

I am a firm believer that we grow, heal, and thrive in relationship.  Relationship with self, others, God, nature, kids, pets, musical instruments …you name it!  The invitation is always there to reach out for connection, tethered to the belief, albeit flimsy, that we are more than enough and are worthy of this connection.  It is our right as human beings.

Friends, I urge you (and me!) this holiday season, to finish strong.  To allow what  comes along in these days ahead to point you towards the Gift of Presence, that invitation to the here and now.  It is real and beautiful and full of possibility.  Resist the temptation to judge it and live elsewhere, like tomorrow or the next day.  You offer such a rich and unique glow  to this world and the people around you…don’t hide in the shadows and wait until it passes …we need your light! I know I have undoubtedly been touched by it.

With Love and Gratitude,

Katie