What helps you create spaciousness in your life?

February 18, 2022 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

The word “spaciousness” came up a lot this past week in my work with my coaching clients. There seemed to be an almost collective noticing (and that’s what coaching sessions can be great for, noticing!) that maybe some of us hadn’t quite taken the time or space to “just be.”

In my last post, I focused on the importance of processing and integrating the changes in our lives — in not being in such a hurry to move forward. When we force movement without “digesting” what’s happened for us (and within us), we often find that our lives lack both satisfaction and meaning.

In order to process change, we need to create space. When there’s been a lot of change, we will probably, at some point, find ourselves needing more space in which to process it.

Part of this means paying attention to inner signals that point us to the need for some spaciousness in our lives.

For me, this past weekend, that meant noticing that I was falling prey to the “use every spare moment to get stuff done” mentality that creeps up on me sometimes. It usually happens when I’ve been busy and my body has adjusted to the adrenaline shifts that come with “busy-ness.” When we have a lot to do, adrenaline will at some point kick in to help us get it done. Adrenaline is the “fight-or-flight” hormone, and it gives us energy.

But we need to recover from these surges of adrenaline. And part of that recovery is pausing long enough (and giving ourselves permission to pause!) in order for our nervous systems to come back into the “safe and social” zone, where we feel alert, calm, and open to supportive interaction with others (in other words, we’re no longer in “fight/flight”).

These pauses create spaciousness for us, and often signal us to move toward more spaciousness. I’ve been repeatedly amazed at how a “problem” can look and feel completely different to me when I’m approaching it from a more spacious place, a more regulated-nervous-system place.

For example, when I finish up my coaching work for the day, I usually feel the need to shift my energy, to let go of any energy I’ve picked up from my clients, and it’s helpful to do this by moving my body. I often go out for a walk at this point, during which I listen to music (right now it’s Tori Amos’s beautiful Ocean to Ocean).

It is very tempting sometimes to not attempt this walk. Even though it’s exactly what I need to create a spacious shift in my day, my mind will go, “You’re too tired, it won’t make a difference, it’s easier to just stay in.”

Now, there may be some days where my mind has a point. Maybe I’ve gotten poor sleep and I’m physically tired and taking a walk feels more like pushing than stretching. What’s important to lean into here is care for my whole being. What, I ask myself at this point, would feel most supportive to my whole self?

Something I’ve found over many years of trial and error is that when I care for the parts of me that are the most sensitive, the most vulnerable (however that may look), I am laying the foundation for caring for my whole being in the best possible way. If I trample over the parts of me that are sensitive and vulnerable, my whole self pays for it later on.

On most days, that spacious, energy-shifting walk is caring for my whole being. In fact, as I walk, I can feel the different parts of me with their different needs making themselves known, and the walk opens up the space for them to be heard and acknowledged.

And from this space, the “right next step” often reveals itself. And it’s always just one thing. Make the call. Send the email. Lie down. Make dinner. When we lack spaciousness in our lives, “to-do’s” tend to pile up until we feel like we can’t crawl our way out from under them. When we bring in some spaciousness, we often recognize that very little of that needs to be done right now. And that right now, nothing is wrong. Everything is okay in this moment.

And that is quite regulating to our nervous systems, the knowledge that in this particular moment, nothing is wrong.

There are so many ways to create spaciousness in our daily lives. There are small ways: staring out the window for a while; watching the deep, steady breathing of a cat or dog; lighting a candle; making some tea; stretching out on the floor and staring at the ceiling; clearing a small space of clutter.

There are bigger ways: going for a drive; taking half a day off; visiting a friend; roaming around an area that is new to you. You can probably think of dozens of others.

What’s important is to remind ourselves that we need this spaciousness in our lives. That if we feel like we’re up against a wall, like we don’t have any options or all the options are unworkable ones, very likely it’s because we haven’t created the space for our energy (and therefore, our emotions) to shift.

What helps you create spaciousness in your life? How do you remind yourself that you need it? I’d love to hear from you.

Want to stay connected? You can sign up for my monthly-ish Artist’s Nest Newsletter, here.

Need support in taking care of your unique and sensitive self while making your creativity a priority? You can learn more about the ways we can work together, here. Wondering if we’re a fit? You can learn more, here.

Above photos by Rafa G. Bonilla and Hide Obara, respectively, on Unsplash

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Time and space to process change

December 27, 2021December 27, 2021 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

My partner is away doing some cat-sitting, so it’s just me and our cat, Genevieve, in the living room as I write this today. There’s a delicious silence in here right now as I look around the room at our Christmas decorations, and catch the scent of the “fir and fireside” candle my friend gave me a few days ago.

This was a full year for me, with lots of coaching work, and (as for all of us) the continuation of the pandemic, and at times I felt like I was running on empty. It’s been at those moments when I’ve been reminded, once again, to walk my talk about self-care.

Over the years I have taken many courses with Mark Silver of Heart of Business (I highly recommend both his Heart of Money and The Heart of Your Business courses), and one of the things I appreciate again and again is his reminder of the importance of taking time to process and integrate what we are learning in our businesses, in our lives.

I’ve mentioned many times in my writing here the illness that hit me around the time I turned twenty-five — half a lifetime ago now! That was the year, in retrospect, of The Giant Pause. I was forced to step back and take care of myself. It was kind of a forced reboot, in that it became clear I couldn’t live in the “push forward” way I had been up until that point.

Although I’ve had to “reboot” many times since then, I’ve never quite hit the wall in the way I did at that point, and I think that’s because I have woven time to process and integrate the changes I’ve been through regularly — when I “keep going” too much and too far without pausing to process what I’ve experienced, my body starts giving me warnings: I get headaches, I’m less articulate, my sleep isn’t good, I don’t feel present for my relationships or my clients.

In working with many coaching clients over the past eleven (!) years, I’ve come to see that I was hardly alone in my tendency to push and push without pausing. Why did I do it? Why do they do it? I think it’s because continually pushing forward upholds the illusion that we are in control of our lives if we just keep doing enough.

But it’s a slippery slope, because a) what is enough? Is this a helpful question? Can it actually be answered from our minds? Isn’t “enough” a feeling of satisfaction? Isn’t “enough” experienced in stillness, in noticing what is already here? (That’s often my experience, anyway.)

And b): If the whole of our identity comes through pushing and “getting stuff done,” what happens when we are no longer (either temporarily or permanently) able to push? My long illness way back when showed me the way to a more all-encompassing sense of identity, one that wasn’t based on what I was able to do, but on who I was at that moment in time, and beneath that, simply the being energy that moved through me always, even when I was absolutely still in a hospital bed.

And c): Constantly pushing our way through our lives keeps us out of touch with our emotions (or, at least, with some of our emotions, and we need to feel all of them!) — particularly sadness, which, as I often note to my clients, is the “letting go” emotion. If we don’t allow sadness, we hang on to things.

Sadness isn’t always here because we’ve experienced a big loss or disappointment — it’s also about the bittersweet quality that we sense as life moves on, and feeling it allows us to more smoothly move forward with our lives — by pausing to allow this letting go emotion to come up and out. Seems like a paradox, yes? The more we push to avoid feeling, the more we tend to get stuck.

How do you know it’s time to pause to process and integrate what you’ve been learning in your life, or the change that’s occurred? As I mentioned above, my body gives me signals — they’re subtle at first, but become more pronounced the longer it takes me to listen to them. In addition, clients have reported to me that when they haven’t taken time to slow down and “pause and process,” they notice the following things:

Feeling empty and dissatisfied — things that are supposed to be “fun,” like hanging out with friends, feel more like “going through the motions”
Having a hard time making decisions — everything seems to have equal importance
Feeling exhausted — but rest doesn’t feel replenishing
Having a hard time falling asleep, or staying asleep
Putting in all the “right” actions, but the desired result doesn’t happen, or if it does, it feels less than satisfying
A vague feeling of disconnection from themselves (note that “vague” feelings tend to be covers for deeper, more specific feelings — the experience of something being “vague,” I’ve found, is code for I don’t want to go there)

We’ll each have our unique symptoms and signs that clue us in to it being time to “pause and process,” but the above are some biggies that I hear about a lot.

I’ll admit that I had considered not taking this week off from coaching, not completely! Even after all these years, there is still a strong voice within me, a part of me, which is really afraid of “not doing enough,” of not being of service to others, of being “idle” (as my grandma would have put it). This part of me is unable to embrace nuances — its thinking tends to be of the all-or-nothing variety, and it feels fearful and anxious all the time.

So I need to recognize it and remind myself that the whole of me is much more than this one part of me; this one part doesn’t get to call all the shots. I’m so grateful I didn’t act on its urgings to overwork myself here at the end of the year, because now I am reaping the benefits of taking time for self-connection: a regulated nervous system, connection to insight, and a budding feeling of openness where, previously, something felt closed.

***

What are the signs, for you, that it’s time to pause and process? How might you give yourself permission to do it? What are the benefits of allowing yourself this time and space? I’d love to hear from you.

Wishing you the time and space you need to connect with yourself as we move into a new year.

Want to stay connected? You can sign up for my monthly-ish Artist’s Nest Newsletter, here.

Above photos by Niels van Dijk on Unsplash and by Jessica Delp on Unsplash

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Back to basics: practicing presence

October 12, 2021 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

As I write this, it’s a rainy fall day and drops are pelting the bedroom window. The change in seasons has got me pondering my own, internal seasons. How often do we forget that, as humans, we are part of the natural world, and we, too, have seasons and cycles?

Too often I hear from my coaching clients that they haven’t taken a real vacation in years, that they keep putting off allowing themselves rest and downtime for when they’re “less busy” (and that time never seems to arrive!), or that when they do give themselves time off, they still feel burdened with everything they “should” be doing.

And I really hear this, because after more than two decades of serious devotion to my own self-care, I too struggle with giving myself true, dedicated downtime, with really allowing myself to deeply pause and acknowledge where I truly am in my life and what my needs are in this season.

We need to exercise our self-compassion muscles here, because very likely (whether you are U.S.-based as I am or not) the prevailing culture does not support you in taking deep and discerning care of yourself — particularly if you have needs that cause you not to fit neatly into the dominant paradigm. And let’s face it: that’s just about everyone at some point in their lives.

***

This morning I went for a walk and saw, in the window of the gray house three doors down, a long-haired white cat peering lazily at me, chin resting on the window sill, seemingly mid-nap but doing that half-open-eye thing cats do where they’re between worlds, not awake but not fully asleep, and yet somehow totally aware of their surroundings. Whenever I see this cat it is in a state of repose, reminding me that I can always access stillness, no matter what is going on in my world, in the world.

The quality of my being changed as soon as I saw the cat — I am often in a bad mood when I head out for my morning walk — and I began to notice yellow leaves floating to the sidewalk, jack-o-lantern decorations strung along a balcony, a vintage-looking cardboard witch with a purple hat on someone’s front door, and an unseasonably humid breeze hitting my face like warm breath.

If, like me, you are an introvert (and a Myers-Briggs “N” type), a regular process of noticing your surroundings, of using your senses to engage with the world, can be truly grounding and stabilizing. Noticing the “external landscape” can also balance your tendency to delve inward and be in your “inner landscape” a lot.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you feel a frenetic kind of busy-ness in your life that never seems to end, you may need to give yourself permission to access your inner world, your inner landscape. (This used to be me, an introvert who wouldn’t allow herself the gifts of introversion!)

If you identify as an introvert, or a highly sensitive person, you will suffer if you are too externally-focused for long periods of time, just as you can go to the other extreme and sometimes delve for very long periods in your inner world. (Elaine Aron, in her book The Highly Sensitive Person, calls this the dilemma of “too in or too out”, and I often see my highly sensitive clients struggling here.)

Finding this balance is not necessarily easy, but there is a simplicity to it, and that often has to do with choosing one thing — a morning walk, a meditative drive, working in your garden, twenty minutes with your journal (writing by hand), a yoga routine — which involves the body, the breath, and noticing. In this way we connect with our physical selves, our emotional selves, and what we see around us. It’s a way of integrating our internal and external landscapes, so we feel more connected to our essential selves and to the world.

Reading books that help us do this is a great practice too. Poetry can be brilliant at this — connecting images, what is seen and sensed, to our internal landscapes. A friend of mine shared that knitting brings her to this space of integration of inner and outer worlds.

A regular practice of noticing also brings us to the present moment, the only moment in which we have true agency and true connection to who we are, right now (the “us” of the past is no longer here, and “us” of the future doesn’t exist yet — but how often are we experiencing stress because our minds are in the past or the future?).

If you are feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, ungrounded (or simply grumpy as I am in the morning!), what regular practice can bring you to engagement and connection with the present moment? It may take some testing and trying, but I encourage you not give up, and give it a chance to take hold. (This means trying it out for more than a few minutes once every few months! Maybe aim for twenty minutes several times a week, and see what happens.)

On that note, Happy Fall (my favorite time of year!)! What does this new season bring for you in terms of caring for your sensitive self? What practices support you here? I’d love to hear from you.

Want to stay connected? You can sign up for my monthly-ish Artist’s Nest Newsletter, here.

Above cat image by Tina Rataj-Berard on Unsplash

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Mood, assumptions, and action

July 28, 2021July 28, 2021 / Jill Winski / 5 Comments

Sometimes when I am working with coaching clients, we talk about things that boil down, in essence, to “low mood.” Low mood is basically “I don’t feel like doing anything. I feel kind of sluggish and down.”

Low mood can be associated with depression, that’s for sure. Low mood can also have a chemical or hormonal component. It can also be, for some of us, our natural “setpoint.” If this is the case, it’s helpful to understand that, and to know that we may need to shift ourselves into action before we feel like doing anything. Wow! That’s a tough one, right?

I have written before about the importance of shifting our energy. I actually prefer this phrasing to “taking action.”

There tends to be a huge emphasis in U.S. culture, and, quite frankly, the coaching/personal-growth world, on “taking action.” Taking action is viewed as the “right thing” and stepping back, pondering, slowing down are often viewed as “not taking action” and therefore, the wrong thing.

Obviously, context is important here. It is definitely important to take action in support of injustice and in support of things we care about. We want to take actions that align with our values.

But many of my coaching clients have been addicted to “taking action,” and growth, for them, has been to slow down and learn that it’s okay to not do. It’s okay to stop. It’s okay to be.

All this said, when we are dealing with “low mood,” it can be important to take actions to shift that mood. Acceptance also comes into play here.

I know, for example, that my “default state” when I get up in the morning is low mood. It’s been this way since I was a kid. I can remember walking into the kitchen before I left for school for the day and my dad would be shaving in the little bathroom in the hall. “Good morning, Jillie!” he (a morning person) would say. I would grumble, barely audibly, good morning. His cheerfulness, at that time of day, was jarring to me.

Rather than “forcing myself” to be cheerful, I’ve found that it helps a lot to a) know that I am in a low mood place when I get up in the morning, and b) know that this will shift as I take gentle actions to start my day.

Sometimes we can get stuck in a kind of belief that is something like “I shouldn’t feel this way in the morning. What is wrong with me?”

Obviously, if we have severe low mood that is actually impairing our ability to function, this is something to check out with a doctor. But if, like me and some of my clients, you know you have a certain “low mood” default place, this self-knowledge is important.

And beyond that, self-acceptance — this is how I feel at X time of day and that’s okay, that’s part of being who I am so far in this lifetime — will allow you to move forward, rather than spinning your wheels in the land of “I shouldn’t be this way, it shouldn’t be this way.”

The thing about low mood is that when our minds get going in that space, we can spin out many very “negative” thoughts that increase the low mood.

In this low mood space, we may notice that we have many “negative” assumptions about things, life, and other people as well. (I put “negative” in quotes because I actually don’t like to view thoughts as “negative” or “positive”, or feelings, either. I think it’s more important to notice the feelings and behaviors that certain thoughts trigger than to label any of it “negative.”)

For example, in a low mood state I might read an email from someone and it comes across as snippy or rude to me. Later, in a more balanced mood state, it may come across as neutral.

In a low mood state, ideas or plans that previously felt important and good can seem trivial or exhausting.

It’s important to recognize that your mood can have a significant effect on what you’re experiencing, how you’re experiencing it, and the assumptions you make about other people.

Shifting out of a low mood space can be pretty simple. It’s why I take a walk every morning. It’s why I get my coffee out instead of making it at home — I get to exchange hello’s and how are you’s with the people who work in the coffee place, and I get to say hi to my neighbors (and their dogs!) on my way home. By the time I’m ready to go to work for the day, my mood has shifted to something more open, more grounded, more curious.

The steps to this shift can look like this:

Notice. Simply be curious about how you’re feeling at the moment (it’s pretty hard to be judgmental and curious at the same time — they are opposite energies!).
Move your body (in whatever way this is possible for you).
Connect with another being (human or animal) in a tiny way. Don’t make it too big! If connecting feels like too much, try observing someone else’s good-feeling energy. This might mean just taking a minute to watch a couple of sparrows (as I did the other day).

What do you notice about your “default mood”? How do you work with it? I’d love to hear from you.

Want to stay connected? You can sign up for my monthly-ish Artist’s Nest Newsletter, here.

Need support in taking care of your unique and sensitive self while making your creative work a priority? You can learn more about the ways we can work together, here. Wondering if we’re a fit? You can learn more, here.

Above images by Ludemeula Fernandes on Unsplash and MIKHAIL VASILYEV on Unsplash, respectively

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The power of acknowledging what is true

May 28, 2021June 13, 2021 / Jill Winski

The other day I began to feel tired and to develop a sinus headache relatively early in the day. By 2 p.m., I was pretty wiped out and really didn’t feel like doing anything else. Something in me, though, kept pushing on, trying to get done the things I’d planned for the day. I noticed as the day rolled on that I felt increasingly edgy and dissatisfied and disconnected from myself.

At about 4 p.m., I sat down on the couch and realized I was in a lot of resistance to what was true for me in that day, that moment.

I also realized (because I have been here so many times before!) that acknowledging and accepting what was true was actually the way to presence and freedom, not pushing against it as my mind would have me believe.

And as soon as I recognized that it was okay to feel exactly what I was feeling and be exactly where I was, the tension I was holding in my body shifted. My breathing slowed and became deeper. When I allowed what I was feeling, I felt freed up to go on with the day (and also to call it a day, if that’s what I chose), rather than locked into a “bad feeling place.”

I’ve written previously about “fighting a feeling”. In fact, a lot of times when I ask a coaching client what they are feeling, they describe to me the experience of fighting a feeling, trying to push something down because it is in some way unacceptable to them. Similar to trying to hold a beach ball under water, this takes a ton of energy and ultimately just doesn’t work! (That beach ball somehow manages to pop back up every time.) When we fight with our feelings, we use up a huge amount of energy that can be available to us for living our lives.

I notice that, for me, what sometimes keeps me from acknowledging and accepting feelings is the idea that, if I fully allow them into consciousness, I won’t be able to do what I need to do. This is the mentality that leads us to burnout. In fact, Amelia and Emily Nagoski describe this in their book Burnout as “not completing the stress cycle.”

When feelings come up, they are meant to be attended to. They’re signals to us. In my case, physical symptoms — my tiredness and sinus headache — were pointing me to a need for a certain type of self-care that had been lacking: I needed better sleep, and to take a look at how I much was pressuring myself to do in a given day or week, and to take some things off my plate. If I had persisted in pushing down my tiredness and general grumpy feeling, I wouldn’t have been able to attend to my needs (because I wouldn’t have been fully aware of them!).

Did acknowledging, accepting, and attending to my feelings prevent me from getting stuff done? No. In fact, it helped me to approach what I needed to do more mindfully and realistically. It helped me put my attention where I wanted it to be (on my clients, on the beautiful day outside, on the text my friend had sent), rather than on trying to push down the beach ball of “unwanted” feelings. Letting my feelings know they were wanted was key to hearing their message for me.

A client said to me recently, but what if when I acknowledge my feelings, their message for me is that I have to take an action I don’t want to take? Ah, I’ve definitely had that fear as well. The thing is, you are still the one running the show that is your life. Acknowledging and accepting your feelings doesn’t mean you have to do anything. What it does do is open you to information about what’s going on for you.

You may choose to do one thing, or another, or nothing at all with that information, but opening yourself to the information gives you the opportunity to understand what’s going on for you more clearly and deeply, and from there you have a range of options that will not even seem in the realm of possibility when you are pushing feelings down.

In noticing our options, our nervous system relaxes. We no longer feel trapped and confined (with the resulting stress that goes along with that). When I acknowledged and accepted my tiredness, only then could I open myself to the myriad ways I could attend to it. When it remained unacknowledged and unaccepted, I felt like I was in the dark when it came to my needs, like my needs were hovering around the periphery and I kept elbowing them away.

There is power in naming what’s happening for us. This is why I’m such an advocate of journaling. When we see, on paper, what is up for us, it’s no longer a mysterious force driving us. We bring it to light, where we can work with it. And often, what’s going on is simpler than we think. Maybe we’re tired, as I was, or lonely, or sad, but we just haven’t named those things and brought them to awareness.

As you go through your day, when you’re noticing stress, chances are there are feelings that are not being given the airtime they need. What happens if you pause for a minute or two to acknowledge, accept, and attend to whatever you’re feeling? I’d love to hear about your experience of this.

Want to stay connected? You can sign up for my monthly-ish Artist’s Nest Newsletter, here.

Need support in taking care of your unique and sensitive self while making your creative work a priority? I currently have one opening for one-on-one coaching. You can learn more about the ways we can work together, here. Wondering if we’re a fit? You can learn more, here.

Above cat images by Dan Gold and Aleksandar Cvetanovic on Unsplash, respectively.

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Shifting your relationship to the problem

February 6, 2021 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

One of my favorite books is Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance, in which she discusses the concept of “widening the lens of attention.” (You can tell this is a book I’ve turned to again and again, given the amount of coffee stains on its pages!)

I thought about “widening the lens” while working with a client the other day. Something unexpected had come up in her life, and she was feeling overwhelmed. I could so relate to the feeling that this one thing had popped up and made everything feel unworkable.

And I was reminded that when we press up against a particular, seemingly unsolvable issue, like pressing our face to a window pane, we can lose sight of the context, and the spaciousness, in which the issue lives.

At the core of most overwhelming life issues is fear, and Tara writes about the importance of relating to our fear rather than acting from fear. Fear can narrow our focus, constricting our awareness until all that seems to exist is the issue before us.

This is a good thing when, say, we’re sitting in our living room and we smell smoke coming from the kitchen. For more complex issues — those tangled, sticky ones that seem like they have no solution (and in which there is no true emergency), it’s not so effective!

Our minds will tell us that we must combat a seemingly unsolvable problem until we have a solution — that’s what minds do. That’s why, when we’re “pressed up against it” like this, it’s important to “widen the lens” — to expand our field of awareness so that we create “right distance” from the problem.

This doesn’t mean that the problem ceases to be an issue (well, sometimes that actually does happen!). But it does mean that we become aware that this “insurmountable issue” is not the only thing in our lives — that there are things that are working very well alongside this challenging issue.

And so often, I’ve found, when we let go of the struggle around a particular issue, we can take cues from what is working. This allows us to see that a) we’re not in control of everything, and b) the problem, when viewed with more detachment and from a calmer place, may be just waiting for us not to solve it, but to change our relationship to it.

This is one of the reasons I do my “what worked well today?” evening pages exercise at least several times a week. Asking this question in my journal, and hand-writing the answers, helps connect me more deeply with what is going smoothly in my life — sometimes without a shred of conscious input from me! (Some of my clients have done variations on this exercise, such as “What did I appreciate today?” “What can I appreciate about myself today?” and “What inspired me today?”)

The poet Hafiz wrote, “Troubled? Then stay with me, for I am not.”

When we can ask the parts of ourselves that are not troubled, that are calm or confident or relieved, to weigh in on that really big problem that just won’t get solved, we are accessing an alternative way of relating to the issue, and we realize, in fact, that there may be many other ways of relating to it.

It may continue to be a problem, but we’ve been so anxious we’ve been missing the solution, which has been there all along.

Or, we may see that the “problem” is more of a path, through which we are learning about who we really are and what we really value.

The “problem” may also be a teacher, showing us that it’s not what happens to us but how we choose to respond to it that is key.

The problem may be directly or indirectly connected to systemic issues over which we do not have immediate control, and allowing ourselves to acknowledge this (rather than blaming ourselves for it) may point us to where we have true control and where we do not.

Or maybe, when we widen the lens, we realize that, with gentleness, the problem begins to evaporate — it was our own harshness toward ourselves that created it to begin with.

This was the case for me when recently I was judging myself for being confused about something, and for “doing it wrong.” When I met with a few others who were dealing with the same thing, it turned out they, too, had felt confused and concerned they were “doing it wrong.” We all realized that the information we had been given about said thing actually was incomplete and confusing, and therefore there was no “right” way to move forward with it.

Connecting with the group allowed me to recognize our common humanity — we were all being hard on ourselves and concerned about “getting it wrong.” How human of us! I realized that when I was able to let go of being harsh with myself, I could see that the “insurmountable problem” was simply a need for more complete information — and gentleness around all of this.

I’ve written here that during the pandemic my partner and I have created a practice of taking drives that help us feel more connected with with the broader world outside our home, and, particularly, with nature. After these drives, I always emerge from the car with a lightened sense of being, and a broader perspective on what I’m struggling with.

These drives support me in “widening the lens.” Walking does this for me, as well, as did connecting with others in the example above. I’ve written previously, too, about “puttering time” — that’s another way I bring in new perspectives for myself, by loosening my grip on whatever is troubling me and shifting my energy, allowing more flow.

What are your ways of shifting your relationship to an issue that feels overwhelming or insurmountable? How do you widen your field of awareness? I’d love to hear from you.

Above images by Jenna Anderson on Unsplash and Stephanie Bernotas on Unsplash, respectively

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The invitation to move inward

December 19, 2020December 21, 2020 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

Here in the Chicago area of the U.S., we are reaching the time of year where it gets dark very early.

Sometimes I turn a light on in my living room now before 4 p.m. because it’s become so dim. From my windows, I can see Christmas lights strung on the balconies of the condo building across the way, decorated trees lit up through the windows, and (my favorite!) the occasional dog or cat peering out.

I know some people find the darker times of year depressing, but I appreciate it when daylight ends earlier. It seems to me to be an invitation to reflect, to hush, to go within. And in this particular year, 2020, maybe more of us than usual are needing such an invitation.

During the pandemic, my partner and I have taken to longish drives on the weekends. I have come to appreciate, even to relish, these drives, which at first felt like acts of desperation (there’s nowhere to go!). Now they feel reflective to me, a shared activity between us where we simply notice. We listen to music on these drives, too (I rediscovered Fleetwood Mac!), and there is a quality of really listening, because our purpose is not to get anywhere. We are simply being, appreciating.

After these drives, more often than not, I feel renewed. And because we are covering more ground in the car than I would on my walks, I feel more connected to community-at-large, my place in the bigger picture, as the landscape flows by. It’s a good way of getting “out of myself” — noticing the specifics of the world around me — when I feel too “in”.

In that same way, during much of the pandemic I have been feeling too “out”. Is this true for you, too?

Less alone time and more coaching clients for me has meant more natural focus on others, and in many ways this has been very, very good. I’ve felt honored and blessed to be a part of a support system during this time for the lovely souls I work with, and it’s felt more important than ever to recognize that we all share this experience of being human, and that any issue a client I work with is experiencing is not solely “their own” — it is, in its essence, a universal thing, a part of existing on this planet.

And, for my introvert self, sometimes all this “out” is a challenge. I need to make sure I’m getting the alone time, the “puttering time,” that fills my creative well, that allows me to recharge and replenish.

That means that there are ways in which I’ve given myself permission to really slow down during this time.

Despite a couple of decades of practice of giving myself this permission, I have to say that it took me several months to recognize I needed it more than ever. A part of me kept exerting pressure to “keep to my usual pace”, with this particularly prickly voice within me piping up to utter things like, “You already go way too slow! And now you think you need to go even slower??”

Here is where I know that the “you need to speed up!” voice is not mine alone and part of a shared experience of being human (at least in U.S. culture): I have this conversation with clients a lot. The idea that they may need to move more slowly, to let some things go, triggers all sorts of fears. What if there won’t be enough? What if I won’t be enough? Who will I be if I’m “slacking off?” What if I can’t keep up?

We talk about how this fearful voice is trying to help, but the voice ultimately doesn’t feel helpful.

We talk about noticing this fearful voice as a part of us, not the whole of who we are. It’s simply one part, often a young one that didn’t quite get its needs met way back when.

We talk about ways we can calm this voice, ways we can reassure it that we are okay, and we’re choosing a new way, a kinder way, to be in relationship to ourselves now.

Clients often say they are relieved to realize that this fearful, critical voice is just one part of them — just a voice within them — and that there are other, calmer voices within them, too. They’re just more used to focusing on the fearful voice.

As Kristin Neff teaches in writing about self-compassion, it’s vital to find equanimity when we are working with a part of ourselves that is fearful, that is suffering. We don’t want to overidentify with our suffering, but at the same time, we don’t want to dismiss it and pretend it doesn’t matter.

That fearful voice may have an important message for us — it’s just that, often, that message is amplified because the voice is so loud and demanding.

It can drown out other, quieter, less frenetic voices, like the voice that might say, “Hmm, yes, this is challenging right now, but we’ve faced big challenges before and figured out ways to handle them.” Or, “I’m sensing we need to rest for a while, and when we return to this issue refreshed, we’ll see it from another perspective.”

I notice that, although that frightened, frenetic voice really jumped out for me as the pandemic set in (and of course it did, why wouldn’t it?!), I am choosing to listen more to the calmer part of me, the part that knows the whole of me is capable of seeing creative solutions I might not have seen before.

And as darkness falls earlier these days, I accept the invitation to move inward and rediscover calm and quiet and the wisest part of me (who is also, by the way, quite fierce about setting boundaries around her time and energy). This will look different ways at different times, but it’s the underlying feeling of replenishing, of recharging and renewing, that tells me I’m on the right track.

For now, I am setting an intention to choose to respond when I notice a trend in my behavior of automatic reacting.

I am reminding myself that I can always access mindful presence, regardless of what I am “doing” at any time.

And that, if I am in a situation where I am really struggling to access mindful presence, I have permission to remove myself from that situation if I can. If that’s not possible, I can work toward acceptance of the situation. (And by the way, acceptance is not the same as resignation to things that are unjust! We can be in a state of acceptance of what is, and still take action toward the good.)

How can you welcome moving inward this season (whether your daylight hours have shortened or not!)? What permission can you give yourself to move inward and reconnect? How does this work for you right now? I’d love to hear from you.

Above images by Wonderlane, Debby Hudson and Renee Fisher on Unsplash, respectively

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Working with (not against!) your available energy

October 30, 2020November 3, 2020 / Jill Winski

I’ve written a lot on this site over the years about working with our energy, energetic ebbs and flows, and the challenges highly sensitive and/or introverted folks can have with energy (especially when they feel forced to adapt to a lifestyle or pace that doesn’t work for them).

Many years ago, my very astute therapist at the time commented that “perhaps” I was a “low-energy person.” I cringed. I didn’t like thinking of myself that way (even though I knew she meant nothing at all negative by it and was only throwing it out there as a suggestion).

As we talked about it more, I understood that what my therapist was getting at was that I often took on way more than my natural energetic inclinations could handle, then crashed and burned. What emerged during that period for me was the opportunity not to go faster and work harder and push myself more (I’d already done plenty of that by the time I was about 14!), but the opportunity to practice what I began to term in my journaling practice radical self-acceptance.

Which meant recognizing that while I often had high energy “bursts”, it wasn’t healthy for me to attempt to sustain them over time — in fact, I really couldn’t without becoming ill.

I learned over the years that I functioned far better when I tempered those high energy bursts with lots of slower, quieter times, where I demanded less of myself, not more. It wasn’t so much that I was a “low-energy person” as that I hadn’t learned to honor the way my energy worked.

Ironically, I found that I got more done, over time, when I accepted my natural energetic ebbs and flows (you can read how that worked with my writing, here), than when I tried to force myself to stay in a “high energy” place and then crashed and burned.

Crashing and burning takes a lot of time. From the vantage point of burnout, I would find myself wondering why in the world I thought I had to move so very quickly, when now I couldn’t move at all.

***

Working with my coaching clients during the pandemic, I’ve noticed how many of us are experiencing our energy in new ways. Some clients have told me they feel “done” much earlier in the day than they had previously; others have said they feel the need to sleep later and stay up later.

Many have expressed that they feel there is “nothing to look forward to,” and this affects their available energy in ways they never would have anticipated. Sharing space with partners, children, and pets far more than “usual” also has unforeseen effects on our energy.

And some clients have shared with me that when “small” but unexpected things go wrong, dealing with them uses up much more energy than it did prior to the pandemic. There’s also a cumulative thing here: as the days and weeks and months pile up, what didn’t feel as challenging in April may feel very challenging in October (and vice versa, for some).

So what we might have gotten “used to” expecting from ourselves may not be at all realistic now. And this is where we have an opportunity, as I did all those years ago, to practice self-acceptance. What is true for us, now? Not a year ago, but right now?

I’ve been slowly recognizing that I need to “interrupt” the perfectionist, overachiever part of me sooner than I used to. I’d gotten much better at not allowing that part of me to call all the shots over the years, but I still often let her get a foothold and then needed to sort of grab her by the ankle and steadily loosen her grip.

Now, what’s true for me is that it’s more helpful not to let her get a foothold in the first place. And often, I simply don’t have the “excess” energy to allow that, so when I sense her trying to take the reins, I’m kinda like, “Nope, sorry, my dear, you do not get to do that today.” It comes from this very calm, kind, and quietly fierce place in myself. Nope. Not happening. We don’t have the bandwidth.

I’ve also noticed more than ever how our nervous systems and our available energy are exquisitely connected. If you are familiar with research on trauma, you may know about the “window of tolerance.” This is the space within which our nervous systems are neither hyperactivated and overstimulated (we might relate these states to the “fight” or “flight” stress responses), nor are they underactivated or shut down (these states connect to the “freeze”, “overwhelm”, or “collapse” stress responses).

The more we can stay in, or return to, our window of tolerance (which Elaine Aron refers to as our “optimal range of arousal” in her book The Highly Sensitive Person), the more sustainable, renewable energy we will have available to us over time, and the more we will stay connected to our creative, resourceful selves, where we are able to perceive many more options available to us than we do when when we are locked in a stress response.

I’ve been encouraging my energetically zapped clients to notice. Notice what happens for them when they begin to get outside of their window of tolerance. Do they feel agitated, headache-y, pushed or rushed? Do they feel sleepy (when it’s not time to go to bed), disconnected, tuned out? All of these might be signs that they are starting to move out of the zone of tolerance into a stress response.

Of course, sometimes stress responses come upon us suddenly. We read something in the newsfeed (right?!?), we get a piece of bad news about someone we love, we worry about health issues (and receiving care for them) more than before. We might find that some of our support networks are eroding, or have dissolved. In the U.S., as of this writing, many of us are feeling an intense amount of election stress. All of this means we’re leaving that “zone of tolerance” probably a LOT.

That will happen — there’s no way to completely keep it from happening — but we can return to our zone of tolerance once we realize we’re having a stress response.

So I often ask my clients two questions: 1) How do you know your nervous system is getting over-activated, or shutting down? and 2) How do you know you’re in a stress response?

When we can identify these signs for ourselves, we can take actions to bring our nervous systems back “online” — to that “safe and social” zone where we feel calm, alert, and able to connect with others.

So how can we regulate our nervous systems when they’re either hyperactivated or shutdown? I’ll go into more depth on this in a future post, but for now:

For hyperactivated nervous systems, think calming, soothing, comforting. What can you do to bring these states to your nervous system? Call a friend? Take a walk? Take four deep breaths? Have a cup of chamomile tea? (It worked for Peter Rabbit!)
For shut-down nervous systems, think small, manageable, actionable — to get you out of “freeze” state. Attempting anything too big at this point will feel overwhelming and only create more “freeze.” But very small actions that feel “doable” can help shift you out of freeze and into movement, even something as small as brushing your teeth, stretching, or interacting with your pet.

In the meantime, Happy Halloween! And, if you’re in the U.S., please VOTE!

What are you noticing about your energetic ebbs and flows during this time? And what helps you regulate your nervous system? I’d love to hear from you.

And: I finally have some limited availability for new private coaching clients. If you’re in need of support right now, feel free to check out this page to see if we might be a fit.

Above images by Alex Simpson on Unsplash, Beth Teutschmann on Unsplash, and Angelina Jollivet on Unsplash respectively

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Puttering time, soul needs, and ever-shifting self-care

October 4, 2020October 4, 2020 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

“what happened to alone time?”

During the loooong time since I published my last blog post, I’ve had to kind of reinvent the ways I practice self-care. Sound familiar?

Part of this (perhaps ironically?) was the decision not to offer my Stellar Self-Care One-on-One Coaching Program this year, for the first time since 2015. I realized that, with my own self-care so up in the air, I didn’t have the personal bandwidth to “hold” the program energetically this year (though I’ve still been working with clients on self-care issues in their individual sessions).

Self-care, for me, has been hugely dependent on the availability of regular time alone, and we’re not talking about just half an hour here or there. Solid, sustained alone time was a big part of my way of life prior to the pandemic.

This solitude afforded me several important things: connection to myself, without reference to others (which, for a recovering people-pleaser, has felt like a must); the fertile creative ground from which blog posts and other pieces of writing are born; the rebalancing of my energy and recharging of my battery that I, as a definite introvert, have felt the need to do alone.

In the five years that I’ve shared a home with my partner, I’ve gotten my alone time when he’s been out, at work. I’d schedule coaching clients during this time, and I’d also be able to have my beloved “puttering time,” in which I would, yes, putter around my home alone, doing things like folding clothes, rearranging books, remembering, musing, and weaving past and future together within myself. (And, of course, talking to my cat.)

Puttering time has nothing to do with “getting things done”; it’s that pure, intentional non-doing time in which I connect with “being” energy (even though I often am doing things during it because I’m just not a particularly sedentary person). Puttering time can be hard to allow to myself, and it can be easy to forget that I need it, even in “normal” times.

Well, the pandemic brought puttering time almost to a complete halt. (I did manage to reengage with it a few weeks ago when my partner was away for a couple of days.) Add in that I have been working with more coaching clients than usual, and, for a while, I had what felt like this whole tangled mess of needs I had no idea how to meet.

I’d like to tell you this is all resolved, but, of course, it isn’t. It’s a day-by-day thing — a process of ever-shifting and ever-evolving self-care that I am learning to embrace.

What has managed to occur, though, is that I’ve reached some form of acceptance.

Acceptance that it’s extra-challenging to meet some very important needs right now.

Acceptance that my partner and I have shorter tempers and we get irritated and angry with each other more quickly.

Acceptance that there are loved ones I haven’t seen in a very long time and probably will not see for quite some time more.

Acceptance that our cat is affected by all this and going out of her mind with hunting/predatory/play energy (she’s shown up on quite a few of my video coaching sessions, stalking imaginary things in the background). (Note to self: in the future, follow instinct to adopt two cats rather than one, to avoid “single cat syndrome.”)

***

Sometimes when I bring up the concept of “acceptance” to clients, they say that acceptance sounds like not trying, like giving up, like resigning themselves to things they don’t want, like being excessively passive.

I used to feel this way, too. But over the years, as life brought me to my knees time and again, I’ve come to realize that acceptance comes down to recognizing where we have true control and where we don’t.

It also means recognizing our limits — which I used to hate to admit I had. It means accepting who we are — that combination of strengths and not-so-strong places that is innate to each of us — and understanding that we can change and grow and stretch ourselves — and we should (this is one of the places where I mean “should” in a positive way — our world, quite obviously, increasingly needs us to stretch ourselves in countless ways).

And: we also each have core traits that we’d do much better to accept than to try to change.

Like my need for alone time. I can do without it for a while, but I’d better figure out ways to get it if I can. It’s a soul need for me, and fulfilling that need allows me to be present for others, for the world.

And I’m learning that there are ways of getting that time, even when it can’t be as “planned” or as consistently available as it was in the past. I grab it here and there where I can; I make more requests of my partner (and he of me) so that we can each have some time to ourselves (even when we’re both at home).

I am also learning to leave myself alone more. By this I mean, more than ever, out of sheer necessity, I am quicker to be kind to myself. To give myself the benefit of the doubt. To drop it when I realize I’m criticizing myself (that self-criticism is probably the number one thing that makes me less available to others).

The ways I practice self-care are shifting, evolving, transforming. This is not a bad thing. It is a necessary thing.

What are you noticing about your self-care during this time? What have you changed? What has changed you? What challenges you the most? I’d love to hear from you.

Above dog photo by Ann Schreck on Unsplash; mountain goat photo by Ray Aucott on Unsplash

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Small shifts during big change

April 18, 2020April 17, 2020 / Jill Winski

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, or are subscribed to my newsletter (you can do that here!), you know I am a big fan of little changes.

Huge changes in our lives can be highly taxing to the nervous system. We’re experiencing that collectively now. And within that, we each have extremely personal, individual experiences of this time.

Probably the thing I’ve noticing most in a coaching context lately is the idea that “I should be coping better than I am.”

One of the issues my coaching clients over the years have tended to share is a tendency to self-pressure. Because the self-pressure is so deeply ingrained, it’s habitual, and when things get hard, instead of easing up, part of the habit is to double-up on this pressure.

If we tend toward self-pressuring and perfectionism, the current situation might be bringing these issues front and center for us.

We might feel like we’re “with ourselves” (or, depending on our living situations, with partners or family members or roommates) a lot more than before, and it can feel a lot harder than usual to balance self-care and other-care (whether we feel alone too much, or with others more than we’d like).

If we “normally” struggle with a particular issue, it just might be magnified right now. Pre shelter-in-place, my partner and I had been grappling with the limitations of our living space, and now, wow are we ever challenged by them! A friend who’d resolved to spend less time in the online world and more in the “real world” for her mental health is having to accept that more time “out” is not terribly possible right now.

So many ways we previously resourced ourselves are currently off the table — and that’s real. It’s real loss and real stress, and it’s okay — and necessary — to acknowledge that.

I’ve noticed that some days — some hours — I connect with kindness toward myself. And on some days, and hours, I do not.

I’m not “trying to do better” at being kind to myself. I’m just noticing how I feel when I can find gentleness and compassion toward myself, and how I feel when I can’t seem to find it, in the moment. It’s harder than usual right now, and that’s what is.

I’m also finding that if I can give a lot of space to whatever I’m feeling, I don’t fight it as much. I’ve learned that fighting a feeling is a lot more stressful than the feeling itself — whatever it may be. It’s helpful to notice the difference between these two states — fighting the feeling vs. experiencing the feeling.

Behind “fighting the feeling”, I’ve found, is the belief that “there isn’t room for this.” Or, “there isn’t time for this.”

What if there is room? What if there’s plenty of space for whatever’s coming up (even if you feel like you’re in cramped quarters?). What if there is time? What if there is enough, right now, even in this situation?

These inquiries have been helping me.

Other seemingly “small” things that are helping:

• Allowing my body to relax while I was on an extra-long Zoom call the other day. Stretching my legs out on the chair next to me, allowing my jaw to soften and my shoulders to slump a bit. It reminded me that I can show up in a softer, more vulnerable way and still be effective — in fact, more effective than I’d imagined I could be on that day.

• Taking short drives with my partner a couple of times a week. Yesterday we drove past a curve of sparse nearby woods and saw deer eating and blinking at us through the trees. We saw colorful signs in yards in children’s handwriting: Thank you, helpers. We saw people in masks walking happy dogs. We saw plump robins foraging for worms through April snow flurries.

• Noticing my relationship to comfort foods. When does the “comfort” in comfort food actually give comfort, and when does it create more stress? I’m looking at all this with curiosity. So many people have shared with me that their eating habits have changed in the past several weeks, and it’s human to seek comfort in our food. “Just noticing” might not seem like a lot, but I’ve found the act of noticing to be incredibly powerful. It is, in fact, a cornerstone for self-understanding and desired change.

• Allowing myself a little more sleep and to call it a day a little earlier than usual. Just that little bit of extra sleep and rest can make the difference in my ability to face the day (and the news).

A final thought: If you’re not sure what you need on a given day, or in a given moment, sometimes it helps to think about what others have told you you’re really good at giving to them. We’re often experts at giving the very thing we need the most (we just might not notice it because it comes so naturally to us, and we might not realize we need it!).

What seemingly “small” shifts in your day are helping you through this time? I’d love to hear from you.

And: here are a couple of older posts you might find helpful. They’re not about current situation, of course, but some of the concepts are relevant: Radical self-care: when your “normal” has changed and There’s no right way to process change.

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Above image of robin by Jordan Irving on Unsplash