Clarity Through Self-Trust

{Coaching reflections, Part 2 of 5}

Coaching is about getting clear through self-trust.

We're conditioned to look outside ourselves for answers.  The dominant culture tells us clarity is found through rational analysis in which status, money, and external success are the primary values and metric points.

Coaching is a process of tuning into the slower rhythms and deeper energies of our being to reconnect with the knowing and wisdom that is available to us in that space.

It's about learning the language of our bodies and deepening our intuitive superpowers.

It's about reconnecting with a steady internal compass that helps us navigate the loud, fast, and flashy world around us and discern which of the voices (if any) competing for our attention are worthy of it.

My first step is always to get quiet and still and then know what I know in this moment.  

Because the more I welcome and allow the knowing that's already here, the more knowing opens up.  The more I listen to my body, the more it speaks and the more I understand. The more I add to my reservoirs of self-trust, the more I have to draw on when the next hard, uncertain things appears.

So what do you know in this moment?  What answers and truths are available to you in this moment through your body?

Take up Space!

There’s a great scene in “Knock Down the House” – a Netflix documentary that follows 4 women running for Congress in 2018 – where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is preparing for a debate against her opponent, Joe Crowley, the district’s incumbent of 20 years. 

She sets down her notes and says, “I need to take up space,” as she reaches out and waves her arms.  She takes a deep breath and says, “I am experienced enough to do this; I am prepared enough, mature enough, and brave enough to do this.  And this whole time, he’s going to tell me I can’t do this – that I’m small, little, young, inexperienced,” and then she extends her arms with a sharp exhale, as though she’s pushing all of that away from her.

I love this scene because moments later in the debate, you feel only the strength of her energy and presence.  You would never guess that she felt anything other than confident and ready for the moment.

I love that we see her fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability but then also see her step through all of it to claim her place on the world stage.

Watching her process reminded me that it takes copious amounts of inner work, energy management, self-talk, and intentional practice to build a capacity to command energy and take up space like that.  It takes staring down your terror, building belief, and staying devoted to your deep reasons.

For Alex, the world benefited enormously from her willingness to take up space, but it didn’t give her that permission.  Even as others encouraged her, she had to be the one to believe she deserved to be there and then step up and forward to claim it.

All of this was a reminder, inspiration, and challenge for me.  And that’s the beautiful thing about taking up space and claiming your bigness: it inspires other people to do the same.  And that is a gift for the world. 

Who Benefits?

One of my best tools for self-love is this simple question: who benefits?

I get political with my self-love. I think about everyone who benefits from my self-hatred – all the CEO’s getting rich off our collective insecurities, the systems of oppression fueled and bolstered by the lies we internalize, abusive people who manipulate our self-doubt for their own ends.

This is the way I see it: if I’m not enjoying and spending and reveling in and claiming my own aliveness, someone else is using that life-force energy for their own agenda.

And remembering this gets me back on track real quick.

Think about it: when you’re busy calling yourself a failure, criticizing your body, or telling yourself you’re not enough – where is that energy going? Not into your deep passions or desires, not into your creativity, not into your voice (which the world definitely needs, by the way).

And no shame or blame around this - it makes sense that lots of us struggle with self-love, body image, and positive self-regard. We live in toxic systems that tell us lies about ourselves and the world and do all sorts of things to turn us against ourselves and each other.

But self-love is our work. And I believe that work is one of the most important journeys we walk in this lifetime.

I don’t believe any of us are here to objectify, judge, or criticize ourselves. I believe we’re here to step into our bodies and into the current of our aliveness. We’re here to claim and enjoy and spend our life-force. We’re here to choose ourselves.

I know we’re all on this journey together, and I send all my love, support, and encouragement to my fellow travelers, along with my own commitment to never give up on this self-love quest. I hope all of you join me on that journey. 

Creating When You Don't Feel Good

I had a life-changing realization recently that I don’t have to feel good to create.

Much to my surprise, I’ve found that I can sit down to write, paint, or make something when I’m not feeling amazing.

And perhaps this is obvious, but it was sure a revelation to me.

Here’s a nuanced distinction I wasn’t quite getting:

Being connected and in flow with good energy matters in creativity. It definitely helps to have access to my vision and imagination. It’s good to have a solid energetic grounding in what gives my creativity life.

But this isn’t the same thing as feeling emotionally good.

The work I do to cultivate and plug into my deep creative energies is something I do on an ongoing, regular basis and not something I have to capture in a moment in order to do a thing in the material world. I can trust the inner work I’ve done already and also trust myself to access it when it matters, even if I don’t feel it emotionally.

(Plus, it is often the act of creating – actually doing the work – that connects me with good energy and gets me feeling good and in flow).

So sharing in case it’s helpful. As someone who personally benefits from so much of y’all’s creativity, I never want to pass up an opportunity to encourage folks to keep going. The world needs your art.

Creativity and the Deeper Thing

On the creative path, there are all sorts of ways to get tangled up and pulled off course by fear, perfectionism, and beliefs we hold around productivity, enoughness, and visibility. It’s a simple enough (though not always easy) process to dive into these pieces and do the work to get somewhere good, but in my experience, there is another essential step in uncorking creative flow.

And it’s basically finding a way to remember that creativity is always bigger and deeper than the thing we’re creating.

I’ve found it helpful to have regular conversations with my creativity, and here’s one way to do this: remember a time you felt connection, exhilaration, flow, resonance, freedom, love, etc. in your creative process; get anchored in how that feels or shows up in your body; and then step into that feeling to “take on” its consciousness and channel its energy. From there you can journal from its perspective, ask it questions, or allow it to guide your creative process.

This is what I consistently find when I do some variation of this exercise with clients: there is always a depth of wisdom, spirit, or vastness present. Which doesn't surprise me because our creativity is a holy and alive thing.

And when we can connect to the depth and vastness of our creativity, we step into a whole other frequency of energy, one that can't really support or sustain our fear.

And while it may not be possible to live here all the time, even a glimpse of it can start to change things.

And this is why it matters to me that more folks find a way to unleash their creative power: because it’s more than what we make with it – it’s the energy inside and beyond us – the light, connection, and resonance we share with the world and pour into the collective.

So if you feel creatively stuck, see if you can find your way into the deeper thing, the underlying energy of power that wants to pull you into all manner of creative goodness and possibility. I'd love to hear how it goes : )

Creativity, Aliveness, and Hope

This is what I’ve come to believe about creativity:

1) We do not create creativity. Our creative power just is. We support it, free it, nourish it, and channel it, but we do not make it because it already and always exists.

2) Creativity and aliveness are the same thing. Creativity is simply the energy of our life-force reaching beyond the boundaries of our selves to find expression in some tangible form – words, images, colors, objects, ideas, connections, etc.

3) Our aliveness is always pulling us forward into vision and creation. Creativity then is simply a matter of uncorking what is already alive within us.

I find this perspective incredibly hopeful. Because it means that all our visions and dreams, all we hope to create in and for the world, begins with what we already have within us. It also means that we actualize the changes and visions we want for the world with the same energy and power that animates our existence and being. And to get started, we don’t have to look any further than our own heartbeat.

Self-Love and Life-Force

I’ve come to understand that one of my primary life tasks is to figure out this self-love thing – to come into right relationship with my real self, find peace and okayness in that realness, and revel in the experience of having this life and being this self.

I believe we all come in with and are in possession of a dazzlingly gorgeous life-force, an animating energy that is the magic that lives within each of us, transcending any measurement or definition.

To me, self-love means enjoying this life-force, this core aliveness, connecting to it with intention and not making our experience of it conditional on anything else.

My sense is that so many of our troubles with self-love are a result of being asked by the dominant culture to spend our life-force (in currencies of energy, attention, creativity, time, money, etc.) in ways that deplete rather than nourish us and separate us from our life energy rather than deepen our connection to it, often in service to arbitrary, culturally-defined standards of goodness and enoughness.

I’ve found that self-love is not found in convincing myself that I’m “good enough.” More often I’ve found it in stepping into spaces and connecting with energies that render the idea I could be anything other than good, enough, and okay nonsensical and absurd.

So when I’m struggling to love or care for myself in the ways I want (because that happens in a culture like this one), I don’t try to convince myself of my worthiness. Instead I ask: how can I step back into the current of my life-force? Where is aliveness in this moment? (remembering that because I’m an organic, cyclical creature, aliveness might mean rest). What is there to enjoy right now in my life and self? What would it take to remember that my life and self belong to me and are for my joy?

But mostly, I just try to stand in who I am – who we all are – incarnations of consciousness, energy, imagination, miracle, and mystery. And really, what other than love could meet us here?

Containers for Rightness

In matters of discerning and deciding, I’ve often been obsessed with getting to the “right” answer or choosing the “right” thing.

But I’ve found this approach to decision-making often devolves into chaotic flurries of mania, pressure, and obsession that, even if it all ends well enough, leaves me in a state of exhaustion and disarray.

So now rather than asking: is this right? - I ask myself this instead: is this a useful container for rightness?

Because I’m learning that most of the time rightness isn’t really found in external circumstances. Instead, rightness lives within me, within all of us - it is a frequency that inhabits the core of our realest selves and truest desires. Our task then is to find those spaces, containers, and portals that will hold that rightness, hum along with it, and reflect it back to us in ways that expand and enliven us.

Seeing it this way has lifted so much of the pressure I used to feel around “getting it right” - because actually, what I need to do first is connect with what already lives within me (and always will) and then explore and play to find those resonant matches and dynamic complements that will expand and deepen that rightness.

There are so many roads to destiny, connection, freedom, and truth - so many ways to love well, wander bravely, and live truly.

So rather than obsessing over which decision is the right one, I remember to live a big life, explore my edges, dive deep, seek out the sacred, set myself free, and create beauty - to focus there first and then ask myself which avenues will best support these projects and aspirations second.

In other words I ask: which directions, containers, and pathways will open up space for what I truly want to do and be in this lifetime? And more often than not, next steps seem to materialize and new roads tend to open from there.

Claiming Power

In a time when we are seeing power at its most abusive, malformed, and tyrannical, I am reminding myself that at its core, power is sacred energy.

Power is our life force uncorked. It is our capacity to love, create, discover, connect, and grow. It is the aliveness and possibility that lives within each one of us.

When we filter our power through love and then allow it to transcend the borders of our being to touch the world around us, something happens. Things shift, alchemize, and revolve - often in surprising ways. I’ve seen this again and again - in my own life, in my DV work, with my coaching clients, in the collective.

It’s easy and tempting to shrink from power when we see and feel the ways oppressive power - force fueled by fear - is inflicting pain, trauma, and havoc in the world around us. It makes sense that we might want to run from our own power, fearing it may be twisted in the same way.

But I believe we must do the opposite. We need our power, and so does the world.

So let’s remember to re/claim power as a holy and necessary energy that lives within us and between us, always, and then set it loose in the world.

The Power in Transformation

To me, one of the most beautiful things about being human is our ability to change - that we have the power to expand into otherness, shift our ways of thinking, and step into previously unconsidered possibility. It takes effort and willingness on our part, and sometimes hard and scary stuff gets in the way, but our capacity for transformation is one of our human superpowers.

Earlier this week, at the end of our conversation, one of my coaching clients said: “I’m always amazed how I can feel one way coming into these calls and feel completely different an hour later.” I was amazed too (I always am) but not surprised. Because this was simply a reflection of her ability to change her mind, move energy, and open herself to new possibilities - which are powers we all have.

I also think of a DV client I ran into one day at the airport, long after we finished our work together. After a decade in a toxic, abusive relationship, she was now safe, happy, and working for the airline I was flying. She had help and support, but ultimately, she was the one who did the work of taking the risk, changing her mind, and transforming her life.

In moments that feel impossible, I need to remember stories like these. I need to remember the times I’ve seen change happen in myself, in others, and in the world.

Life is hard. Trauma is real. Injustice exists. Not all of us make it out. If we’re awake, we see evidence of this everyday.

And this is also true: there is a power and a magic within us that creates worlds. We are truly remarkable creatures. Let’s not forget this, okay?

Our Rage is Necessary

I want to talk about rage.  This emotion is often misunderstood and villainized – pushed away or misused in ways that cause harm or hurt.  But we need our rage, as it serves so many important functions and is a natural response to injustice, oppression, and brutality of all kinds.  Now more than ever, we need the full spectrum of emotion – including our rage – to navigate the world, discern paths forward, and care for ourselves in the midst of hard times and difficult circumstances.

First, I believe rage serves an important function in not letting us forget what’s real. It tethers us to reality, reminds us who we are, and calls us to live in integrity. As an ambassador of the truth, our rage is holy and important.

Rage helps us call out and resist gaslighting (attempts to disconnect us from our truth and groundedness in reality through manipulation, isolation, and denial because we are easier to control that way). Because in addition to the violence, injustice, and villainy that’s happening in the world, we also have to sort through and deal with the cacophony of voices that are minimizing the horror, denying reality, and refuting basic facts. Our rage helps us do this by pulling us back to center, empowering us to set hard boundaries, and connecting us with others around shared purpose and values.

I believe rage does not want to be fixed. It does not want to be controlled, forced, coerced, or judged (to be clear: this is different than choosing our words and actions responsibly in response to our rage).  Rage wants space to move and permission to be.  It wants to be loved and accepted as a valid energy that deserves to exist - that often needs to exist in order to name injustice, transmit information, inspire action, and move energy.

I notice that when I push against an uncomfortable or painful emotion, including my rage, it fights me back, often refusing to let me go until I listen. But when I acknowledge its presence, accept its company, and trust that I’m big enough to hold and be with it, the emotion can more easily do its alchemizing work and keep moving.  Feeling rage is often still difficult, but trusting myself (and remembering my emotions mean me no harm) brings relief and helps me more easily access the gifts that come with surfing the rapids to the other side.

I also believe rage and joy can coexist. More than that, they have to.  Over the past few days, I've been in a constant state of rage - everything from outright fury to despondent anger to steely resolve. I have also intentionally made space for joy, care, and connection.  Last week, for instance, I painted walls with my sweetheart, coached a client I adore, and went dancing with a friend. This was essential.

Rage is a powerful energetic source that we can use and channel into all sorts of goodness: just action, true words, fierce care, creative projects, and bold resistance. So where is the energy of your rage calling you next? What truths are underneath it? What love is fueling it?  And how will you answer the call of that love?

Remembering the Truth About Change

Change is a tricky and beautiful process.  I’m endlessly amazed at our ability to transform, shift, and create, whether that’s new habits, new mindsets, or new lives.  But I’m also aware how change is often a slow and winding process that can leave us feeling stuck, discouraged, and convinced we’re failing.  Whatever process of change I’m in at the moment, I find it goes a whole lot better if I remember the following:

Change is energy work.  Forming habits, shifting patterns, and creating something new involves working with and moving the energy of our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions.  Energy is dynamic.  It expands and contracts.  It’s always on the move.  The energetic expansion that comes with a breakthrough, insight, or step forward is often followed by a contraction as our system recalibrates, as the energy seeks new equilibrium, and as the old, dying thing fights for its life.  This might not feel so good.  It may feel like you’ve lost the thread.  All of this is normal.  Be gentle with yourself when there is big, energetic movement happening in your life and self.  Rest, drink water, cuddle with loved ones, all that good stuff.

Change is not about linear progress.  It is not about sustaining the energy of a breakthrough indefinitely.  Change is forgetting, remembering, then forgetting again.  It’s a process of laying new tracks in our brains, step by step, through conscious attention and intention.

Change is deeper than the things we’re building from and around it, whether that’s states of being (like feeling more calm, grounded, and clear), habits (numbers of days in a row we've meditated or gone to the gym), or tangible creations (words written, meals cooked, canvasses painted).  Real, sustainable, durable change happens when we go back in after we’ve missed a day, fallen off the wagon, or drifted from our calm, clear center.  It’s the shift we create within when we notice where we are, allow ourselves to be there, look around for the lost thread, and pick it up where we find it to try again. 

When you’re in the midst of a messy transformation, what do you most need to remember?  How can you show yourself love, gentleness, and care in the midst of the changes, chosen or unchosen, rocking your world?