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 P.S. Monday-night group-coaching drop-in sessions are on a different schedule in December. We did not meet last week, but we’ll meet this week and next (Dec 11 & 18). I’m also doing a special Dec 27 Wednesday-night group (still 7:30-8:30 ET). New and repeat people come to these Monday events all the time, so it could be you! You too are so welcome to join us on- or off-camera.
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just open the door, receive the delivery,then send it on its way I invite you to give this a moment of attention even if you don’t feel much resentment. Let’s get super subtle here and be free free free. If nothing else, check out the bullets below the pic and find one thing to keep in the fore to enhance your well-being (which includes aligned, not exhausting, service). Resentment has such a bad rap. It has its unfortunate place over with anger, where people relegate unwanted emotions—over in the bad zone. Who wants to be resentful? Yeah, please don’t sit around resenting. But resentment might show up briefly anytime, kind of like the delivery person, and when it does, there’s something to receive with a thank you. Beyond the scope of this writing are all the reasons you don’t want to shove resentment down into the cells of your being to accrue & fester there. That happens with denial and vilification, so instead, let’s just make resentment the nice delivery person, who’s in a hurry anyway to get on with the next delivery. Just open the door to briefly, get the goods, and get on with your day. Resentment as delivery person may put a wrinkle in something you’re doing right now, but you WANT the thing being delivered. That thing’s going to make your life easier or more pleasant somehow. Here are some typical message-deliveries resentment brings. And bee-tee-dubs, you might just consider whether one of these might be for you to keep cleaning up even if you’re not tuning in to any resentment:
I love to think in terms of the first whiff. If you get just the tiniest whiff of resentment, pause with it a moment. It’s got something for you. Don’t ignore it. Ask it nicely what it’s got for you. Ask what it’s pointing you to that’s going to support you to be
Love & blessings, Jaya P.S. Monday-night group-coaching drop-in sessions are going strong. Note a couple of tweaks in December schedule below. New and repeat people come to these Monday events all the time, so it could be you! You too are so welcome to join us on- or off-camera. It’s American Thanksgiving time again, when people in the U.S. are urged from all directions to be grateful. And the gratitude craze isn’t all-American: especially in spiritual circles, it covers the globe. I’m not (entirely) against gratitude, but I have written before about the potentially more solid and powerful aspect of appreciation, as compared to gratitude (which may have stickier components, like that of needing to put out I’m-so-grateful to deserve good things coming your way). In this writing, I’d like to explore the POWER of appreciation in your process of creating your life. As you look around you and observe your life from eagle view, or take in this one moment, appreciation is always available. It’s an option. It’s a choice. It’s worth reaching for, because what you appreciate really does nourish your total well-being. It feels good to appreciate. You feel good about what you behold when you appreciate it. You set yourself up for feeling more goodness, and hope expands, and your sense that your life is worth showing up for expands. So then your sense of can-do expands. Your ability to take the next step with ease expands. With appreciation in the fore, you may find yourself more energized and clear in creating your life. Everything expands as you give it your appreciation. It gets better and feels nicer and turns its best face your way. So …
That’s a good one to stop on (the list could go on and on, obviously). It’s a good one because we’re BOTHERED by the weather these days. It can disturb us.
But note that anything else on the list can go off-kilter! Things (people, places) go wrong or get wacky all the time. It’s all in progress and impermanent, either breaking down or growing & improving. So something not wanted or not to your liking can be found in most anything most anytime. These somethings can, could, and do easily make you feel bad, if you let them. They stir up dissatisfaction (and maybe a sense that you're not okay, and then maybe a fear you’ll never be okay). … Think in terms of where you put your FOCUS. In any life, any scene, any moment, there’s wanted and unwanted. (That’s Abraham-Hicks language again.) There’s always stuff to appreciate with every fiber of your being, and stuff to bellyache about. Which will you focus on? It’s up to you what you animate and fuel and expand with speech and thought and strong emotion. When you offer & feel appreciation (especially with every fiber of your being), you energize your own being and your very sense of well-being. You also declare and establish that this stuff you’re appreciating is what most matters to you, what’s predominant for you. And that predisposes you to notice more of it, to make much of it, to lean into all that you appreciate that’s right here, already in place in this imperfect moment & reality. Thus, you expand and you create more of what’s wanted. By choosing appreciation, you consciously create your life, the life you want. Call it self-fulfilling prophecy, call it Law of Attraction, call it basic common sense: there it is any way you slice it. Love & blessings, Jaya P.S. Monday-night group-coaching drop-in sessions are going strong. I took last week off as I was traveling to the República Dominicana, where I am right now and for 2 months! New and repeat people come all the time to these Monday events. You too are so welcome to join us on- or off-camera. where maybe you haven’t been Want fewer than 11? Skim the list (bold print is here to help) and go in where you see a spark of something that would represent you showing up for yourself. It could be game-changing. 1. Clean up a stupid little pile somewhere, on a wrongly used chair or stagnating desk corner, that’s really not hard to sort through at all but you keep acting like it is. ENJOY DOING THIS. Notice how easy it is to make something right. 2. Clean the bathroom mirror. That’s it. That does something. Harness the symbolic value, if you want more, and tell yourself, I’m clearing things up. I’m seeing more clearly. I love a clear view of things. (Apply this harnessing and naming of the symbolic with anything you do. It adds layers of meaning otherwise lost on you.) 3. Move more slowly, not just in your walking gait, but in your gestures. Do this especially if you typically move fast; especially if you think you have a lot to do and you need to get it done. Move slowly. Move deliberately. Feel yourself moving through space, through time, through your life. (Note this is a presence practice, a SIMPLE trick to be more conscious.) Feel that your life matters, this moment matters. Your life is not to be rushed through. 4. Talk to yourself out loud (double-duty accomplished if, as you talk, you’re walking the dog or watering plants or wiping surfaces or stretching your amazing body) and give yourself a whole bunch of good and real and true LOOK AT ME messages, just between you and you. Here’s a brief audio example, just between you & me. 5. Pause with every apology you hear yourself make (until you can pause it before it gets stated out loud, until you break yourself of this habit), and consider whether there was actually something to apologize for. You’ll mostly find there wasn’t, so take it back. I mean this: quit apologizing for little stupid things like not responding to a text when you think someone wanted you to. Categorically DO NOT APOLOGIZE WHEN YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING WRONG. Or hear yourself and take it back (at least between you & you). Learn to say I’m sorry only when you’ve actually violated your own code of ethics, when your own integrity feels affronted by your own actions. And then it will mean something, and you won’t be walking around apologizing for your existence, for taking up space, for being a human being born onto this planet. Here are some examples of sorry apologies if you want more guidelines for that. 6. Have more fun. Feel good more often. Laugh more. This does a million times more good than a gratitude journal, so if you like things like that, like this too. Feel good about whatever part of current conditions you can feel good about. Focus on what’s fun, what’s easy, what feels good, what you’re proud of, what makes you laugh, what brings pleasure. Cultivate all of this. Make it a project. 7. Get faster & faster at interrupting trains of thought that don’t serve you. That means anything about what’s wrong with you, how you’re not doing enough, how you’re doing it wrong, how this isn’t good enough, how this isn’t okay. That means interrupt it as it comes up, now and now and now. IMMEDIATELY give yourself kinder and truer messages, as many as you can string together. Ideally, do this out loud or in writing. 8.Deal with something, one thing, that’s kind of big and pretty much ignored. Lighten the thing that weighs you down. You know what’s waiting for you. Just start it. And then do another bit another time, soon. Go in via your point of least resistance, just to show yourself you can. Do on bite-sized piece until you’ve found your inner pac-man that can gobble up anything. (Is pac-man still a thing?) 9. Go to bed feeling good about the day. Appreciate all it held and all you did. If you can’t feel good about today, for some reason, at least be done with it. Put it down fully. Be done with today. You did enough. You did well enough. LITERALLY NEVER GO TO BED CARRYING WITH YOU A SENSE OF AN UNFINISHED NOT-ENOUGH DAY. Never. Never. Just quit it.
10. When you go to bed, tell yourself, Tomorrow, All things new, All things possible. If you want or need help to really set yourself up for letting go of today and looking toward a tomorrow full of possibility, go to sleep listening to affirmations or soothing music. My current favorites are from Crea tu frecuencia. Yeah, they’re in Spanish (I personally think this beats Duolingo by a long shot). Lots of people provide them in English. Try Jason Stevenson, if you like Aussie accents & a soothing male voice. 11. When you wake up, do things INSTANTLY to set yourself up for a good day. Do not start the day telling yourself awful things or cultivating things like fear and dread and sorrow. If you wake up already feeling some kind of way, DO NOT JUDGE THIS. Be sweet to yourself. Get curious. Greet whatever it is with curiosity. What’s this, sweetheart? Do anything to soothe it, soften it, give yourself kind messaging that counters any thoughts that come hand in hand with this feeling. If you’re not sure what they are, write down, “I feel [whatever it is, as best you can name it], and that means that …” Getting your thoughts on paper will point you to the turnarounds that will counter them, and often will start to shift how you feel. Value, at the very least, that you’re not just going with the thoughts that reinforce bad feelings. Because that, my friend, is NOT being your own best ally. I start most days with focus wheels these days (a process from Abraham-Hicks). Try it, you’ll like it. Whatever you feel a wobble about, write into the hub of the wheel what you want to feel or believe, and then stay put till you’ve filled the wheel with 12 reasons you can actually believe—you actually do believe—that center statement. My website has a whole page that illustrates and explains how to make a focus wheel and offers kinds of statements to reach for. Love & blessings, Jaya P.S. Monday-night group-coaching drop-in sessions are FOR EVERYONE (not just clients or current clients or anything else you might make up). Come talk to me and/or hear me talk with others about any topic and do body, heart, and head processes for release, clarity, alignment. New and repeat people come all the time. You too are so welcome to join us on- or off-camera. And another P.S. Did you know that I and a lovely colleague of mine (Rebecca Mehnert) do 3-Centers meditations (dropping in with body, heart, head) 6 days a week (Sundays off) for 15 minutes or less before noon ET (so, starting at 11:45)? Here’s the 3C med zoom link if you’d like to join. You can also find that anytime on the homepage of my website. (Scroll there all the way down.) or, Are you a Clown Fish or a Mockingbird? As far as I know, no one has (yet) created a cute little online quiz to determine whether you’re a clown fish or a mockingbird. If you were hoping for just that, please forgive me because, nope. I’ll start you off with a question though, so you can get that buzzy quiz feeling. Have you ever stared at corals in an aquarium? Or been fortunate and adventurous enough to get to swim around and see these enchanting colonial organisms shimmy-dancing in their actual oceanic habitat? It’s one of the most mesmerizing things, to stare at coral. I especially wish for you that you’ve had the experience of dropping in completely to just stare, keep staring, take it in, keep watching, and let yourself be completely wowed by the constantly moving tentacles waving around in the water. Some seem to barely flutter their long or little fingers while others could give a car-lot inflatable air dancer a run for its money! But actually, I want to invite you not to analyze, because the real point of this writing is about interrupting stuff going on in the head. Consider getting out of your head FAST when what the mind is up to IN ANY WAY doesn’t serve you. I want to (again) invite you to interrupt that as fast as you can, because one unhelpful thoughts strings you along faster and faster to the next and the next and the next, and momentum builds in directions you don’t want to go. I want to invite you to practice dropping in to let yourself be mesmerized. Let yourself be absorbed in presence. Make like a clown fish and absorb yourself in coral. Stop the thoughts, stop the momentum in wrong directions. Let’s talk about trees, because they may be more readily available to you than coral. I believe you can and really should (a word I don’t use lightly or often) let yourself get mesmerized by how breezes and winds move through their leaves. No magic mushrooms needed! Just gaze at what’s happening as the breezes sift through and ruffle things up in super-subtle or sweeping ways (and everything in between). Watch and keep watching. This is a presence practice. Ground yourself so you feel your embodied self, connect to the sensation of breath, and use your glorious sense of sight, if you’ve got it, to stare at the fluttering leaves. You are gazing at consciousness itself, consciousness made visible. You are consciousness connecting to consciousness. And … that is soooooo cool. But it’s also a really practical thing to do for your well-being. This could support you as often as you let it, perhaps MANY TIMES A DAY EVERY DAY, to get out of your head and shift your state when it would serve you to do so. You can do this with one single tree or a vast treeline, whatever you have access to. Failing that, substitute grass or a bush or anything you can come up with that will do in the moment. We’re taught to stay with the contents of our heads instead of interrupting it. But it’s actually not helpful to stay with what feels
I include solution-oriented, which sounds a whole lot more positive than the others, because, as Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” So you need to LOOK AWAY, not to stay with it, when you don’t feel expansive, fresh, insightful, inspired, creative—all signs that signal you’ve opened to higher mind and are ready to see something new. I know you know the difference. Wanna be a clown fish or a mockingbird? Use coral or use trees. Be whatever you want and use whatever comes into view, whatever comes to your creative mind. Lighten things up by moving away from what’s weighing you down mentally. Laugh at your old self who thought it was good and wise to stay with muddled or distressed thinking and do something radical here and now. Call yourself back to presence.
Here comes a reminder of the 3 steps for coming to presence (and bonus—soothe your nervous system that got agitated by your thoughts).
Let the mind be mesmerized—or at least interrupted--by the staring (ideally as you consciously ground and breathe). Stay with it, even for a bit. Drop in. You can simply step outside or stand at the window for 2 or 3 minutes of leaf gazing. It feels amazing. It’s a great and simple reset. When you feel soothed and perhaps inspired, Now what? Now you might be able to see something from a new perspective and open to creative ways of moving through your life as it is right now, scooching toward the life you’re seeking to create. Love & blessings, Jaya P.S. Monday-night group-coaching drop-in sessions are FOR EVERYONE (not just clients or current clients or anything else you might make up). Come talk to me and/or hear me talk with others about any topic and do body, heart, and head processes for release, clarity, alignment. New and repeat people come all the time. You too are so welcome to join us on- or off-camera. And another P.S. Did you know that I and a lovely colleague of mine (Rebecca Mehnert) do 3-Centers meditations (dropping in with body, heart, head) 6 days a week (Sundays off) for 15 minutes or less before noon ET (so, starting at 11:45)? Here’s the 3C med zoom link if you’d like to join. You can also find that anytime on the homepage of my website. (Scroll there all the way down.) |
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