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use all 3 centers of intelligence to find your relaxed & open way of being & seeing & DECIDING  Photo of person in the dark gazing at string lights glowing in their hands from Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash I want to invite you out of that furrowed-brow, overthinking thing and point you to what could feel & work better. You’ll need a willingness to trust yourself more, and also to trust life. What if you began by committing to EASE around any decision you need to make? Ease in body, heart, and head—your three centers of intelligence. Each lets you know whether you’re on- or off-track for good decision making, and so … whether to LEAVE IT ALONE right now or jump in & run with it—or even dreamily push the pieces around. Let’s walk together through all three centers. Body: LOOK AWAY FROM THE TOPIC when you’re …
In those moments, don’t think about it at all, never mind try to move the decision forward. Seriously. Literally walk away if you need to, and go make your body feel better. Start with a drink of clean water. It’s a great time to come back to the topic when you’re …
Now go! Go ahead & come close to this thing you’re considering. See what wants to be dreamed up, learned, discovered, invented, and maybe fully decided! Heart: DON’T EVEN GO NEAR THE TOPIC, never mind try to make the decision, when you’re …
In your bad feeling states, shift your physical & mental gaze toward what makes you feel better. In fact, just go take care of your heart. Don’t analyze or think about your feelings. Breathe them, soften them, soothe them, carry them around kindly. Take your feelings with you as you go back to the body and do something that will move your limbs & energies and get the blood & breath flowing again. When do you go back into the stuff of your decision? When you feel
All or any of this means you’re ready to dream into your vision again or dive back into the specifics & details of what needs to be known so that the decision can come to you without strain & forcing, never mind agonizing. Head: Screech decision making to a halt when you’re
I mean it. INTERRUPT ALL THOUGHT when that’s the vibe in your headspace. The sooner, the better—before it builds momentum. Get out of your head, please. Back to the body, back to the heart. Take note, in fact, that your body & heart are feeling bad as they sync with those thoughts. Now, go after what makes them feel better. Abandon thinking altogether until you can reach for thoughts that go with a relaxed body and soothed heart. You’ll know you’re ready to bring focus back to the topic when
Now, let your imagination run, do the research, make the phone calls & visits, have the conversations, and make little or large choices that move you toward that readiness to decide—or plunk you right in a decision that you notice kind of made itself. (Byron Katie taught me that decisions make themselves, and I keep finding that when I’m tending my state through my 3 centers, they do just that.) Hey, when you’re in a good place in body-heart-head, I invite you to notice the magic. Are you …
Notice the magic. It will get you where you’re going. (And, um, it’s not magic at all. It’s the way things work when you’re clear & open. You know.) Love & blessings, Jaya
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Storytime This is the plan I told god (who was apparently laughing the whole time!) (not unkindly, I think—I’m way past believing I’m the butt of cosmic jokes). The haha plan: August in Hawaii to take care of goats (and 3 cats and a bunch of chickens) for my stepdaughter and her husband, so they could go to the mainland and know their animals were being well cared for. A beautiful opportunity for me to show up for her the way a mom does, plus … me in the tropics for the whole month of August. Meet the two adorable dawgs I met on my way. During my (according to haha plan) 2-night-1-full-day stay in Las Vegas with the two adorable men who are my bro and bro-in-law. Stevie is on the left (girl Stevie—named after Stevie Nicks), and Jack on the right.  Photo of two adorable German Shepherd dogs, Stevie and Jack. As I walked w/ bro-in-law and dawgs in a beautiful park the evening before my early flight to Hawaii, Jack—yeah, the BIG one—rammed into me full force at the park. Just pure joyful exuberance, all innocence and play. My knee did something, my ankle did something worse, and my ass landed on the ground. An egg formed on my ankle. My foot refused to walk.  A medical photo of a swollen black and blue foot.  Photo of a foot and ankle wrapped in an Ace bandage, peeking out from jeans that were freshly cut to make it fit. I am not in Hawaii. All that I was going to do there I now cannot do. I’m in Las Vegas. I’m not spending August in Hawaii. I’m spending it in Las Vegas. When I tell people what’s going on, I open with these instructions: Please don’t say Oh noooooo. (Did you already? TAKE IT BACK!) Please don’t give me pitying looks and tones. Please don’t treat me like a victim and act like something went wrong. By video call the next day, I sat with my friend Kelli, who had agreed to those terms and whose approach to life is gorgeously compatible with mine. (In fact, we take clients together and have the most fun in three-way collaborations for amazing healing journeys. Here’s the time she and I and our client Lindsay all had a moment rolling our eyes at the patriarchy—condescending men in the workplace—before we got on with unpacking the gifts of her situation.) With Kelli, I had a cry about the disappointment and my attachment to what I was being called to let go. More important, we talked about my commitment to applying my belief system here. Fully. Firmly. I NEVER BELIEVE something shouldn’t be happening, is a problem, or represents me being deprived or somehow squashed or tortured by life. The mind may suggest any of that. I do not believe it. I do not follow those thoughts. I come back to what I do believe and give that my focus and my curiosity as I show up for the unfolding and the revelation along the way. I BELIEVE I’m where I’m supposed to be at all times. If that ever feels like too much of a stretch (supposed-to schmosed to), I can always get behind the idea that, wherever I am, whatever’s happening, there’s much to be gained and something that matters for me to show up for; and that this is always for my benefit and the good of all concerned. If something feels off where I am, I consider it an invitation to course-correct and I head roughly in the right direction, trusting my capacity to keep course-correcting along the way. If I’m guided somewhere and something different happens than what I thought I was going for, I show up for what’s actually happening. All I want to do is apply this. Kelli was right with me. She understands that there’s nothing incompatible with acknowledging disappointment & grief AND aligning with reality on its terms. (In fact, we were both open to welcoming my tantruming inner two-year-old if she felt the need to come out and make noise, but apparently that wasn’t needed.) Together we marveled at what happens when you keep applying your belief system everywhere, in the most challenging moments, at every fork in the road or even during/following some crazy freefall. With her, I touched into the awe of what is happening here and now, far beyond the disappointment. If it’s better than Hawaii with goats, this is gonna be really good. Together we got excited about the mystery of what is going to happen that won’t at all be what I planned, what I foresaw, what I thought was going on back when everything had so simply and effortlessly aligned for the (nope, not to be) trip to Hawaii. That, I can’t possibly know yet. So far, it looks like an opportunity to laugh a lot and have some pretty profound conversations with my brother (Tommy) and brother-in-law (Rik). I dedicated my book Scooch! to Rik, because he had the most amazing experience of doing jail time for a white-collar crime he had no part in and didn’t know about. He got behind two years behind bars as something to make the best of and get through as gracefully as possible, with the best self-care and the best service mentality in place. He is a remarkable human being, and that is a remarkable example of following your own belief system no matter the circumstances. I’ve gotten very little time in adulthood with my bro, never mind the two of them. Something really good could happen here. There was some trauma stuff in my family of origin that I feel pretty resolved with. Ah, but my brother. I don’t know so much. He was enough years behind me (and I was distancing from family so much) that I just didn’t get in on a lot of what he went through. And you never know what gross or deeper or subtler bits of healing will arise for a good, compassionate look and some conscious breath. Stay tuned. … As for my stepdaughter and her husband, they were able to mobilize a community effort with several people stepping in to do various parts of the whole I was going to do (back when, haha, we pictured me tromping around in the muck boots that are still waiting for me). I really love this. They’re getting that don’t-we-all-need-it practice of LETTING people help them, and they’re carrying on with their plan that apparently no god is laughing at. Nothing has gone wrong. I’m in Las Vegas, hobbling around on crutches, hollering GET DOWN at two dawgs that are great big love bundles who think I’m amazing. (Um, not that this makes me special, but I’ll take it personally anyway.) Love & blessings, Jaya Here's a sane, peaceful, trusting alternative to doership.
The idea of doership, or being the doer, is that you’re the one making things happen or getting things done—and when you’re in doership, you’re in illusion (uh, not to mention stress). You’re also prone to getting intense about how things go, in what timing, and with what outcome. Here’s a great sentence from an online dictionary explaining doership: “If there is no feeling of doership in the deed performed, then bondage will not result.” How do you get out of doership? (If you’re skimming or in get-in-get-out mode, drop down to bullet points below for sound things to tell yourself when you catch yourself being the doer.) First, simply notice when you’re believing you’re the one who makes it happen, or you have to get it done, or if you don’t do this, no one else will or it won’t get done right or all hell will break loose. Notice when you’re doing a task or moving from point A to point B between tasks in a way that’s tense, driven, anxious, frenetic. Notice the lack of peace [substitute ease, equanimity, joy, connection to magic] in do-do-do-do-do. Stop. If you can’t take a pause, then follow the next instructions while you’re carrying on with whatever you must do. Tune in to your breath and watch it go in and out. Follow the passage of the breath, right on its heels, experiencing exactly where it is in your body at any given moment. Feel the inevitable pause once the out-breath is spent. Come back to the core of yourself, back to center, by following the breath. This will also instantly serve to calm you, even a bit, and to elongate the breath—with no actual effort to do that. Just watch the breath—don’t slow it down; it will slow down on its own. Now find where you’re believing you’re the one who makes it happen. Notice you think you have to make it happen. Notice you’re believing that your doing is why you’re here, or your most important assignment, or at the very least what you must do right now. Consider the possibility that you’re in illusion. Tell yourself clearly, explicitly: I’m in doership right now, so I must be in illusion. Next tell yourself a number of things you can actually believe to counter this thought that you have to make it happen. I’ll list a bunch of possibilities, and you can adopt those that resonate and come up with more on your own. The point is to counter this potent belief with a good number of other things that you can also believe and that are closer to truth:
If any of that leaves you feeling more relaxed and more expansive, you’re on the right track. Use the contractions you feel to call you to a pause for breath and mental reset. On the physical level, notice clenched muscles, furrowed brow, frenetic motions—even irritated or bossy tones of voice. Catch yourself (kindly, without judgment) in needless intensity and tension. Come back to the breath, back to what’s truer and more aligned than forcing your way through as the doer. You really do get to live in alignment and flow—and you’ll function more effectively and even more efficiently when you’re there. Beyond doership is a great exhale and opening to magic! Note that part of living in everyday magic includes aligning with flow, connecting to your guidance system, living in the now. Show up for the journey, now and now and now, because that’s where the magic reveals itself. Love & blessings, Jaya
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