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.

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 Niels van Dijk on Unsplash and by Jessica Delp on Unsplash

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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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When it’s hard getting started

January 14, 2020January 13, 2020 / Jill Winski

As we move into a new year, we’re met with a flurry of messages: How will you make this year different? What goals will you accomplish this year? How will you create BIG CHANGE this year?

These messages may or may not line up with where we actually are in our processes, in our lives.

Just because it’s January, it does not necessarily follow for all of us that we are in a “start new stuff” phase of life. We may be in a grieving place. We may be in a “processing everything that happened in the fall” place. It may be time to take a few things off the plate rather than adding more.

Even if we are in a “start new stuff” phase of life — which can be a delicious place to be! — we might find that we’re having trouble actually starting. This could be for any number of reasons — we might be, without fully realizing it, making getting started extra-hard for ourselves.

Are you really in a “start new stuff” place? Here are some ways to tell:

• When you think about something you’d like to begin, there’s an element of excitement, fun, joy, or deliciousness to it. There may be other, less “positive” feelings there too — but you notice that at least some part of this idea or thing lights you up.

• You have the time and energy (both physical and emotional) to do this thing.

• You have the financial resources to do this thing (or know how to get them).

• You have access to other sources of support that might help you to do this thing (or ideas about how to get them).

“Start new stuff” periods in our lives are characterized by moving outward into the world and gathering support for this movement. If you got mostly feelings of “yes” when you read the above statements, then, yay! You’re probably in a “start new stuff” period of your life.

But if you didn’t? Let’s do a little investigating and see if you might be in a “time to move inward” or “in-between” place in your life.

• You feel like you “should” be starting new things, but nothing is lighting you up.

• You feel depleted — your emotional, physical, spiritual and/or financial resources do not feel like “enough” right now.

• You feel overwhelmed, or like you’ve been running on adrenaline. You’re coming off a very busy time of life, and although your mind likes the idea of starting new stuff, in your body it feels like if you add one more thing you are going to shut down or implode.

• You are going through a big loss, or have just experienced a big loss in your life.

If you got mostly feelings of “true” when you read the above statements, you are likely not in a “start new stuff” period of your life. You are likely in a “moving inward,” “processing what happened,” or “cocooning” period of your life.

When we’re in this space, it can actually be counterproductive to start new stuff (especially if it’s “big” stuff, like a project that will take a lot of time and energy, a move, or anything that requires lots of inner and outer resources to get going and keep going).

With clients who are in this space, I have often seen that projects they think they should do (because it’s a new year! Because they wanted to do them before, when they were in a different place!) end up falling apart pretty early on. It’s like there’s not enough glue (desire + resources + right timing) to hold them together.

We live in an “all action, all the time” culture. It’s not realistic to adapt ourselves to this message, pervasive as it is. Where are you, in your life right now?

If you realize you are in a “start new stuff” place — if the idea of that lights you up, at least a little! — it can help to begin in “right-sized” steps.

Lots of us have a habit of making our steps so big we just can’t wrap our minds around them. (This was me when I started blogging in 2011!) Choosing a step that feels innately doable is key here. When I’m overwhelmed, I usually find that if I start with a step that feels super-easy, I’ll do more than I’d planned. But if I try to begin with something complex and triggering, I probably won’t get started at all.

A lot of getting started is about knowing yourself and what feels “right-sized” for you on a particular day. I remember coaching someone several years ago who felt energized by doing things in big chunks rather than tiny steps — really small steps just felt too boring to her and if something felt bigger she was actually more likely to do it, not less.

For others (like me!), we might need to make the step super-tiny on some days, and a little bigger of a step might feel right on days we’re feeling more resourced.

Wherever you are as you begin this new year, honor that. Change is a process, and there’s no right or wrong to that process — there’s only where you, authentically, are right now.

Whether you’re in a “start new stuff” phase, or a “moving inward” phase, or a “relishing what you’ve created” phase, it’s all good if it’s true for you. And you can find support for wherever you are.

What do you know about where you are as the new year begins? What’s true for you? What might support you in being where you are, whether you’re in a “start new stuff” place, or not? I’d love to hear from you.

Speaking of support, I have a new option on my Ways We Can Work Together page. If you need support for integrating self-care and creativity in your life, you may want to check it out!

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

Above image of black cat by Andreea Popa on Unsplash; image of yawning cat by Philippine FITAMANT on Unsplash

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Choosing your focus

November 3, 2019November 2, 2019 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

My partner and I recently took our annual pre-Halloween zoo trip, which I always relish.

As we wandered around, mesmerized by the free-roaming guinea fowl (who sound like they’re chanting in unison!), I started venting to him about something that’s been bugging me for a while.

Except — I stopped myself.

It’s great to have good listeners in our lives, those to whom we can safely vent — people who don’t tell us we “shouldn’t feel that way” or who shut us down or who criticize us for having something to vent about. This non-judgmental listening is an essential quality if we want to feel deeply supported.

The kind of venting I’m talking about here is also sometimes called “conscious complaining” — you’re aware you’re complaining, and the other person holds space for you, for a certain amount of time, so you can get out whatever it is. This is different than an unconscious onslaught that saps and drains the other person.

Sometimes, though, as I move into more venting, a still voice inside me is like “Hmm … maybe you’ve focused on this long enough.”

That happened for me that day at the zoo. I kind of stepped outside of myself for a moment, and heard myself launching into this topic, again — and, although my partner was willing to listen (again!), it occurred to me that I didn’t need go there anymore. I could choose to move off of that topic because staying on it was no longer serving me.

It’s important to discern between focusing on things and talking about them because of our genuine need to sort through them and work them out — and focusing on them as a kind of fixation that distracts us from the good in our lives and, maybe, keeps us stirred up because anxiety is familiar to us.

We’ve probably all encountered people who go to one extreme or another here: the co-worker who can’t seem to stop sharing the same complaints with you day in and day out, versus the family member who downplays every emotion to the point you’re not sure they actually have any.

Between these extremes there is a place that feels healthier — unique to each of us — where we’re sharing when we need support and in order to work through things, but we’re not going over the same territory again and again when that path is already well-worn.

When I stopped myself from venting to my partner that day, it was because something in me sensed I would only be deepening the “brain rut” I’d already created with that long-held story.

And I realized it’s time to start detaching from it and letting it go. That means, for me right now, talking about it less — honoring the subtle voice that says, “Let’s be still instead of going there again.”

So I chose, instead, to focus on the colors and textures of leaves, the quiet grace with which a giraffe loped across the grass, the stubby back legs of a polar bear as it swam under water, a squirrel monkey swinging from branch to branch with its tiny baby on its back.

Trees and animals (even those very vocal guinea fowl!) bring me to stillness, which helps me practice discernment.

It’s important to note, in our Western culture which does not encourage the expression of many flavors of emotion, that venting serves a truly important purpose — it helps us to get in touch with the feelings within us so that we can work through them. Often we’re not sure what’s up for us unless we share it with a trusted other.

When we’ve shared something many times, though, and we notice that sharing again may no longer be serving us, that’s when it’s time to choose where we want to put our focus.

Because, yes, we can choose! And it’s this choosing that, ultimately, creates movement, change, and growth in our lives.

(And by the way, the most important sharing we’ll ever do is with ourselves, whether that’s writing what’s true for us on the pages of a journal or in some other form. But, often, we get to that truth through connecting with others at some point in the process.)

What do you notice about this process of discernment for you? I’d love to hear from you. (And a belated Happy Halloween!)

My specially-priced Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions will continue through November 30, 2019. If you’re in an “in-between” place this fall and need support, you might want to check them out! You can do that here.

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

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The magic of giving yourself more time

April 7, 2019April 7, 2019 / Jill Winski

Something I’ve noticed again and again while working with clients who want to let go of overwhelm is just how often we expect ourselves to make big life changes very quickly and easily.

When — lo and behold! — making the changes feels like it’s taking a long time and is not all that easy, we conclude that something is wrong.

Where does this mindset come from? For some of us, it’s deeply rooted in childhood, where our feelings might have gotten lost in the shuffle or, in some cases, were flat out not allowed.

For lots of us, too, the culture that surrounds us is focused on “fast and easy,” and we can feel exposed to this message hundreds of times a day. No wonder when things feel slow and difficult, we question ourselves! (This is where self-compassion is especially important.)

When we allow our feelings to surface, we have access to our intuition, and our intuition gives us a solid sense of how fast — or slow — we need to go to best serve ourselves. (Sometimes intuition prompts us to move more slowly and see what emerges, and sometimes it prompts us to take swift action and a lot unfolds seemingly all at once, but when we’re acting from intuition, that unfolding feels right, no matter its pace.)

There are times, for example, when I get an idea about something I might want to do, but when I start taking actions toward it, I can feel a forcing/pushing energy behind it that creates an “ick” for me. (“Ick” is my way of describing something that feels like it’s actually the opposite of where my essential self wants to go.)

If I keep on pushing through the “ick,” I notice I just create more of it. My mind may tell me I need to do this thing (whatever it is), but if I don’t take a giant step back at this point and investigate what’s behind the “ick,” I only end up feeling awful about the thing I thought I wanted to do/create/have.

If we’re in a big hurry, it’s always worth stepping back and questioning what’s going on for us. What are we afraid of? What do we fear will happen if we don’t hurry? How do we want to feel?

***

A while back, a client I was working with felt pretty sure that she wanted to quit her job — the mere thought of quitting caused her essential self to light right up. But when she started getting things in order to actually quit, she felt her version of “the ick”. Flow stopped, fear took over, and she felt frozen. Did this mean, she wondered, that quitting her job was the wrong move?

After we did some calming of her nervous system and she was feeling more safe and peaceful, she was able to see that although she did indeed want to quit her job, she needed to give herself a longer time frame in which to make that big step. Instead of “right now!”, she realized that giving herself six months to plan her exit felt really good and didn’t trigger the “ick”.

When she stepped back in this way, her intuition was more clear to her — she wanted to leave, but she needed more time to do that in a way that felt solid and grounded to her essential self.

Your essential self is the essence of who you truly are (as opposed to your social self, which is much more concerned with how you’re viewed by those around you).

I have learned that the essential self is never in a hurry. Its voice is that of our intuition, which, as I mentioned above, has a “just-right” sense of our unfolding — it’s not about “fast” or “slow”, but about the right pace for where we want to go next, where we (essentially) need to be.

On a smaller, day-to-day scale, giving ourselves more time when things feel hard can help us meet ourselves where we are, too. Whenever I have to figure out some new technology, I get edgy because I am not a techy person. I’ve noticed, though, that if I can block out an hour to learn something new, rather than expecting myself to “just get it” in five minutes, I usually learn it fine and don’t feel like I’m waging a war against myself.

How is giving ourselves more time in this sense different from “procrastination”? It’s the difference between approaching and tending to our feelings, and avoiding them.

What we call “procrastinating” feels so awful because we’re really in avoidance — not necessarily of the thing we’re “supposed” to do — but of ourselves, our feelings, and understanding more deeply what’s going on. (I can’t tell you how many times a client who’s judged herself for “procrastinating” has come to the realization that the “thing” didn’t even need to be done, once she got clear on what was going on.)

When we take a giant step back and ask what’s really going on here, we are generous with ourselves. We’ve taken the pressure off, calmed our nervous systems, and now we can clearly feel into what’s right for us and what isn’t. (If you need support here, you might want to check out my Stellar Self-Care One-on-One Coaching Program.)

When you have that “up against a wall” feeling, what happens when you simply choose to give yourself a little more time? I’d love to hear from you.

My Stellar Self-Care One-on-One Coaching Program is enrolling now. If you want to let go of overwhelm and embrace your creativity, I’d love to support you. Want to learn more? You can do that here.

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

Above images by Giv Meraj and Terry Richmond on Unsplash, respectively

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Tolerating the discomfort of setting limits

March 20, 2019March 20, 2019 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

One of my teachers says that being able to tolerate discomfort is one of the most important capacities we can develop in this life.

I very much agree.

We humans will do a heck of a lot of maneuvering in order to avoid discomfort. In fact, we employ all sorts of sophisticated systems — many of them automatic and not entirely within our awareness — to keep ourselves from feeling discomfort.

And when we commit to taking better care of ourselves, to responding to our needs instead of squashing them or pretending they’re not there, one of the really uncomfortable things we inevitably realize we need to do more of is setting limits.

Many of us have a rather complicated relationship with the idea of limits. Part of this goes back to how we were raised by our parents or guardians. We may have had lots and lots of limits imposed on us.

Or maybe we had far too few (which can be particularly frightening for children, who need the safety of supportive limits that adults set for them). We may also have experienced an inconsistent and confusing mix of the two.

So setting limits in support of self-care can be truly challenging, particularly for those of us who are practiced in living in an “others-centered” way.

And yet, setting these limits is vital to taking care of ourselves and creating the space that is required to build the lives we desire, to create what we yearn to create.

The good news, I have found, is that many people are absolutely happy to respect our limits, once we communicate them. The not-so-good news: We will also experience “pushback” when we change the behavior people are used to from us. (Martha Beck refers to this pushback as “change-back attacks”.)

This pushback can come from others, and it can also show up as extreme discomfort that arises within us. In fact, sometimes the biggest challenge I have is in setting limits with myself.

There is a deeply-rooted adaptive behavior I can default to of pushing myself relentlessly. (I say “adaptive” because I learned when I was young that if I pushed myself very hard, I could potentially get a lot of praise from the adults around me.)

And when I let in a little discomfort, if I’m not mindful, I can sometimes default to even more pushing myself to avoid feeling it.

Of course, there is an unpleasant hangover effect from all this pushing myself: I feel depleted, disconnected from myself, angry, sad, and confused as to why I feel so awful after all my very hard work.

Most of the clients who work on self-care issues with me are all too familiar with the icky hangover effect of defaulting to self-neglect. And we do quite a bit of working with the significant amount of discomfort that can arise when we start to let go of this pattern and turn it around.

This is where the power of noticing comes in. Sometimes, particularly when a coping behavior is very deeply ingrained in us, we need at first to just notice it — more and more particularly — and give ourselves a good chunk of time to let it really sink in just how this pattern is affecting us.

I sometimes work with clients on one area of a particular relationship that causes them stress. They know the relationship is challenging for them, but until they slow down enough to truly notice what’s happening within the relationship that is triggering the stress — the various pieces that make up the chain of events that lead to the result of STRESS — the pattern continues.

Slowing down and noticing our thoughts, our feelings, and the actions we take (or don’t take) in these situations is key — and it can be truly uncomfortable to do that.

A lot of times the ways we neglect to take care of ourselves — sometimes particularly where other people are involved — can get shoved into a giant blind spot for us because our discomfort causes us to speed right over what’s actually happening.

One of my clients, for example, felt that she had to answer the phone every time her mom called. And her mom sometimes called as many as five or six times a day.

Until we took a slowed-down, close-up look at her belief system around her relationship with her mom and the feelings and actions that belief system created for her, my client was dropping everything multiple times per day to be there for her mom. She wanted to be there for her mom, but she needed, she came to realize, to be there for herself first.

And there was some untangling to do there that was uncomfortable to accept — and to act on.

The paradox here is that when we’re willing to let in the discomfort of slowing, stopping and really seeing what’s going on, we actually feel less discomfort over time. We learn to live more comfortably within our true selves.

Instead of moving away from discomfort, we move toward the kind of relationship we want to have with first ourselves, and then our loved ones.

Facing our discomfort around setting limits — whether with ourselves or others — is easier with support. This is the kind of work we do together in my Stellar Self-Care One-on-One Coaching Program. Interested in learning more? You can do that here.

Want to stay connected and learn more about my coaching offerings? You’re welcome to sign up for my monthly-ish newsletter. You can do that here.

Thanks to these photographers for helping me illustrate today’s post with monkeys! Top photo by Tobias Mrzyk on Unsplash ; middle photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash ; bottom photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

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Reconnecting with what you want (when you feel a little lost)

December 30, 2018December 30, 2018 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

With only a couple of days left in 2018, I took a look back at my year and asked myself some key questions. (You can check out some of these questions in my 2017 year-end post.)

I also thought about the clients I’ve worked with, and what had come up for them. And it seems that the most common issue I’ve seen this year is along the lines of this: I feel like I’ve gotten off-track, somehow. I’ve lost the path. Or: I feel so busy and overwhelmed, I’ve forgotten why I’m doing this in the first place.

In the process of creating our lives, we will feel off-track, like we’ve lost sight of the path, and even if we feel “on-path”, we will feel so busy and overwhelmed at times that we’ll wonder whether what we’ve created is actually what we want.

This is not a matter of “if I were doing it right, I wouldn’t feel this way.” I hear this so often. We’re so quick to jump from “this doesn’t feel good” to “I must be doing it wrong!”

Repeat after me: Feeling uncomfortable, off-track, or overwhelmed is not a sign that you are “doing it wrong.”

It’s simply a sign that something is calling out for your attention. Something wants to be looked at more closely.

The more we “push through” and/or ignore this inner nudge to look more closely at what’s going on within us, the more out of control and “off-track” we tend to feel.

(Ironically, we usually bulldoze over our feelings because we’re afraid feeling them will cause us to lose control. It’s true that we do “lose control” in the moment when we allow feelings to emerge. But overall, we gain more control of our lives when we are clear on what our feelings are trying to tell us. I highly recommend Karla McLaren’s books The Language of Emotions and The Art of Empathy on this topic.)

Being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings as they arise is key to connecting (or reconnecting) with what you really want.

Why? Because until we are coming from a “clean” emotional space, we will keep taking the same actions that lead us to results that aren’t really what we want. I have written here before about making decisions from a place of peace, and I have quoted Lao-Tzu, who asked if we can find the patience to allow “muddy water” to become clear. At that point, said Lao-Tzu, the “right action” will arise by itself.

I have found this to be true in my own life time and again. But most of us are really resistant to believing this, because it requires a certain degree of trust to let go enough to allow our “inner muddy water” to become clear.

If we haven’t had a lot of practice in exercising our trust muscles — trust in ourselves to make solid decisions, and trust in the process of life — it can feel downright scary to not rush to action.

But, as I’ve often written here, when we rush to actions that feel “muddied” because we are so afraid of being still, we often make messes that we have to undo, or we perpetuate the same feeling we are trying to get away from by taking rushed action!

I am a prime example of this. As young as age ten or so, I developed a coping mechanism of getting through life by avoiding my emotions, rather than moving toward what I wanted. This coping mechanism became so automatic that by my mid-twenties my body literally broke down. Pushing down emotions only works for so long, my friends.

Our emotions are messengers for us. When we can sit with them, let them move up and out, without taking action on them right away, we clear the way for our intuition to emerge. It is our intuition — the voice of our essential self — that will point us to (or back to) what is deeply true for us.

So when we feel like we’ve “lost our way,” what’s usually going on is that we have been avoiding emotion.

It’s extremely common for me to hear from a client, “I feel like I don’t have time to deal with my emotions!” (This is coming from people who know the value of emotional work — that’s why they’ve signed up for life coaching! Our culture really drills into us the idea that we don’t have time to feel. We must challenge this idea.)

Now, once we have allowed emotion to come up and out, and have cleared the way for the voice of our essential self to make itself known (this voice can be quite subtle, which is why “muddy” emotions can seem to blot it out), we’ll often find that what emerges is one simple step to bring us closer to ourselves.

That’s it. Intuition does not come to us in a series of complicated steps that extend into the distant future — it is usually just one step, one “best” next step.

I was reminded of this while doing my Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions this fall — the whole purpose of these sessions is to connect folks with their “best next step.” It never fails to delight us when, once we’ve let the muddy water clear a bit, that best next step pops right up with intensity. It may be a seemingly “tiny” thing, but it’s always strong and clear.

What’s fascinating is that once we’ve allowed our feelings to emerge, rather than pushing them down, we often find that we’re not as “off-track” as we think, or that our overwhelm is directly connected to the pushing down of our feelings, not to what we’re doing or not doing.

The good news here is that allowing our feelings to come up and out does not have to be some laborious, time-intensive process where we remove ourselves from our “regular lives” for weeks or months. In fact, it’s vital that we weave connection with our feelings into our daily lives.

When we connect this way, just checking in with how we’re feeling on a daily basis, we feel “off-track” far less, because in tending to our feelings and the message they have for us, we are clearing the way for intuition — the voice of the essential self. (You don’t have to actually “sit” with your feelings, by the way. I find walking, moving my body, most helpful for connecting with my emotions.)

How will you connect with what you’re feeling on a daily basis in 2019? What have you noticed about this process for you? I’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, I wish you a beautiful start to the New Year.

(For more related to this topic, you might also find this post from last year helpful, or this one from years ago.)

Want to stay connected? You can get updates on my coaching offerings and other good stuff by subscribing to my monthly-ish newsletter, here.

I’ll be working with new coaching clients starting January 10, 2019. Wondering if I might be able to help? Feel free to check out my Is This You? page.

Above photo of candle by freestocks.org on Unsplash; snow globe by Aaron Burden on Unsplash; lamppost by Hide Obara on Unsplash

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Navigating the messy middle (and reconnecting with your “why”)

April 22, 2018April 22, 2018 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

In my life coach role, I frequently work with writers. Perhaps so many of my clients are writers because writing is so important to me, and I really get the struggles and joys of the writing life.

At any rate, I often have clients who are at some point in the process of creating something — whether that’s a book or a painting or a play. They might be in the excitement (and trepidation) of beginning. Or they might have finished something, and aren’t sure what’s next for them.

One of the most challenging stages of creating something — and the place where so many of our fears and our icky inner critic stuff can come up — is the “messy middle.”

Maybe we’ve lost some steam with our project. Maybe we’ve lost our way a bit. Maybe — God forbid! — we’ve gotten a bit bored with what we’re creating. (And does that mean we should give it up and move on to something else? In many cases, no! It just means we’re in the messy middle.)

This is the time, my friends, for kindness.

Just how kind can you be to yourself — and your creative work — when you are in this place of feeling like you’re not sure you want to go on with what you’re doing? (I wrote about the importance of kindness to the creative process here.)

I remember getting lost in a store when I was a kid. I was probably about four. One minute I was with my mom and everything was fine, and the next my mom was nowhere in sight and the gleaming aisles of the store might as well have been miles wide. (I think it was Kmart!)

It was probably only a couple of minutes before my mom found me, but I remember during that brief window of time telling myself how stupid I was for getting lost, how mad my mom was going to be at me, and how the adults around me were very scary and there’s no way they’d help me.

Sound familiar? Even to your adult self? We learn very early to be hard on ourselves when things feel scary and disorienting. But this is exactly when we need to slow down, reorient ourselves to our surroundings, and breathe.

Once you’ve given yourself permission to slow down for a moment (or hey, how about a whole day?), it’s time to reconnect with your “why”.

What prompted you to begin this work in the first place? What made it so important that you actually began it? (Beginning is huge! We often avoid it.)

What was the feeling state you desired when you thought about creating this thing? It is always a feeling we seek, and not anything else, when it comes down to it. The “result” — whatever it may be — is only of value to us because of how we believe it will make us feel. How can you reconnect with that feeling?

The “messy middle” can also be a time that we’re tempted to compare ourselves to others whose middles are long in the past (we see the results of them having made it through their own messy middles, but not the middles themselves). Just as we sometimes compare our beginnings to others’ “halfway-throughs,” we can compare our middles to their finished products.

What I love about the creative process is how it is a metaphor for the process of living itself. While the beginning of a relationship, for example, often has its share of trepidation (can I trust? should I trust? Is it safe?), it also has plenty of excitement (the possibility of love! sex! learning each other’s secrets!).

The middle of a relationship, however, may seem frightfully unexciting. (Is that all there is? Is this really it? Where do we go from here? This is especially true if you are a reformed drama junkie, as I am.)

In life, perhaps even more so than in our creative projects, we are challenged to reconnect with our “why.” (And remember: you are always in relationship to your creative work. It’s a relationship like any other!)

Can we reconnect? Absolutely. The real question, though, is do we want to? And if we do, what might support us in doing so?

These are the questions to ask. Their answers will guide us back to connection, with our project, with our loved one, or they will guide us to somewhere else, where the love truly is for us, today.

What helps you through the “messy middle” in your creative process? How do you reconnect with your “why” when you seem to have lost it? I’d love to hear from you.

Happy Earth Day! Let’s extend our kindness to this beautiful planet and all of its amazing creatures. In honor of Earth Day, my individual coaching sessions are at a special price, through the end of this month (April 30). Find out more on my Ways We Can Work Together page.

Coming up: My one-on-one coaching program, Stellar Self-Care (In an Overwhelming World), will start enrolling in May. Want to learn more? You can sign up for my newsletter to receive the details, here. You can find out about other ways we can work together, here.

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Avoiding vs. replenishing (+ last chance to sign up for my fall coaching special)

November 21, 2017November 21, 2017 / Jill Winski

Fall walks: so replenishing!

As we head into the holiday season, overwhelm is a topic that comes up for many of us (particularly if we are highly sensitive, empaths, or introverts — or all of the above!).

When we feel overwhelmed (or are anticipating becoming overwhelmed), it’s tempting to go into “avoidance” mode. This can feel like the equivalent of putting our hands over our heads and saying “I can’t! No more!” — and retreating. And not returning.

Sometimes it is absolutely appropriate to avoid something. It may be totally wrong for us.

But we don’t have to stay in the energy of avoidance. Have you noticed what avoidance feels like? Have you noticed that avoiding something actually takes a lot of energy from you?

Replenishing is different. Replenishing ourselves is recognizing that we’ve had enough, and retreating for a while to rebalance and rejuvenate, and then emerging — replenished.

I’ve noticed that, if I can trust in my ability and willingness to replenish myself, I don’t have to avoid as much. What a relief! Because a lot of avoidance is flat-out exhausting.

If we’re going to replenish ourselves, we need to give ourselves permission to do that.

That might look like leaving a party early, when we recognize we’ve had enough (rather than avoiding the party).

It might look like opting to stay in a hotel rather than with relatives (instead of avoiding the trip altogether!).

It might look like giving ourselves lots and lots of breaks while we get the house ready for guests (noticing our energy levels). (Or, my favorite: being okay with getting a C+ in housekeeping.)

It might mean choosing to let something go, so we can have more energy for something that’s more important to us. (For me, this is often letting go of my need to “do it right” and reminding myself that just my presence is of value to the people I love.)

What do you notice about how you feel when you avoid something, versus committing to replenishing yourself? I’d love to hear from you.

I wish you the joys of replenishing yourself this holiday season (and Happy Thanksgiving, if you are U.S.-based). And if you need permission to do that — well, here it is!

(If you need further support for dealing with holiday socializing when you’re an introvert, you might want to check out this post I wrote back in 2014.)

Speaking of replenishing yourself: Tomorrow, November 22, is the last day to sign up for one of my specially-priced Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions. If you need support in navigating a challenging transition in your life right now, I’d love to help! You can learn more about these sessions here.

Also, you can sign up for my newsletter (for updates on my offerings and other good stuff) here.

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Getting clear on what’s true for you

September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 / Jill Winski

Several years ago I was talking to a friend of mine (who also happens to be a very gifted life coach). During our conversation, I kept comparing myself to someone else I admired, saying “I just can’t do what she does.”

My friend pointed out my use of the word “can’t” and asked me: “You can’t — or you don’t want to?”

I stopped and pondered for a moment. Oh, my friend was wise. The truth was, I didn’t want to do what this woman was doing. It was wonderful — for her, but not for me.

This realization brought me to another question: Why was I choosing to believe I wasn’t capable of doing something, when the truth was that I didn’t want to do it at all?

It occurred to me that it was “easier” for me to believe I just couldn’t than to accept and sit with that fact that, as is often true for me, someone else’s path wasn’t my path. Allowing this truth to surface meant that I would need to find another way that did work for me, for who I was (and am).

It is challenging to look inward for guidance when it seems so much easier to look outward. Realizing we don’t want to do it the way “everyone else” is doing it may trigger stuff for us, too. (“Why can’t I do it the way she does it — what’s wrong with me?”)

Guidance that doesn’t fit us, however, is not “easy” at all. Trying to follow it feels like wearing a pair of shoes that are too loose or too tight — it’s hard to get where you’re going that way!

Isn’t it fascinating that our minds will actually believe things that are not deeply true for us, rather than take in truths that may be hard to accept? And yet, this happens all the time. I see it often with my life coaching clients — which is why, sometimes, our work is about simply creating enough safety and comfort for them to be with whatever their truth may be.

Because here’s the thing: if we aren’t standing in our truth, we have no solid foundation to build on. Somebody else’s truth, somebody else’s guidance, won’t do it for us (unless it truly resonates for us).

So how do we get clear on what’s true for us?

• Be sure that you want to know the truth. Sometimes I’ve worked with a client who realizes “I don’t want to get clear right now. I have so much going on that is causing fear and chaos for me, and I’m just not ready yet.” This is totally valid. You know what’s best for you — and in fact, a feeling of safety is key in allowing the truth to surface. Allow yourself to get to that place of safety — that inner feeling of safety — first.

• Don’t force it. You don’t have to grasp or push to know what it true for you — the truth arises when you feel safe enough to be with it and when you are in a place of relative peace. (I often connect with what’s true for me when I take my morning walks, which bring me to a peaceful place of acceptance most days.)

• Notice the language you’re using, as my coach friend helped me do during our conversation. If you hear words like “can’t”, “should”, “never” or “always”, that’s your mind going to an all-or-nothing place — and chances are, those words are not true for you.

• Know that your truth is not deeply buried. When you feel safe to contact it, to express it, you’ll find that it’s right there waiting to be honored. If writing is your thing, a simple and helpful exercise is to go to your journal and write: “What I really want to say is … ” (Thanks to Natalie Goldberg for this idea, which I found years ago in her book Wild Mind.)

• Again, safety. And support. Who is a person you trust, who is good at reflecting to you who you are, as my friend did for me? She knew me well enough to intuit that my “can’t” wasn’t really a “can’t” at all, and she played that hunch.

It is so much easier to move forward — even with the really challenging stuff — when we are doing so from a foundation of what is true for us. That starts with letting yourself know what is true, and going from there.

A quick update: My one-on-one coaching program Light Up Your Creative Self will close after September 30. This program may be for you if you are feeling blocked, stuck or simply like you are flailing in the dark when it comes to a creative project or your creativity in general. I have typically done this program with writers, but it is open to anyone who feels called to it — we are all creative (even when it doesn’t feel like it!). Interested? Find out more on my Ways We Can Work Together page, here. (By the way, it’s $25 off the total price through the 30th.)