The Glass is Already Broken :: SONIMA Article

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 10/2/15 ON SONIMA.COM

In this moment, it’s early autumn in New York and the weather presents itself as an invitation to be easy. The sensation of moving freely, without layers, makes me feel intrinsically more connected; there’s no barrier between my environment and my skin. This is a sweet time of year, an easy season to inhabit, with Indian Summer days that seemingly stretch through forever.

Of course the calendar reminds me otherwise. The sun is setting much earlier now, and the warmest days of the year have passed.

One of the hardest natural laws to reconcile is that everything is subject to change whether we want it to or not. Autumn turns to winter and winter turns to spring. The Law of Impermanence is everywhere and the seasons just stand up to testify.

I would guess that by the time we’ve hit adulthood, we’ve all felt the truth of impermanence in a million mundane ways. Job situations break down. Love affairs ignite and fizzle. Even our own bodies change, eventually becoming weathered and time-worn. I have bottles of eye serums and face creams that promise to exonerate me from this rule, but at 33, those first few unruly grey hairs tell it to me straight. I can prolong, postpone and deny the inevitable, but what comes to pass does not stay.

This is often presented as the “bad news,” or fodder for an existential crisis. I’m reminded of a video that was circulated recently of a young girl who realizes her infant brother will grow up, and quickly begins to connect the dots to her own mortality. Her breakdown at the realization is touching because we’ve all been there. The tenuous nature of things can be a difficult pill to swallow.

When impermanence is served as the “good news,” it’s often as a salve in difficult times. This too shall pass. Time heals all things. When one door closes, a new window opens. Even heartbreak changes.

However, I can’t help but wonder if rather than “good news” or “bad news,” impermanence is simply “the news”—the way that we generally accept that organic matter breaks down, without artificial preservatives. As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron reminds us, “That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs.”

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6 Lessons from the Global Coaching Classroom

This week launched the beginning of a fresh round of coaching circles at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

A few times a year, I host group coaching calls for current students of my alma mater that have collected from across the globe. I'm joined by students from Dubai, Ireland, Texas, Japan, and many of the locations in between.

I lovingly think of these groups as my Global Coaching Classroom. I'm assigned eight groups. Twelve hours of coaching a week. 40+ women (and two lucky fellas), a cross section of personalities and backgrounds, with a sweet knitting-circle sort of vibe. 

We talk business and marketing. We get deep into coaching technique. We roll up our sleeves together and chart the course for the lives they want to create, while deconstructing what having their dreams would do for them.

It's all about extrinsic goals that give us an intrinsic feeling, and employing strategies to make that happen.

I've been coaching these groups for close to 6 years now, but it never fails to feel like the first day of school. The nerves. The expectation. The desire to leave them with golden nuggets and help them reveal their own perfect wisdom.

What inevitably happens in this "first week of school", though, is that I'm brought around to my own golden nuggets— tiny truths and solid reminders of why I love doing this work, how we're all better, more clear, and devoted to our dreams after having spent 7 weeks together. 

The students become the teachers. The teacher is a perpetual student. In a container of reciprocal learning, the lines are more blurred than we think. 

Here are 4 lessons that I was reminded of last week: Straight from the coaching classroom.

1 :: We all have a story to share. Give people a chance to tell theirs, and we're given an opportunity find the nooks and crannies where we all connect.

Although these groups of creative change-makers span cultures, ages, and locations on the global map, our differences became less blaring than our commonalities once we all began sharing our stories. What brought them to the table? What are their intentions? What are they looking to create and contribute? Who else might benefit from their vision?

Many have come from a path of challenge and healing. Many have a vision of leaving the world a little better than they found it. And all of us are perusing our personal definition of freedom. We’re different, complex, and all strikingly human. 

Lesson: When we give others a chance to tell their stories, we're given a gateway to our similarities in return.

2 :: One of the best forms of education is direct experience.

There's the information we read in books, and then there's the knowledge we've lived into our bones. 

This is any experience we've had close up, immersed ourselves in, kneaded it with our own two hands in such a way that it's left an impression in our skin and our psyches. Intimacy does that--intimacy with people, experiences, practices--closeness makes an impression.

Much can be said about academics and book smarts, but there’s another form of learning, brought to us by The School of Life, that can’t be underestimated. What have you lived through? What did that experience teach you? 

Are there rituals, skills, or circumstances that you’ve gained personal insight into, simply by spending time doing them?

Whether it’s playing the piano, juicing, soothsaying, or motherhood, the learning that comes from practicing repeatedly is what develops our “expertise”. 

Studying up on a topic is great, but DOING IT is how we alchemize information into understanding, and develop a well crafted perspective we can share. 

Lesson: Step away from the manual. Step into the experience of it. Keep an open heart/mind and you’ll learn along the way. 

3 :: Community connection is a healing modality.

As the doyenne of empathy, Brené Brown would say, shame breeds in isolation. It thrives on secrecy. And once it’s spoken, it dissipates. It’s easy to think that we’re the only ones who feel confused, overwhelmed and “not quite ___ enough” when we hide these feelings under the veneer of having our shit together. We’ve all done this on occasion. I know I'm not alone here. None of us wants to be perceived as a hot mess, a failure, a fraud. 

However, these feelings need oxygen to heal, and that comes in the form of connection. 

Sharing ourselves in totality with supportive, likeminded people reminds us that we’re not alone, and that others feel the same. It’s also a keen reminder that our emotions don’t have to break us, they can come along with us for the ride. And if that ride includes the support of others, it’s bound to be faster, smoother, and a whole lot more enjoyable. 

Lesson: Allowing ourselves to be seen, and encouraging each other to shine is a fast track to collective blossoming. 

4 :: Feeling grounded, authentic, and at home in our skin is a metric of success.

Recognition. Accolades. A seat at the Lady Boss table. Our name in flashing lights. We all have an idea of when we'll know we've "made it", and a personal inkling of what success looks like. But what does our version of success feel like; even if those external metrics never come to fruition?

Most of the time we're chasing an external idea of success because of the way we believe it will make us feel. 

Contentment, freedom, security, confidence, and the limitless permission slip of self expression come from being more at home with ourselves. The next time we take out the measuring stick and ask ourselves what our version of success is, we might also ask what we believe this success will make us feel. It's here that we'll find what we truly want.  Often, it's a feeling we can cultivate by becoming more at home with ourselves-- with or without the added bling. 

Lesson: The ability to be at home in any situation, because you're at home in your skin is a dazzling, intangible, measureless way of knowing you've "made it". 

The Power of our Personal Narratives :: SONIMA article

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 4/24/15 ON SONIMA.COM

 

In Ancient Greece the three Moirai were goddesses who handled the thread of our lives.

The first of these “Fates,” as they’re sometimes called, was a goddess named Clotho, the spinner. She would arch over her spindle and weave human life, spinning a thread from its moments. Her sister Lachesis, the allotter, took stock of our threads with her measuring rod, deciding when our story was woven to completion. The third sister, Atropos, would then decide the final act of life, and snip our thread with her shears, bringing the story to completion. Her name means “inevitable” or “unturning”; the cessation of spinning, the story we can’t escape.

This myth is a story about stories; an answer to questions that were hard to define and even harder to prove. Why are we here? Who is calling the shots? It’s a story about the weaving of our stories, both personally and collectively—a means of understanding who we are as people.

Humans have told stories to make sense of the world since the beginning of time. The earliest stories are in the Lascaux Caves of Southern France. Primal narrative of the art of survival, the ritual of the hunt, painted on the walls in 13,000 B.C. Aesop crafted his fables of ethics and virtues, tales of what it means to be human in 500 B.C.; tales that we still tell to this day.

Our ancestors took sounds and created speech, symbols and created language. Alongside opposable thumbs and a sophisticated prefrontal cortex, stories are the trademark of being human. We’re distinctly wired for narrative, both that we collect and that we create.

If you’ve ever sat down to meditate, it’s easy to see the narratives that we spin, on and off the cushion. We have an unobstructed view of our thoughts: One moment we’re in the future, planning our dinner, our presentation, how to allay the outcomes we fear, and create the ones we desire. The next moment we’re in the past; analyzing a conversation we had on Tuesday, what we could have said differently, the tone of our partner’s response. We sift through our stories to collect meaning and information, weaving our threads from the contents we find, building our perspective on ourselves and the world around us.

The novelist Virginia Woolf once described our sense of self “like a butterfly’s wing…clamped together with bolts of iron.” And indeed, our mind flitters like a tiny time traveler, riding the length of our stories.

Cognitive science and psychology agree, with the study of narrative identity pointing to the flexibility of self. It’s the measured assertion that we don’t just tell stories, we are our stories; bound together by our beliefs and experiences. This makes our stories, and the qualities of our stories important to who we are. The question then becomes, what are the stories we’re telling ourselves if they’re the script of who we become?

The ancient Greeks gave our life’s story to the Fates, but may have misunderstood the place of the narrator. The power of any story is that it’s infused with a point of view, and told through the narrator’s interpretation. In other words, we own our stories; no one else can tell them for us.

There’s an old Chinese fable of a farmer and his neighbors. One day the farmer’s only horse escaped from its corral and ran away. The neighbors came when they heard the news and stood around shaking their heads. “Oh what bad luck!” they lamented, but the farmer simply shrugged. “Perhaps.”

About a week later, the horse returned, bringing a whole herd of wild horses with him. As the farmer and his son corralled their new stock of horses, the neighbors stood by and rejoiced. “Oh what good luck!” they declared, and the farmer replied, “Perhaps.” The story continues like this with an unfolding of good luck and bad, but to the farmer, a matter of perspective.

We can’t predict the cards that we’re dealt, but we have agency over how we interpret them. A tragedy, a blessing, a story of redemption, forgiveness, revenge: Regardless, we are the narrator.

Some of our narratives are so entrenched that the story begins to tell us. That’s when story becomes dangerous; when we’ve lost ownership of our interpretation. We begin to view things as “just the way it is”, which breeds cynicism, passivity, and doubt.

Imagine being a woman in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and 100 colleagues gathered in upstate New York to reevaluate a popular story line. The question was “What does it mean to be a woman?” and they didn’t believe in the assumed answer. It was a story that was so deeply embedded that we as a society mistook the status quo for truth. There’s a popular adage in public relations; “If you don’t like the conversation, change it”. I’ve never worked in PR, but I’ve always loved this saying. It’s a permission slip of personal agency, and reminds us that our story is in each of our hands.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided it was time for a new narrative, an updated story that would answer the question of who we are, and 19 years later Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote, with the rest of the nation following suit, tipping the scales of women’s equality.

Our cultural heroes and those who have changed our collective conversation possess diligence and faith, but most of all, imagination; they saw a story that needed to be told and told it.

On a personal level, all change begins by recognizing that we are the narrators of our stories. If we believe that we don’t deserve it, or that others are generous, or that the grapes are sour anyways, then we’ll act in ways that confirm our suspicions. The psychological term for this is confirmation bias; but we can call it the power of personal narrative. We’re always seeking out information that colludes with our story, and behaving in ways that confirm it.

Stories run deep, often the length of our lives, and are not always easy to change. Sometimes shifting our narrative requires splicing, healing, or the force of Atropos’ proverbial shears. However as long as we recognize that we own our narrative, the stories we collect and the stories we create are under jurisdiction of our point of view; they can be rewound, reinterpreted, reviewed, and reimagined.

Moment by moment we choose the ones that we tell.

Fill'er Up, Pour it Out: A Practice of Gratitude

The weather has officially "turned" here in the States, the last autumn leaves are covered with snowfall, pumpkin-flavored-everything has hit a fever pitch and a finale, and Holiday shopping season has been ushered in with Door Busters and Cyber Monday. 

I was grateful to spend this Thanksgiving with my big, loud and loving Italian family in Coastal Ohio. I brought my beau home for the first time (who my Grandpa playfully dubbed “Zonk, King of New York.”), cuddled a tribe of toddlers, carb loaded like a marathoner, downloaded old family photos (including the foxy shot of my Grandma, above), and went on a thrift store treasure hunt with my cousin, Cyllie. 
I also contemplated Gratitude. The Giving of Thanks, and the heartbeat of the holiday we were all celebrating. 

Gratitude has been a buzz word for quite some time now, pulling rank on Instagram and Twitter (#blessed #grateful #humblebrag) and the glossy personal journals sold in Barnes and Noble. 

But, really, what is Gratitude when it's not just a hashtag that expresses our good fortune, or a warm feeling between our collar bones? 

Is gratitude something that we can do? Activate? Cultivate? Expand? 

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, who has dedicated his life to exploring this question gives a gorgeous understanding of Gratitude that I love so much I had to share. It's simply this: Practice Gratefulness and Thanksgiving. 

The first branch is Gratefulness. Open hearted appreciation for what we have right here in it’s naked, mundane state. It's the sense of being touched by the moment. Letting our lives penetrate us. Break us open. 

Hands palms up in the mudra of Receiving. 

The mantra: Fill ‘er up, please. 

In action, the Fill'er Up branch looks like 
•spending time with children, animals, wildlife, or anything else that brings you close to your essential nature. 

•Saying “yes” when someone offers you their resources. Even if it’s awkward, or difficult. We all like to help. Let us. 

•Unpluging your internet for 2 hours. (Literally, take the router plug out of the socket.) Crawling under the covers and reading for pleasure. 

•Stargazing, Cloud watching, connecting to that place inside that recognizes the paradox of our immensity and tinyness when we turn our gaze upward.

•Asking for what we need, while trusting that our Ask is based in mutual respect and the spirit of Generosity. Even if it’s awkward or difficult. We all like to help. Really, please let us. 

•Keeping a journal. It doesn’t matter what you write, it’s simply a commitment to converse with yourself. An act of friendship and solidarity. 

The second branch is Thanksgiving. It's described as the moment when our vessel is full from the generosity of life-stuff, and we feel moved into the action of expression. We're compelled to contribute, freely transfer, and furnish others with our inspiration and good fortune. This is the juice of creative bursts and authentic exchanges. Our levy overflows. 

Hands palms up in the mudra of Giving. 

The mantra: Pour it out, thank you. 

In action, Pouring it Out looks like
•Making something and sharing it. Whatever floats your creative boat. A CD mix with a magazine collage cover, a pecan pie, a workshop, your writing, a stick figure comic strip, a limerick or a sock puppet. Infuse it with your inspiration, and then give that sh*t away with love. 

•Introducing people, unprovoked, because you think they might really dig each other, as new friends, lovers, or co-conspirators. Good things happen when good people meet. 

•Looking at the woman behind the counter in the eye as you take your change and thank her while thinking “you’re lovely.” See her beautiful humanness, and reflect it back to her. 

•Writing a thank you note to someone who’s support has allowed you to flourish, and be specific about the qualities you admire and appreciate about them. Send it via snail mail. We all like to get presents in the mail. 

Generosity and Greatfulness are perfect bed buddies, flip sides of the same coin, two branches of the same tree, and what Gratitude looks like in action.

We have to give it to get it and vice versa. Gratitude doesn't stick, it flows. 

The Beauty of Being Right Sized: An Antidote for Perfectionism

My mom is the kind of mom who receives messages from the Universe. 

This sounds a little "woo woo", I know. 

However, she speaks about it as Eastern philosophers speak of contemplation practices, or Judeo-Christians speak of prayer, holding a question or thought in mind until she receives a response, or spark of insight. 

Often this happens spontaneously, when her mind is relaxed with other activities, and sometimes the messages are for me. 

One evening during a very dark winter she called me up with just such a message. It was on the heels of botching something that was extremely important to me. I had planned it all month, certain I would receive accolades, praise, and tiny yellow tea roses thrown at my feet for being a quiet genius, revealed. 

Instead, I had a panic attack. Full out. Breathless, body quakes, phlegmy tears rolling down my chin while a circle of my peers watched me unfold.

Aka: The worst.

In a fit of humiliation, I had self-quarantined in my bedroom for the remainder of the weekend, hoping my bedsheets would swallow me whole, cocoon and transform me, eventually releasing me reborn on the beaches of Bali in June. 

This didn't happen.

Instead, my mom called. 

"The Universe has a message for you... It's 'Humility.'" 

OH. REALLY.

I received this "offering" the same way as I would if the Universe had a message for me: "You've let yourself go since high school", or, if the Universe had a message for me: "Your face is too round for that new haircut."

It seemed like a celestial-padded jab from my mother. 

NOT what I wanted to hear. 

But as we know, our needs and our wants are distinctly different devices.

So I did what any wallowing word-nerd would do, which is find the definition of "Humility" on Wiki, looking for even more reasons to be injured by this insult.

Humility. (n) Close to the Earth, grounded, right sized. 

It took a bit of contemplating (and a bit more wallowing), but eventually, I got it.

My expectations of myself and my performance had been so inflated, so dependent on grandiose standards, and my desire to be praised, that I collapsed when it didn't play out as desired.

Perfectionism in drag. Disproportionate thinking. The gap between expectation and a reality sandwich can be brutal. 

One of the finest antidotes is staying right sized. 

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3 Practices for Staying Right Sized 

1::Drop Expectations, Embrace Intentions.

Desire is the root of all action, but the intention we approach our desires with can be the linchpin difference between staying stuck, beating ourselves up afterwards, or shaking off slights and moving forward with personal permission. 

Is our reason for acting dependent on the outcome? Is it because we expect to change someone, be received a certain way, or to get something in return? 

Motivation that's dependent on outcomes that we can't control is the best recipe for staying in a perfectionist "freeze", or falling apart in the after wash. 

Rather, ask yourself "How do I want to participate in this? With compassion? Honesty? Dedication? Humor?" We can control how we 'show up', and honoring our intentions vs expectations keeps us right sized, and confident in our abilities; regardless of how the situation plays out. 

2:: When in doubt, Generosity trumps all. 

Humility doesn't mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less.

The concern that I hear most often from clients is some variation of: "What if I look silly?" or "What if they think I'm a fraud/chump/total loser" or "What if I make the wrong decision?" 

I've felt every one of these anxieties nestled in the pit of my stomach at some point, and the one thing that they all have in common, is that the anxiety lens is intently focused on ME. 

As my teacher, Venerable Robina Courtin so divinely put it: "We're so wrapped up in what other people think of us. It's a fucking nightmare."

I really like ordained nuns that drop F* bombs. I also think she's spot on. 

Peeling our attention off of ourselves and how we'll be perceived, while pinning it to what we want to contribute, offer, and create for the sake of others is the most effective way that I've found to navigate the tides of inflated/deflated thinking. 

When we do something for others, we organically drop into our right size. 

3.  Revel in Enoughness

Abundance is sexy. I get it.

The idea of living the luxe life, and chasing the dream of "having more and being more" is super seductive and ingrained in our cultural mythology. However, it also leaves us unsatisfied and unaware of what we have sitting right in front of us.

When we're prone to inflating who we are in the world with every new compliment/promotion/win/shiny thing, and deflating with every disappointment/discouragement/challenge/loss, our sense of self worth is always in flux.

As Alice said to the Caterpillar in Wonderland, "I'm not myself, you see...being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.". 

You said it, sister. And it's exhausting. Being right sized means being able to inhabit what we have right here right now, appreciate that it's not perfect, and admire that it's "enough".

Ourselves included.

The Nakedness of Blossoming

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

A day after reading these words, I found myself on a street corner of St. Marks Place in the East Village buying mauled paperback copies of Anias Nin's diary.

Volumes One and Two. Seven bucks a pop. 

I've always looked to literary lionesses for guidance. Essayists, journalists, novelests, bloggers. Women who write to know themselves, and report their world in a way that feels universal and brave in a way that I traditionally am not.

Bravery comes in many forms. Put me in a room with tigers, and I'm the grittiest gal you know. I'm strong in times of crisis. If the ceiling is caving in either literally or metaphorically, I'm the first to roll up my sleeves. 

Ask me to be vulnerable, however, and my first impulse is to close up like a morning glory at dusk. Tight inside my bud.

I've always seen vulnerability as something that looks good on other people. 

Maybe that's why I've always been more apt to declare myself an avid reader than any amount of a writer. I do both with similar frequency, but the latter requires me to stand out in the open with my words. 

The thing about opening, blossoming, after all, is that it requires us to unravel. To be exposed. Naked. And I was taught, like a nice and proper girl, to keep my shit together with a smile. Thank-you-very-much.

No exposure, no risk. No risk, no heartbreak. Seemed like a logical equation to me, but one that was paltry and missing a beat. I realized later that the tail of that equation is No heartbreak, no living. And frankly, what else is life for? 

Anais Nin's challenge of 'taking the risk to blossom' smacked with a bravery that I knew I wanted more of. I imagined she would disclose how she did it, conducted her life naked and exposed, while simultaneously strong.

A path to proverbial freedom.

Perhaps I read too much into that quote, or expected too much of her insights to lead me. Perhaps I wanted to defer the responsibility of living into it myself. Regardless, I spent that summer lapping up her words with a highlighting pen.

What I found was a map of salacious affairs, bohemian living, unrepentant sexuality. She lived fiercely on her own terms in many admirable ways.

In many other ways, though, Ms. Nin was not free from her bud at all. An intricate web of secrecy, maintaining marriages to multiple men, the "Box of Lies" she created to keep her own indiscretions straight. 

Paradox is part of being human I suppose. We all have contadictions. I expected a model of liberation-via-truth, and encountered a model of being messy, unapologetically flawed and complex.

Perhaps the punch line is that they're one in the same. 

Recently, I've been taking a course created by my friend and wordsmith crush, Patia Braithwaite. It's called The Soulful Blogger, and it's challenge to us is to get naked in our writing.

Its been messy. And scary. The thing about writing (slash-living) naked, is that vulnerability cannot be performed. It has to be embodied and spoken through, directly. Like the literary lionesses I look to for guidance,  The practice the freedom comes with sharing: our voices, our views, out in the open.

We can receive guidance, but no one else can give us the roadmap to our freedom, to our blossoming. We just have to disrobe, and stand out in the open. Imperfectly perfect. Human and flawed. In solidarity with ourselves. 

Out of the Jungle and Into the Woods: A Case for Obvious Choices

We need more obvious choices.

This is something my dad's boss said to him while they were picking out office equipment one day. It hit him with truth resonance in a way that compelled him to pass it along to me, and hit me with truth resonance in such a way that it's been lodged in my memory since. 

Life is complicated, busy, and I for one fall into a crippling pit of indecision when presented with too many options. 

We need more obvious choices. 

I've decided to sublet my NYC apartment and hightail it upstate for the next few months.

When I'm asked why I lived in New York all these years, my thoughts have been varied. I have lots of thoughts and reasons about New York, but lately, different feelings.

Some months I think that it's the only city that can keep my attention span. It's ever changing and unknowable. A few sets of scaffolding later, she's wearing a different face. There are neighborhoods I still haven't discovered and most I'll never fully know. 

Some months I think it's because I crave a diversity of cultures and ideas.

NYC is the central hub of the best of humanity: ingenuity, innovation, architecture, art, culture. It also paints a raw picture of the worst of humanity that - as one who strives to know myself - feels important to see: Homeless men and pregnant women sleeping on the doorsteps of billionaires. Inequality juxtaposed, and in full contact.

Some months I think I call this home because anything is possible and nothing is out of the ordinary. 

If you want to change the cultural current or start a pink-polka dotted pajama factory, by George, you can do that here! As I write this I'm stepping onto a subway with a woman dressed as captain America. It's 11:30 on a Thursday morning. No one bats an eye.

When I'm asked why I'm moving upstate for two months, however,  the answer is neat and simple. Obvious and felt. I need to be near nature. 

We don't think Obvious Choices, we feel them. 

And feeling is the language of nature herself. This doesn't mean that obvious choices are easy choices, by any stretch. Sometimes they need examining and planning. Sometimes they come with trepidation and uncertain outcomes.

Obvious doesn't mean Easy. Obvious mean Clear. Evident. Undeniable.

So I've made the decision to feel my way out of the Jungle and into the Woods. At least for now. Mother Nature and I have a lot to catch up on. 

xo

Adreanna