What's the next best step you can take? 👣

 
Taking the next best step.jpg

Happy New Year! We’ve officially graduated from 2020. Maybe you’re feeling tired, relieved, sad, grateful, hopeful, or anything in between. I know 2020 has pushed me to my edge many times. So many of us have experienced loss and hurt this past year – I hope you’re creating space for what you need right now.

2020 was an extraordinary year: from the promise of starting a new decade, to the pandemic, to rapidly shifting how we live, work, and connect, to reflecting on and reckoning with systemic racism, to grappling with record-breaking natural disasters, to experiencing a divisive US election – with many big and small moments in between.

It has stripped us of our “normal” ways and unearthed so much that needed tending on an individual and collective level. It has broken us open to create new possibilities for how we live, work, and relate to each other and the planet. It has made some things simpler and others more complex. It has invited us to consider what truly matters.

Upon reflecting on 2020, I wanted to share four (of many) lessons and big questions I’ll be carrying into 2021 below. I welcome your thoughts, reflections, and living some of these questions alongside each other.

I’m deeply grateful for you and this community of wildly curious, purpose-driven, and kind people. Thank you for reading and your support. I hope 2021 brings more joy and ease than difficulty for you.

With love and gratitude,
Sarah-Marie

Turning the Page on 2020 with Four Lessons & Big Questions

1. Embrace our shared humanity.

While 2020 was the most physically isolating year of my life, it has also shown me how interconnected and interdependent we truly are. While I’ve intellectually known that we’re both separate and not, 2020 gave me an embodied sense of our shared humanity. We all experienced difficulty and hurt to some degree. We may have felt lonely and disconnected at times. And we all wanted safety, wellbeing, and connection for ourselves and loved ones. No matter what we go through, we are never alone in our experience. This knowing has given me comfort and allows me to access more kindness and compassion for myself and all beings.

How might compassion and kindness inform your actions in 2021?

2. We heal in relationship.

Most of us have our first experiences of hurt and trauma in relationship with others. And yet as social creatures, we also heal best in supportive relationship with others and ourselves. Our inner work and societal work are intertwined. We make up the communities and systems we’re a part of, and our actions matter and have ripple effects. 2020 has amplified a lot in our collective consciousness – from systemic racism, to polarization, to climate change, to collective trauma. We’ve got a lot to work with in 2021 and beyond.

To heal and address all that’s unjust and broken, we need to be in right relationship with ourselves, each other, and the earth. Reverend Jennifer Bailey said: “Relationships move at the speed of trust, but social change moves at the speed of relationships.” We need to recognize our shared humanity and meet each other across difference. May we remember that we’re all products of our conditioning and look for the goodness underneath. May we approach each other with respect and kindness in all of our interactions. May we honor and protect our planet.

What kind of context do you want to create for your relationships in 2021? What will most serve healing?

3. Give yourself permission to feel and be with. 

"'Free' is not free from feelings, but free to feel each one and let it move on, unafraid of the movement of life." - Jack Kornfield

2020 allowed me to experience the full range of difficult feelings. Fear visited often. As did Anxiety, Grief, Shame, Loneliness, and Anger. Maybe they came to see you as well. Whenever I resisted and turned away from the feeling, it just kept asking for my attention. It wanted to be seen and acknowledged for trying to protect me. Emotions have a beginning, middle, and end. Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in them - when we don’t complete the full cycle. When we fully allow what is to be here, we create space for our experience to change naturally.

For example, when we notice Fear (and associated negative thoughts), we can meet it with curiosity and explore our embodied experience of it. I often ask myself: What’s happening inside me right now? Can I be with this? Where do I experience Fear in the body? Then I try to stay with the changing sensations. I ask myself: What does the fearful part of me most need right now? And I extend kindness inwardly (and often place both hands on my heart to add a soothing touch). In this way, we can expand our capacity to be with more and more of life. We can be free to respond creatively instead of being reactive.

What do you need to give yourself permission to feel/be with in 2021?

4. Everything is workable.

2020 has humbled me. I’ve realized just how much is outside of my control. The year has changed plans for all of us and asked us to be creative and adaptable within new constraints. In my case, I tried settling in a new city while being physically isolated from others, adjusted to being in place after years of frequent travel and movement, adapted and moved all of my offerings online, …

I’ve realized that life becomes more workable when I don’t let the small, fear-based self run the show and make it all about myself. Every day, I affirmed my intention to let life use me well and be a contribution (inspired by my mindfulness meditation mentor). I've grown to trust that everything is an opportunity to grow and that we can pause and respond with intention no matter what happens.

We may not know the whole path, but life will always show us the next best step forward. We can trust in the self-generating mechanism of life. When in doubt, I’ve learned to go further in. Our body knows. We can take a moment to pause and sense how the whole of a life situation feels in us without judging or analyzing it. We can notice and cultivate our body’s innate “felt-sense” capacity—a subtle bodily sensation of a situation that lives somewhere between our conscious and unconscious mind. From this place, new awareness can emerge, and new perspectives and actions become possible.

What’s the next best step you can take in 2021?

 

Let's be human together 💗

 
Permission to be human

"'Free' is not free from feelings, but free to feel each one and let it move on, unafraid of the movement of life." - Jack Kornfield 

These are challenging and unsettling times in so many ways. You may feel like it’s all too much to be with at times. You may be done with 2020. You're not alone. 

And yet we’re alive in this moment right here. This moment is calling us to be with what is. Now is (still) worth showing up for.

The way out isn’t to run away or numb. What we resist persists.

Resistance is how we naturally protect ourselves against vulnerability. We cannot selectively numb though. When we block the grief, fear and anger, we also block the joy, love and our sense of aliveness. 

So give yourself permission to feel. Let the emotions move through you. They have a beginning, middle, and end. Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in them - when we don’t complete the cycle. 

May we let these times be a teacher of who we really are - of presence and love - and what matters most. Rumi wrote: “This turn toward what you deeply love saves you.”

What or who do you deeply love?

We’re all human. We’re all trying to figure it out. And we can’t do this alone. We all need spaces where we can be witnessed in our humanity. Where we can make room to be with the life that's here. 

What are these spaces for you? 

Below are a few resources that I hope might be supportive for you.

With love,

Sarah-Marie

Resources 

[PRACTICES] 

Thanking Your Emotions 

When you notice a difficult emotion arising as you go about your day, you can stop, take a conscious breath, and say "Thank you for trying to protect me. Thank you for trying to take care of me. I am OK for now."
 

RAIN of Self-Compassion

Through the practice of RAIN, we can bring mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions and experience. It invites us to be with our emotions and actual lived experience with self-compassion. The acronym RAIN stands for:

  • Recognize: Seeing clearly what's going on and how we are stuck inside an experience;

  • Allow: Creating space to be with the experience just as it is; 

  • Investigate: Moving from the story and beliefs to getting in touch with the actual lived experience, with kindness; and 

  • Nurture: Offering kindness inwardly. 

Here's a ~16 min guided RAIN practice.  
 

[POEM] 

Excerpt from "Go to the Limits of Your Longing" by Rainer Maria Rilke
 
"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand."

Guided Meditations 

 

What's on the other side of your comfort zone?

 
Befriend Your Discomfort

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anaïs Nin

What stands between you and your most important contribution? 

As a wise mentor told me, "this is no time for playing small." Ruth Bader Ginsberg didn't play small. May we step up and carry forward the torch. In these challenging times, we need all of our gifts and contributions more than ever, whether in big or small ways.

Having a long history with "hiding until I'm ready," I made a commitment to take the exquisite risk of being seen in service of my purpose. The more I stand in the truth that it's not about me at all, the more I'm free to create a context of healing, belonging, and contribution for others.

I've kept this line by David Whyte as a daily reminder: "To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others." 

Leaning into purpose is not comfortable but even more so is not leaning in.  

We all can get in our own way. We avoid things that could move us closer to our contribution and learning goals because they are uncomfortable. For me, it's typically things that bring up the possibility of rejection, incompetence, conflict, or failure. And the emotions I'm feeling are fear, anxiety, and shame accompanied by tightness in the chest and throat area.

Depending on the thing we're avoiding, we may divert our attention through self-judgment (my #1 go-to), judging and blaming others, rumination, worrying, questioning everything about our life, addictive behaviors, victim mindset, projects that suddenly seem urgent, etc. 

The impacts are massive. We limit our contribution, learning, and growth. We carry stress and diminish our sense of presence and aliveness. We waste vast amounts of mental and emotional energy. We may carry a sense of shame and guilt for letting others and ourselves down. The list goes on.

How might we befriend our discomfort and overcome resistance? 

In the long run, avoiding things we know are important is always more painful than facing and working through the discomfort.

Rather than seeing discomfort and difficult emotions as problems, we can open to the experience and let them move through. As Jack Kornfield writes: "Free" is not free from feelings, but free to feel each one and let it move on, unafraid of the movement of life." And we can bring kindness and self-compassion to our experience and remind ourselves that it's part of being human to want to avoid discomfort. 

Then we can re-anchor ourselves in our goal or intention for how we want to contribute or what we want to learn. And do the work. 

How's life calling you to contribute? What's the work that needs doing? What's worth risking being seen for? 

The world needs you and your contribution. 

Below are a few resources that I hope may be supportive for you.

With love,

Sarah-Marie

 

Resources 

[PRACTICES] 

Self-Reflection

  1. What are the things that you routinely avoid that would move you closer to your goals? What are the things you know you need to do but are making you most uncomfortable or anxious?  

  2. What thoughts and fears come to mind when you think of those things?

  3. What emotions or sensations arise?  

  4. What's the impact on you or others of avoiding those things? 


Power Hour

Purpose: To make progress on something important you've been avoiding. 

  1. Block off a 1-2 hour time period and eliminate potential distractions as much as possible.

  2. Write down your inner critic's chatter and any fears related to the activity.

  3. Write down your intention or goal for the activity. Why does it matter? What could you learn? 

  4. Set a timer for how long you want to focus on the activity and start working. 

  5. As you work, write down any fears and mind chatter that comes up. Reground yourself in your purpose/goal as needed.

  6. At the end, reflect on the experience. How did it go? What did you learn? What do you want to focus on in your next power hour? 

Pro tip: To make this even more effective, do power hours with an accountability buddy. :)


RAIN

Purpose: Through the practice of RAIN, we can bring mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions and experience. It invites us to be with our emotions and actual lived experience with self-compassion.

The acronym RAIN stands for:

  • Recognize: Seeing clearly what's going on and how we are stuck inside an experience;

  • Allow: Creating space to be with the experience just as it is; 

  • Investigate: Moving from the story and beliefs to getting in touch with the actual lived experience, with kindness; and 

  • Nurture: Offering kindness inwardly. 

Here's a ~16 min guided RAIN practice. 

 

[READING & LISTENING] 

Below are a few resources that I've found helpful in my own journey of befriending discomfort and overcoming resistance. I hope some of them may be supportive for you as well.  

 

[Quote] 

“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.”

- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art 


Guided Meditations 

 

 

Permission to Feel

 
What am I unwilling to feel?
 

These are deeply emotional times. Many of us are experiencing a range of emotions - fear, anxiety, sadness, grief, frustration, anger, ... as we're facing the consequences of the pandemic, the ineptitude of leaders, systemic oppression, injustice, precious lives lost, ... It's heartbreaking and enraging. 

As Ruth King writes in her book Mindful of Race, "anger is initiatory, but it's not transformative." It can point to what's important to us and help us take action. But we have to go a step further to investigate what's underneath it. What's underneath the anger? Maybe it's fear. And underneath that a deep care for others and ourselves.

Grounded in our caring, we can respond and act in a more intentional way and think about what's ours to do and contribute. 

As Pema Chodron said, "the emotions we have, the negativity and positivity, are exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, and fully alive.” It took me many years to learn this lesson as I sought to avoid negative emotions as much as possible. The result was that I felt numb much of the time. I felt less alive. 

I've found it helpful to check in with myself and ask: What am I unwilling to feel right now? Can I be with this?

When we name our emotions, they gradually lose their power to take us over. While we can't stop the waves, we can learn how to surf them. And the good news is that no emotion is final. Emotions are always changing. 

We can stop, take a deep breath, and acknowledge and honor our fear and other strong emotions with compassion. We can realize that it's really the Fear, the Anxiety, the Sadness, the Anger... that's paying us a visit and moving through us. It's not for us to hold alone - it's part of our collective human experience.

May we seek to recognize our emotions and use them to respond wisely to the circumstances of our lives and the world. 


Below are a few resources to support you. 

With love,

Sarah-Marie

Resources

[READING & LISTENING] 

  • [Book] Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett - Explores how we can cultivate greater emotional intelligence, understanding our emotions and using them wisely.

  • [Podcast] Here's a great Unlocking Us  episode with Marc Brackett and Brene Brown. 

  • [Book] How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett - Explores the science of how emotions are constructed (an interplay of brain, body and culture) and the real-life implications.  

  • [Article] What is this Feeling? Anticipatory Grief and Other New Pandemic-Related Emotions by Esther Perel - Describes pandemic-related emotions and helpful strategies and practices for moving through them. 

  • [Song] All Together Now by OK Go 
    Love this song! We're all together now alone in the chrysalis (where the caterpillar dissolves and assembles into a butterfly).  

[POEM]

On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran 

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
     And he answered:
     Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
     And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
     And how else can it be?
     The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
     Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
     And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
     When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
     When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
    
     Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
     But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
     Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

     Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
     Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
     When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.