Diamonds and Trust Nuggets
April 2013

Checking In:
The Simplest of Self-Care Power Tools

I'm writing right now only because I paused and checked in with myself. Before, I was in that whirlwind of whooshing through the to-do list. I caught a whiff of my own frenetic energy (in my mind I was reaching for the phone to take care of a quick call but in reality my fingers and toes were already committed to carrying a box up the stairs)—so I paused. I reached for a question (no hands needed!) and found this: How much time do I have till my next client? And this: What do I actually want to do with that time? And now, I've landed, joyfully writing.

How many little explosions, harsh words, confused moments, weird encounters, rotten decisions, states of prolonged irritation or vague dissatisfaction (etc., etc.) could be staved off by simply checking in? The act of checking in with yourself allows you to locate simple truths like "No," "I'm not up for this right now," "I need food," "I'm still mad at him and it's leaking through indirectly," “This feels very important to me on a soul level and I keep not giving it my time and attention,” and so on. ... It's so easy and so powerful: check in.

What is it you need to check in about?
The more you're onto yourself, the more you know typical areas where or times when you need to have check-ins in place. If you tend to say yes to everything, you might want to mandate a required check-in before taking on even the smallest new commitment. If you forget to eat, you need to check in for hunger—and be clear about the alarms (keep reading) that alert you to low blood sugar. Do you stay up beyond what's good for you? You might pause before choosing the evening's activities and see if you're going for what makes sense to get you to bed on time and in a ready-for-sleep state. You know the tendencies you need to watch for and counter.

What alerts you to check in?
We all have our particular little buzzy alarms that go off to remind us we need to check in: feeling woozy, getting irate, hearing a certain tone in our own voice; having any emotion descend, distract, or seem to take over—feeling confused, sad, angry, jealous, scared, threatened, unsettled; getting tense in every muscle, going unfocused, finding ourselves to be all over the place (Checking emails again? Opening another document and a chart while dialing the phone? Heading for the laundry room as the kitchen sink is filling with sudsy water?). The bottom line is that any physical sense that something feels off indicates the need to check in. I remember being stunned when I first read Deepak Chopra's simple observation that the Universe guides us through sensations of comfort or discomfort in the body—which I think of in terms of on and off signals. (For more angles on this topic, see my prior writing called Accessing Guidance in the Moment.)

What keeps you from checking in?
It's so easy to check in with yourself: it's free, and there you are, no matter where you are, ever available. But while a check-in may be obviously appropriate or desperately needed—still, people don't check in at small daily junctures or even huge turning points in life. Why is that? Here are a few reasons I've noticed:

Being too focused on others
When your primary concern is to take care of others, you'll go directly to what others need and want above what you need and want. Ultimately, then, there's no need to check in with yourself at all: you can just look outward to what they tell you. You might even simply imagine what they're wanting right about now and do that. A close second to this is worrying about what others think of you. Here, you might get tripped up on taking care not to hurt feelings, offend, be rude. It's particularly fascinating to me when people have such a religion of being nice that they're willing to become liars. This could apply to innocuous things like, “I do, I love your new bangs”; but people take it as far as staying in a love relationship they don't want to be in because they can't stand to hurt someone else with the words I'm leaving. The stakes can get even higher and the religion of nice & polite can trump all: someone told me a story of engaging an attorney she didn't trust (her body registered a visceral no) for something important enough in her life to show up for in court—all because it felt rude to walk out with her money still in her own wallet when she'd come to this person for help. Wow.

Please give yourself permission to be rude in life, or to offend whether you're being rude or not.

Attaching to a Particular Process or Outcome
When you're fixed on some particular way you want things to go along the way or some particular outcome (or both), you'll forget to notice what's actually happening. For example, having high hopes for getting a job, you don't quite register during the interview that the boss is already micromanaging with nit-picky questions and speaks disrespectfully of the past two people in this position. Or noticing it, you keep bringing back to the forefront the concept you came in with (with the extra responsibility and higher pay, this is a move up, no question); thus, you lose track of reality. The antidote is simply to show up for what's actually happening … not what you thought should happen or what you wanted to have happen. (Click here for a whole article on the topic of showing up for what's actually happening.)

Having already started something that now has its own momentum
Many (many) people tend to have a belief in place that, once in the midst of something, they have some obligation to see it through to the end. They feel the momentum of it (or sometimes even the drag!) and push through to the endpoint despite the many possible station stops for cutting the journey short along the way. Have you seen yourself do this? Have you figured out yet that it's not necessary? More important, have you given yourself permission to stop anything you've started? Pause right now to check in about the particular thing you suspect you may benefit from stopping. Are you sure it's too late or too much trouble? You actually do have the right and may be wise to cancel the subscription, end the first date before the first beer is down, take the kid out before the end of the school year, process the data differently in the middle of the project. ... Do you have to finish everything you begin? It's a great thought to question.

Not having check-ins as part of your worldview
Most of us, growing up, aren't taught to check in with ourselves. We're taught to follow certain concepts and codes of conduct. We're taught to obey certain authority figures—or may along the way construct a default identity of categorically defying authority. (Neither model represents freedom!) We're even taught to follow clocks and schedules. It's such a simple thing to learn to check in—to go inside for our next operating instructions, thus being self-referential. But until it comes fully into our consciousness, we simply won't think of doing this.

Not knowing how to check in
Checking in is about connecting to yourself and tuning in to the inner voice that actually knows what's right for you.

• Be still and quiet.
  
• Feel your body. What feels off? Where is there tension? Simply bring awareness and breath to those places.
  
• Reach for the right question to ask yourself.
  
  • What do I really want?
    
  • How can I best get that?
    
  • Is this my priority right now?
    
  • Is this the best use of my time?
    
  • What's missing?
    
  • Is some form of self-care more important than anything else right now, or can I carry on with what I'm doing in a way that's better for me, that incorporates self-care?
    
  • Is there something I need to attend to first, then come back to this?
    
  • Is it time to step back and look at the overview, then come back in to the task at hand?
    
• If you're trying to decide whether to do something, look for the next layer. What is it you want or think you'll be getting from this? By exploring the motivating factors, you may find a better way to get what you're after. For example, you may be thinking about going to a party because you want to have a social life; you want to have fun. Ask yourself questions like:
  
  • Is a party the best way for me to do this? Is this fun for me?
    
  • How could I connect to people socially in a way that works better for me?
    
  • Could I actually have more fun doing something alone right now, while setting the intention to create a fun social life?
    
• Reach for other useful questions particularly suited for decision-making:
  
  • Does this feel on or off to me?
    
  • Does this move me toward or away from my intention?
    
  • Is this the right time?
    
  • Am I getting tripped up on some should or something someone else wants from me that may not be right for me to give?
    

The simple act of checking in with yourself could be the difference between

• feeling irritable vs. revving up into full-blown everything-irks-you-irate
  
• being bothered by near ones (partner, housemates, kids) vs. yelling at them
  
• letting a default yes answer determine how you spend your time vs. giving time and energy to what most matters to you and moves you closer to your vision
  
• doing what people do vs. making an authentic choice that feels true and ethical to you and expresses who you are now or are stepping into becoming
  
• making yourself sick vs. practicing excellent self-care
  
• having your life slip away from you vs. choosing it consciously
  

It's not a big deal in the moment but it makes a huge difference in both process and outcome: just check in with yourself.

Love & blessings, Jaya

It's not a big deal in the moment but it makes a huge difference in both process and outcome: just check in with yourself.

Get Over Her!
May 9 (internet program):  I'll be the featured guest speaker on Lesbian Love Talk, Barb Elgin's weekly internet radio show, which airs at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday nights, with programs posted online to replay anytime. I'll be addressing the importance of letting go of a past relationship. Come hear (and if you wish, call in and ask) about not being a victim, getting to forgiveness, creating closure by yourself, and more. Check out Barb's Lesbian Love Talk show!
Note: If you're a straight woman or a man, there's little I'll say on this show that doesn't translate--switch the pronouns as needed.





Free Exploration Sessions:
from 60 minutes to 30
For the past three years, I've built my business in part by offering free 60-minute sessions to give people an experience of my work. I also consider it a time tithe, as I offer the session to anyone who wants it, even if they have no intention of coaching with me. I love these sessions and find it deeply gratifying to sit with someone, anyone, and send them away with a new perspective on life, themselves, their circumstances—whatever—so that they can do it differently, connect to all that supports them, come closer to self-love. ...

It's come to this: more people show up wanting these sessions than I can properly make time for in the context of my client load. I've therefore cut them down from 60 to 30. It works! To get the free session, just fill out the contact form on my website.





The Practitioner Is In: Try 15!
Even half this time span works. I'm doing 15-minute sessions at my wonderful food coop in Ithaca, NY, as part of their new The Practitioner Is In program. I'm one of the rotating practitioners showing up on a Wednesday night every other month from 7 to 9. I'll be there again on April 10. Call 607.273.9392 to sign up for a 15-minute slot.





Fun with Facebook!
In March, I posted something that got 85 LIKES, almost twice as many as any other post yet. Hmmm. Here it is for you to see for yourself and help me contemplate why it struck such a chord:

Surrendering what's not yours to mind is not a blanket, one-time event. It's a life's work, a practice, unfolding now and now and now. You will mentally pick up and start toying with any number of things that aren't yours to manage. You will worry about outcomes that you can't possibly (and don't need to) control. The trick is to catch yourself and come back to what's yours. Where you have something to think through, a dialogue to open, an action to take—great. Where what happens next has nothing to do with you, where it's up to someone else or the workings of the Universe—surrender! You'll love the relief.


Visit me on Facebook anytime. It's a public page, so you don't need an account to take a peek.