(Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in these writings to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.) I meant to get this email out earlier but I got busy googling Can you freeze red lentil soup? and then best lesbian dating apps for Kansas City, then I looked again to make sure I hadn’t missed any of the free NYT daily puzzles. Just kidding. I HAVE, however, been thinking about how distractions have innocent motives*. Your little or grand time-wasting side trips carry messages & invitations for your greater well-being—if only they can elbow past your self-accusations of lazy distractible unfocused procrastinating or whatever you choose to call it to make yourself feel bad. (*Thank you to brilliant coach Jude Spacks for giving me this phrase and concept of the innocent motive.) Ever notice that feeling bad about your behavior (thus yourself) is possibly the LEAST likely way to move away from what you’re not loving? It’s certainly not the easiest, quickest, or kindest way out! So, wanna drop the judgments with me for a moment and explore what wants to come through that could actually feel good to you? That could in fact usher you right into the next bigger-better version of yourself? DISCLAIMER: Please don’t misread me and think I’m saying you should never play games or run curious online searches or binge-watch a good show. I’m not saying that at all. I’m addressing the surplus of that—and how you know it’s too much is not related to a concept or number of minutes. Just this: It feels like too much TO YOU. It feels BAD. See what hits you in this list of possible invitations seeking to come in when you reach for the stuff that zaps your time and messes with your ideas of productivity. Which messages might be for you? Or what else do they bring in as fresh ideas for what you’re really after? Your (loving, entirely UNscolding) guidance system may be saying:
It could be so many things! More below for you to see what’s yours or jogs your thinking toward the more precise issue/s for you.
Hey, I recently did a group EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) session that felt like an inspired journey of connecting to and honoring the guidance system that’s unique to each of us. Check it out if drawn! Your guidance system can support you to get out of anything you don’t actually feel good about doing RIGHT NOW and point you to what would truly meet your needs, fulfill your desires, and move you along toward your visions and intentions! Love & blessings, Jaya
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Let guidance, not guilt, determine when you reach out or respond Let’s clear up the heaviness, distress, guilt, obligation, anxiety, energy leaks, bad feelings & bad vibes, self-loathing—whatever way you feel rotten about texts, WhatsApp messages, Instagram (or any social-media) messages, emails, cards & letters, little notes left, messages in bottles, WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER. We have so many ingenious ways to be in touch, create connection, and send love. You can use these to make you feel GOOD or you can use these to make you feel all manner of BAD. Please use communication tools consciously. Use them ONLY to support you to feel how you want to feel. (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) You do not owe anybody messages. Unless you’ve made some clear, contractual agreement with someone, YOU DO NOT OWE THEM
(Hey, integrity side note: it really helps NOT to tell people you’ll get back to them at any certain time because then you’ve said that so, sure, you’ll feel guilty & bad if you don’t do what you said you’d do. Just DO get back to them when it’s right, and leave out the promises. Or keep track of and follow through with what you say you’ll do.) You are not a bad person if you have unanswered messages from others sitting anywhere in your world. These others wrote you because they wanted to, when they wanted to. They were following their timing, not yours. You do not owe them lining up with that. They wrote you when they felt like it for their reasons and with their thoughts & feelings going. Some of those thoughts & feelings are ego-based—that is, related to their personality structure and what they have & haven’t worked out yet, and what they want from you, and what their beliefs are about what’s what and what they owe others and what others owe them. Please know (um, KNOW that you know) that all of the above varies tremendously from one person to the next. There’s no standard, no one-size-fits-all. It is not your job to track all of those things for others. It is not your job to work yourself around other people’s stuff. In fact, if you make it your job, you will fail. You will also feel all manner of BAD: obligation & guilt & sadness for disappointing them [and whatever else or other you go to]. And if you don’t get right back to them, you will feel things like this:
(I recently wrote about how resentment can be a very useful messenger. Check that out if and only if you feel drawn to do so. You also don’t owe anyone clicking on the links they send you.) You might consider disconnecting any false equal sign you’ve got going between someone messaging you and you owing them anything. They messaged me = I owe them a certain response in a certain timing Set yourself free. Then you can just give everyone on the planet permission to reach out to you when it’s right for them, for their reasons, and you can give yourself permission to reach out to them when it’s right for you, for your reasons. Let’s talk about leading with apologies when you get around to reaching out to someone. Don’t. Seriously, stop it. No love agenda is served by beginning a communication with how sorry you are that you haven’t been in touch or you didn’t respond sooner. You have & had reasons for your timing. (You’ll have fewer & simpler reasons when you don’t carry around a bunch of baggage related to messaging.) It actually gets worse if you’re telling all your reasons for why you are & aren’t communicating at what frequency or in what timing. (When you relax around this whole topic you won’t feel the need, or you’ll simply see a reason to tell if that’s kind & appropriate—and it likely won’t be apologetic.) If someone has a problem with how you’re communicating, it’s their problem. Let them bring it up with you if they want to, then you can listen to them lovingly (or however you want to) and just tell them the truth about how you prefer to manage communication, which may not coincide with how they manage it. If someone wants to make you wrong for how, when, and how often you communicate, let them. Leave them to it. But don’t join them in making yourself wrong. Don’t give a false apology. In other words: do not join someone in agreeing that you’re wrong or bad because of how you communicate following your actual life, timing, work load, emotional reality, chosen focus, preferences, and so on. If someone lets you know that you’re bothering them by the way you communicate and their feelings are hurt and it means this or that to them and they want X or Y from you—you can take that in kindly. But that doesn’t then mean you owe them any of it, or that it would serve either of you for you to deliver that. (If you’re someone who needs the reminder to check in with yourself about your own actual current capacity: please check in with yourself OFTEN about your own actual current capacity.) CRAY-CRAY ALERT: It serves nothing and no one for you to keep communicating at your pace & frequency while simultaneously continuing to feel bad & guilty & wrong because of what that means to someone else. How about making a clear change instead? Um, this means that if you just keep feeling all manner of BAD about messaging, and aren’t changing anything (perhaps because you don’t really want to or at capacity or aren’t wired that way or …), you will be stuck feeling bad. You’re doing that to yourself. It’s not someone else or their expectations or desires doing that to you. DO NOT DO THAT TO YOURSELF. Set yourself free of what it means to them, and just communicate how you want to. And, META-BONUS: communicate clearly, when it comes up, about your communication. If you find you have reasons or feel guided to communicate differently with someone in a way that would feel better for all concerned, by all means, do that. (Or experiment with it for a bit and course-correct as you get new data.) Changing how you communicate with someone would ideally be based on your intentions for the relationship and your sense of what would feel better TO YOU. (If you’re basing it on guilt & obligation, or placating & people-pleasing, it won’t feel any better.) I wish you freedom to be your most authentic self, unburdened by what others are up to. You get to be you. The more self-permission you have to live (and communicate) authentically, the more you’ll just follow your beautiful guidance system to be in touch with others in right timing. It can be simple & easeful. It can feel good. It can be a simple matter of following the impulses as they arise. Love & blessings, Jaya that call you to feel ALIVE I was doing a focus wheel early one morning to get my head space right where I wanted it. (Focus wheels are FUN and you can add color or use different colored pens. TRY IT. No tool is better for pointing yourself properly toward the day or some specific task or event that you notice has anything sticky or heavy in it for you.) Somehow the lightening sky caught my attention through a window and I had the impulse to jump up, step outside, and look up. And then I didn’t want to. It’s getting cold, and I’m not acclimated yet, and I tend to resist cold. And I accused myself of not focusing if I got up. (It’s a weird way we talk ourselves out of following guidance—with some righteous-sounding accusation.) But that place in my side where I got the tug was still doing something, and I’m pretty committed to following those nudges & impulses when I get them. So I got up and went outside. Wow. The air was amazing, if a little cold—then the longer I stayed the more I felt into how fine it was to feel cold. The clouds were kind of blushing just a little bit with the edge of the sunrise (which is mostly blocked where I am, so I LOVE when I step out while the clouds are still reflecting some color). The moon was a skinny sliver, which may be my favorite phase in its cycles—and most certainly is my favorite in the now-moment when I catch it in that phase. And then as I stood there, I happened to look down and over as a rabbit popped out of a hiding place and hop-ran away from my human presence. They may not have been happy to see me, but I was oh so happy to see them. I love a rabbit sighting, and I’d been thinking I hadn’t seen one in a while. And then I looked up at the moon and clouds and sky again and remembered something I love to say to myself: let the morning make its impressions on you. I did that. I loved it. And I felt so alive. Let the morning make its impressions on you. You can place any word you like in the slot morning is taking up in that sentence. However you fill in the blank, the idea here is a call to PRESENCE. Fully take in the thing you’re bringing awareness to. Let it make its impressions on you. Feel it in body and heart. There’s head-center stuff to notice too—like associations, symbology, or even just using what you perceive to consciously tell yourself things: This is a lovely morning. What an amazing way to start the day. This is going to be a great day. This is not a wow or intense story. There’s no car chase. No falling in love, except with the moon, all over again. Nothing extraordinary or even worth writing about. Except I really wanted to write about it because it has huge implications for your connection to your guidance system, and for living the life you want. I want to invite you to follow those impulses that make you feel alive. That’s one way you know it’s a good impulse. (Okay, sure, if you’re an adrenaline addict or if anything that’s really self-harming makes you feel alive while you’re healing something, this does not apply.) For the impulses to do what nourishes your soul and thus your entire being, go. Jump up. Step out. Let some small thing be worth a moment of disturbance, like it’s worth it to drink water, to do a stretch, to gaze at a face you love in the middle of your work day or any activity. Notice your resistance to following those impulses. Don’t worry about it or judge it. Don’t even sit around asking, Why do I resist these things? Do notice. Notice that you’re calibrated to talking yourself out of things that actually align with what you say you want or value or who you want to be or how you want to live. That’s no problem, because we all do this. And we all have a guidance system that’s equipped to move us through and around resistance. We all have resistance. It’s a wacky human thing. Do be aware of it and notice it, and just take a moment to call it what it is: it actually helps to name your resistance. We sometimes especially resist little things. You won’t make or break anyone’s day or ruin their life if you push against an impulse to go look at the moon. But actually, you could change your day more than you suspect in the moment. You will certainly rob yourself of that dance with consciousness in which you’re constantly whisper-called and gently nudged, again and again, so kindly, so gently, to all that you want. And when you practice following those tiny impulses with the little things, you get really good at doing the dance (YOUR DANCE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS) and you can apply it in all things large or small. Most of us talk back to some absurd percentage of the guidance-system impulses that come our way. What if you didn’t? What could your life become if you made it a practice to just respond, now, to all the nudges toward LIFE and feeling alive and taking care of yourself and reaching out to someone and and and … Find easy, tiny ways to just respond to the guidance. It’s actually not inconsequential to let the dawn make its impressions on you. Or to throw into the pot the random spice you just thought of or the vegetable that caught your eye. It does something to get up and brush your teeth when you feel the tug to go do that next. Follow your guidance system. One tiny impulse at a time, it will get your right where you want to be. And one noticing and countering of resistance at a time, you’ll become a well-tuned dance partner to this custom-made guidance system that kind of only has eyes for you—and actually has the good of all concerned forever simultaneously in view. You really can’t go wrong. Wanna make it a practice? Love & blessings, Jaya … What decides it? Let me just say a few words about your marvelous guidance system (which you can amend as you like to fit what rings true for you) and then I’d like to look with you at what on earth you would let decide your life for you if not that. Head straight for that bullet list below if you just want to consider what else could lead what you do and don’t do, what you choose, what you do or don’t admit to your experience, your heart, your life. And just after the bullet points is a doozy that needed its own paragraph, so maybe read that too. You have so much freedom to create your life from the inside. You get to notice everything out there that gets your attention and run it by how it makes you feel, whether it feels aligned or off to you, whether it sparks an expansive, excited sense of creating the next thing you want (in all realms of life), or whether it feels defeating or depleting or fraught with obligation, guilt, old stories and decisions made in the past, and so on. You get to keep it fresh if you want to. That’s true even if you can’t instantly change current conditions. You can always change how you feel. You can always change what you say yes or no or how much to right now. And your guidance system is always calling you to what feels better and more aligned. With zero judgment, coercion, or manipulation. Just letting you know. Now and now and now. Your job for living at the highest level you’re capable of RIGHT NOW is to respond to your own guidance system. It’s never out there—it’s inside you. But the out-there stuff is part of your dance with consciousness. It’s full of symbols, signals, suggestions—all kinds of stuff you can respond to. More important, you can notice how you ARE responding—how anything registers for you in body, heart, head. What happens when that comes into your field? Does it make you feel expansive, more on-course, more curious about life, more authentically you? Does it feel full of new possibility, growth, more fun, more freedom, more ease? MORE OF THAT. Does it make you feel bad, like you’re doing it wrong and won’t ever get it right, like you have to bite some bullet or put in a bunch of time where nothing remotely matches what you want and who you know yourself to be (or, if. you’ve gotten away from yourself, from what you suspect and still get glimmers of)? To anything that just feels NOT HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL, please, LESS OF THAT. And if you don’t follow your marvelous guidance system--that originates in you, that comes up from inside you; that has alllll the facts and stats about what’s going on now, what has been, and where you’d actually like to go next; that knows exactly what your obstacles and fears and limited beliefs are, AND IS EQUIPPED TO MOVE YOU THROUGH AND AROUND THOSE—if not that amazing guidance system, then what? I asked a client that question rhetorically the other day, and then all of these answers wanted to pour in. So I wrote them down. You could let yourself choose any one thing and another and another and your whole entire life out of any of the following (instead of in response to your own guidance) (and of course, this is not an exhaustive list, so do open to what else wants to come to you):
To be clear, those things could be choosing your life. And then there’s this crazy thing: what you promised or committed to before. You SAID, so you’re sticking to it. Never mind that by now, life has brought in a whole bunch of new information (and keeps persistently trying to bring it to your notice, because our guidance system NEVER gives up on us), information that you COULD hold up to the old promise in order to take in that it practically begs and screams for you to appropriately renegotiate and/or revise it—but you’re letting your past self and what they knew and decided and said decide today, against what your guidance system is bringing in today. Against the fresh dynamic-NOW wisdom of your own marvelous guidance system, that’s actually tapped in to the evolution, to your becoming, to all that you keep stretching into (or at least would like to, at least at the soul level). But let’s go back to that parenthetical in the above paragraph. Your guidance system is like an adoring dog whose loyalty will not budge. It will not give up on you. It will not punish you for ignoring it or talking back. It will not stop coming up with creative ways to get your attention. And it will not stop using your EMOTIONS to help you really get and viscerally know: this is what I love and what feels good; this is what makes me feel terrible and what I need to adjust and/or move away from. Heart guidance will be the topic of a future mailing. In the meantime, my work here is finished: consider what decides it for you if not your guidance system. And whatever you do or don’t see right now, consider more responding to and flowing with the nudges, tugs, flashes, zingy attention-getters, inspired ideas, impulses to act, random people dropping into your field or mind, dreams, persistent desires, and all the magic, synchronicity, and repeating echoing themes that keep coming in from the outside and bumping into your deep inner knowing and the truth of who you really are. Love & blessings, Jaya simple directions to simplify what feels complex When people lay out a problem for me, often especially with the stuff involving other human beings, they often need to say A BUNCH OF STUFF to explain the complexity of their feelings and alllllllllll the factors that make knowing how to handle this one so very problematic. I’ve come to almost never trust the sense that (or the phrase) It’s so complicated.
CAN WE PLEASE MAKE IT A WHOLE LOT EASIER? Think in terms of MOVE TOWARD or MOVE AWAY FROM. How easy is that? One thing to assess: Do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it? Too easy? Well, what if you took a break from COMPLICATED and just played with this? Make it a grand experiment. Also, note that very little harm could come of playing with simply moving TOWARD what right now feels like you want to move toward it, or moving AWAY FROM what right now feels like you want to move away from it. And then to make it even easier … Can we please also just bring it to now, so it’s about presence, tuning in to the guidance of the moment, being here & now with what’s actually happening in this moment, and how it’s currently hitting you, and what’s wanted in this moment? Otherwise, you may go astray in these two ways to feel safer or more solid:
So bring it to now: RIGHT NOW, Do I want to move away from this or toward it? C’mon, for real, LET THIS BE EASY! What could help you take this on as something easy to play with and worth playing with? Imagine stripping away all or any of the following:
Just ask, Do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it? That’s it. Then, as you follow through, you can move angrily/agitatedly or calmly (so go for calmly when you can). You can move saying a bunch of stuff (explain, defend, try to shape how they perceive you) or you can do it in silence or with just a few words (so go for silence or few words when you can). You can move trying to evaluate yourself in the moment, or just follow what you want to move toward or away from as your grand experiment and evaluate later. Evaluating now could quickly suck you into
How simple are you willing to make this experiment? Right now, do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it? Run your own experiment. I’ve found that I feel lighter, things feel easier, I’m more tapped into guidance, and life feels better when I’m stripping away complicated factors and moving (NOW, for now) toward or away from. I invite you to play with it and gather your own data. Quick story if you’d like an illustration of the above points (skip it if you don’t want that). I recently wanted to contact some people I adore whom I met in Costa Rica when I was there for the first 3 months of 2023. And the mind started feeding me a bunch of complicated reasons why maybe I shouldn’t … I interrupted that mess. I grounded myself and connected to breathing and simply felt into whether I wanted to move toward or away from them RIGHT NOW. The obvious, instant answer was MOVE TOWARD THEM. (It can be so blessedly obvious and clear when all the blah-blah gets stripped away.) I made contact from a clear place and the result was a lovely and easy and fun connection in that moment. (We’d been having trouble connecting for a number of reasons, hence the mind’s access to evidence of complication.) I know I gave you a relatively low-stakes example (or at least I imagine it appears that way). Just play with it. You may find it applies a lot more often than you now imagine. I also invite you to pause and take note of where you’ve already done or already do this! You know how to do this. Do it more. Make it a grand experiment for a while and consider making it a much more important part of your repertoire of tools to play with or ways to operate in the new era! Right now, do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it? Love & blessings, Jaya |
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