Identity

Time and space to process change

/ 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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Mood, assumptions, and action

/ 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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Self-knowledge will always support you (+ Happy Fall!)

/ Jill Winski

When we’re going through challenging transition periods in our lives, or when we feel seriously overwhelmed, we can get triggered. Our “stuff” can come up big time — and by “stuff” here I mean our “core issues.”

For example, if one of our core issues is feeling like we need to do it all on our own because we’re not allowed to ask for help, we may coast along seemingly doing it on “all our own” during times when we’re not particularly challenged.

But one or two important elements of our life shift, we recognize we’re feeling in over our heads, and suddenly, bam! The core issue is pressing on us: “I need to do it all on my own, but I’m in new territory here and it feels like I can’t do it on my own, but I have to because I’m not allowed to ask for help/ if I were a strong person I wouldn’t need help/ maybe the kind of help I need isn’t out there.” (I use this as an example because it’s, in my experience, a pretty common core issue for my perfectionist-leaning clients — and for myself as well!)

Another core issue could just as easily be “I can’t do it on my own — I need someone to do it for me or I won’t survive.” You can see that, while this could indeed be very true for a child, for an adult it might not be true in many circumstances (depending on what the thing is and any number of other factors).

If we, as adults, don’t take a look at the core issue that is popping up for us during challenging times, we can stay in a sort of “spin cycle” for a really long time because we don’t see a way out of it.

Usually, working with a core issue involves gaining more and more perspective around it over the course of our lives, so that what once may have felt debilitating or terribly shaming to us becomes something we understand, something we can work with, something we can hold.

So, when we’re really challenged by circumstances inner or outer or both, we need to find ways to calm and soothe our nervous systems so we can relax and detach enough to see the core issue and work with it rather than running away from it, ignoring it or pushing it down.

One of the ways I’ve noticed seems to be particularly helpful here is to call on our strengths by asking them to come forth with this question: What do I know about myself that will help me here?

What’s useful about the framing of this question is that it presupposes that we do know things about ourselves that we value, are unique to us, and that have helped us in the past. This circumvents our tendency during stressful times to go to a place of self-doubt or a place of noticing what’s NOT working and what we’re NOT good at (which is totally habitual for most of us when we’re feeling dazed by something we’ve never dealt with before and in over our heads.)

This works even if we don’t have a lot of life experience. When I was in elementary school, I absolutely hated participating in team sports, but I was forced to for daily gym class. At one point, I was struggling through some sport or other in the gymnasium, wearing my red gym uniform that always seemed way too big, and my teacher shouted out, “You’re holding your own, Jill.” (I’m pretty sure my fourth-grade teacher had gathered by this point that I hated gym, since I sometimes pretended to have a stomach ache to get out of it.)

Now, oddly, when my teacher told me I was holding my own, I believed her. It felt true — I was holding my own. I was actually somewhat nimble and good at catching balls here and there. I just didn’t enjoy any of it — I wanted to read Judy Blume books under a tree somewhere, not dodge the elbows of my aggressive classmates.

What got me through playing countless team sports in gym class for several years after that, though, was my belief in what my teacher had observed: I could hold my own. It sucked, I didn’t want to do it, but since I was a kid and I didn’t have the agency to get out of it, I could hold my own (though not so well in wretched games like bombardment!).

This was my “kid version” answer to the question “What do you know about yourself that will help you here?” “I am pretty good at holding my own.”

(And, Hallelujah, when I got to high school I had way more options for gym class and I took almost all dance classes, which I actually enjoyed.)

Now, notice that if I hadn’t believed my teacher’s observation that I was holding my own, it wouldn’t have been useful self-knowledge to draw upon. When we draw on what we know about ourselves, it won’t feel supportive if we don’t have a certain conviction about it.

A client I worked with several years ago had been through an incredibly stressful relationship break-up. I asked her what she knew about herself that could support her in this bereft-feeling place. She said (shared here with her permission), “I am really good at finding comfort in the most unexpected places.”

What a beautiful piece of self-knowledge! And notice how her essential self served that right up when I asked? We always have within us the seeds of what we need to navigate those extra-challenging spaces, even if they are only seeds and have some maturing to do. That’s often how the hard places end up serving us in the long-run — by maturing the seeds within us that are so ready for growth.

What do you notice about this for you? What do you know about yourself that will help you in a situation you’re currently facing? I’d love to hear from you!

And: In celebration of fall, my favorite season, my Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions are back! If you’re in an “in-between” space this fall and needing some support, you might 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 photos, respectively, by Anh Tran, davide ragusa, and Jakob Owens on Unsplash

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Finding a creative routine that works for you

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Many years ago, I had a full-time job that drained my energy and I really wanted to write a novel. But it wasn’t happening. Every time I got home from work, I felt brain-dead, turned on the TV, watched two episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which happened to be on right when I got home), and kept the TV on for the entire evening.

I finally resolved to get up an hour early each morning and work on my novel before I went to work. I did that for exactly one day. I felt so sleep-deprived at work due to cutting off my last hour of sleep that the entire day was a slog.

The next thing I tried was writing during my lunch hour. Typically, I didn’t take lunch, because if I skipped lunch and ate at my desk while I worked, I could leave earlier.

Writing during lunch proved challenging. I felt distracted (my mind on the afternoon work I had to get back to), and extending my work day by an hour drained my energy (too overstimulating for this introvert).

The next thing I tried was writing after I got home. I resolved to not turn on Sabrina the Teenage Witch (no Salem for me!), go right to my desk, and work for an hour.

This failed miserably. Once I walked through my door, my system set itself to “relaxation mode” and the hour of writing felt like a climb up a mountainside with a boulder strapped to my back.

Now, you may be thinking at this point, Well, yeah! It’s hard. You have to force yourself to do it!

Except I didn’t want my writing to be constantly tied up with the feeling of forcing myself. The whole reason I wanted to write a novel in the first place was because writing brought me joy and purpose, and because reading novels had felt so joyful and purposeful to me. Forcing myself to write was not going to work for me for the long haul.

So I started looking at the elements that seemed important here.

• It was important to me that I was able to sleep as late as possible in the morning — that worked best for my body.

• It was important to me that I could leave work as early as possible — that created the most hopeful and positive feeling for me in my work day.

• Writing at home at the end of the day didn’t work because it was too tempting for me to succumb to TV at that time — I had to rely far too much on willpower at that time of day in that setting.

But then I thought — hmm. What about a different setting? What about writing after work, but not at home?

So the next thing I tried was heading to the coffee place that was next door to my workplace, right after work. I brought a spiral notebook with me, ordered coffee, and started writing. About forty-five minutes in, it felt right to call it a day.

I went home, turned on the TV, and did my usual nighttime routine — except my writing was done. I hadn’t had to cut off my sleep in the morning to do it, and I hadn’t had to take a lunch hour. And I could go ahead and relax when I entered my apartment.

Eventually, I decided on writing at the coffee place at least four days a week, right after work, for no more than forty-five minutes a day. (I discovered that if I tried to push beyond forty-five minutes, I got too much into the “forcing myself” zone and I started to rebel. If I kept it at forty-five minutes, it usually felt just right.)

Creating takes energy — there’s no way around it. And while it’s true that creating gives us energy (as Maya Angelou famously said), it’s also true that our bodies have needs, very real ones.

Since several years prior to this period of my life I had completely ignored my physical needs and ended up terribly ill, I knew I had to take my body’s needs seriously. I knew I couldn’t afford to let perfectionism take the reins again. I needed a “reasonable, realistic” creative routine.

Ugggh! Reasonable and realistic had to be two of my least favorite words. (Still true for me — I’m an INFP, after all!)

So I had to do a couple of things in order to allow myself to carry on with this “workable but not necessarily exciting” creative routine:

• I had to let myself be a regular, boring human who couldn’t crank out a novel draft in a weekend on a great wave of inspiration.

• I had to accept that my creative identity was changing — it was no longer about great highs and lows — I was no longer flying above the treetops or clutching a towel sobbing on the bathroom floor. My creativity was now going to be built into my daily life, in a quieter, more subtle, more sustainable way.

And this needed to be okay if I was going to have a healthy relationship between my physical body, my emotional self, and my creativity.

It took me about a year and a half to get to a complete novel draft, and another year to rewrite it. I didn’t “crank it out in a weekend,” but I did finish it. (And although this novel makes me cringe now, I used excerpts from it to get into a graduate writing program, where I became a better writer. No creating is ever wasted!)

It’s a fact: as much as we may not like to believe it (I know I didn’t), we have a finite amount of energy available to us each day. (When we’re going through big things, we’ll have less than usual.)

We don’t move forward by arguing with reality. We move forward by embracing it. When we tend to see lots of possibilities, it can be easy to get disconnected from the realities of our physical and emotional selves.

But we’re in physical bodies for a reason (if we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here, having this human experience!). We need to honor our creativity and our physical and emotional needs.

Finding the right creative routine takes testing and trying. I tweaked this routine in small ways many times, and my life is different now and I don’t have this routine anymore. We need to be open to what works for us now, and willing to let it change and evolve.

It’s possible to find a creative routine that works for you — even when it seems like it isn’t. What have you discovered about this for yourself? I’d love to hear from you.

I am currently enrolling new coaching clients. Do you need support in making your creative work a priority while practicing excellent self-care? I’d love to help.

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

Above images by Carli Jeen, Ella Jardim, and Kyle Glenn, respectively, on Unsplash

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Permission to be done (and Happy Halloween!)

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Periods of transition are often (but not always) synonymous with letting go. It might be letting go of a job, a relationship, a home — but, in a deeper and broader sense, this letting go is often a letting go of who we used to be.

One of the issues that can arise here is one of permission. My Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions are underway (you can find out more about these here), and something that has come up more than once so far is “permission to be done.”

Recently, I ran into someone I worked with years ago. Running into her, recognizing each other and catching up a bit, reminded me of the many pleasant and kind people I worked with in that job, and as we parted ways I found myself thinking, just for a moment or two,  “Why did I ever quit that job? That was a good situation for me.”

And it was … until it wasn’t. I can remember Fridays back then, done with work for the week, when I’d walk home in the dwindling sunlight (I had an insanely short commute, one of the great perks of that job), feeling so satisfied with my life and grateful for what I had.

Except, in truth, there were only a handful of those happy Fridays, max. (Memory is funny like that. ) That period of satisfaction didn’t last all that long. Things changed, I changed — my essential self wanted a different experience — and it started to become time for me to be done.

And yet, being “done” with that job was a process for me, in and of itself.

Looking back, I can see that there were various “parts” to being done. There was the part where I wanted to be done — but really, truly wasn’t. And that part went on for a pretty long time. Because the “me” who wanted to be done with the job was in conflict with the “me” who wasn’t ready to be done, a struggle ensued, and until both “me’s” were on the same side, it wasn’t truly time for change.

And then, after what seemed like ages, I was ready. Except I had a hard time giving myself permission to be done. Because once I was no longer in inner conflict, I recognized the plain old fact that my job was just pretty pleasant, and I worked with nice people, and I had good benefits. (And there was that insanely short commute!)

When we’re making changes or decisions from a pretty peaceful place like that, we’re actually on much more solid ground than when we try to change from a place of dissatisfaction and unrest (this is usually a sign that we’re, actually, not quite done).

But it can also feel challenging, sometimes, to simply give ourselves that permission to be done.

We might have some fear or confusion around giving ourselves that permission — particularly if we think we might be letting others down in being done, or if we harbor the belief that “quitting is bad” or that being responsible means hanging in there for the long haul.

If we’re heavily identified with being “the person who sticks around”, it may be harder for us to give ourselves permission to be “the one who leaves” or “the one who lets go.” (Being done does not always look like leaving, but it usually feels like it to some extent! Even if the change we’re making is strictly an internal one, there is still an “inner leaving” process to go through, a letting go of the person we were.)

On the smaller scale, the day to day one, I notice that this time of fall, of Halloween, where the days are noticeably shorter, helps me give myself permission to be done with the day. When darkness creeps in more quickly, it’s like there’s a clearer line of distinction between day and night.

It also reminds me that, in many ways, I am not in control of beginnings and endings, of day and night, of the seasons of my life and of life in general.

While this can be unsettling, it’s also a relief. Recognizing where I do and don’t have control can be a big help in giving myself that permission to be done when I need it.

Where do you need permission to be done? What helps you give yourself this permission? I’d love to hear from you. And Happy Halloween! 

P. S. My Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions are underway and will be available through November 16, 2018. If you need some support in navigating a difficult transition this fall, I’d love to help. You can find out more about these sessions, here.

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

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Competing values and conflicting desires

/ Jill Winski / 6 Comments

Many years ago, I trained to work on a crisis hotline for women in domestic violence situations. One night of our training, we did an exercise that has really stuck with me over the years.

We were given a sheet a paper with about a hundred different personal values written on it. We then took scissors and cut from the list the fifteen values on it that mattered most to us. Then we took those fifteen little slips of paper, each with an individual value on it, and whittled them down to the ten values that mattered most to us. And then five. And finally, three.

The instructor asked us, “How does it feel to let go of the things you value? To not be able to hold onto them? What do you notice about what matters most to you?”

The most surprising thing that came out of this exercise for me was realizing that one of my top three values was predictability. I’d had no idea predictability was so important to me. It didn’t sound very “exciting” to my young self at all. But I knew in my bones that this value of predictability was a true one for me.

What also came out of this exercise, though, was that another very important value for me was “a sense of possibility.” I had a hard time, back then, reconciling this with the deeply held value of predictability. But as I worked on the crisis hotline and talked to women in dire situations, I could see that most of them had a strong desire for predictability and a strong desire for possibility, both of which often felt cut off from them.

We humans are complex. Years later, both predictability and possibility are still deeply defining values for me. What I’ve discovered is that, for me, the risk of the possible often springs from the safety and stability created by the predictable — and vice versa. They are not as much at odds with each other as I’d once thought, and in fact I want to have the feeling of both, regularly, in my life.

I’ll admit, though, that when I learned “predictability” was a strongly held value for me, it felt at odds with my sense of who I was. Owning that value has been a challenge for me. But owning it made so much intuitive sense to me — I had for years at that point involved myself in relationships that were highly unpredictable, and I never felt safe or cherished in them.

One of the most frequent challenges I see coming up for coaching clients is exactly this: values that seem to “compete”, and along with them, desires that seem (on the surface, anyway) to conflict. On the one hand, we want this. And on the other, we want that. Sometimes the different things we value and desire may seem about as in sync as oil and water.

Here are some more examples from my own life of how this can look:

  • I value routine, but I also value flexibility and variety
  • I value solitude, but I also value lots of connection with others
  • I consider myself a homebody, but I also value exploring new places
  • I value a feeling of privacy, but I also value being seen and known

I used to think I was alone in having so much contrast in what I valued and wanted. But having spent nearly eight years connecting with people in my life coach role, I now know that it is extremely common to have values and desires that seem to conflict and compete all over the place. I’d say it’s just part of being human.

Our minds love to grab onto the all-or-nothing, the black and white. The part of the brain that wants to ensure our physical survival particularly gets caught up in this, because it is always trying to simplify. This is great with things that actually are simple: if I’m crossing the street and a car is zooming toward me without slowing, I’d better get out of the way.

With the complexities in our lives, though, it’s much more helpful to honor that they are complex. That things are not as all-or-nothing as they may seem. Or that, as Byron Katie says, our minds often get things “backwards”. (The Work of Byron Katie is a fantastic way to question what your mind believes. Katie says it is “meditation”.)

If you take my list above, for example, how does it feel different for you if we simply replace the word “but” in each sentence with the word “and”? That would look like this:

  • I value routine, and I also value flexibility and variety
  • I value solitude, and I also value lots of connection with others
  • I consider myself a homebody, and I also value exploring new places
  • I value a feeling of privacy, and I also value being seen and known

Wow! Just rewriting that list, I felt this amazing sense of spaciousness and possibility (one of my core values!) that I didn’t feel much of at all when I wrote the list with the word “but”. (As Martha Beck likes to say, watch out for your big buts!)

So when I work with clients who have competing values or conflicting desires (or both!), we first invite that sense of spaciousness to the table. How does it feel different if this is welcome, and that is also welcome?

What often happens from this place of spaciousness is one of two things: it turns out that one value or desire actually is more important than the other (so they are not truly competing or conflicting — it’s just that one takes more of a “supporting role”); or, there is very much a way that the energies of these seemingly competing or conflicting values or desires can co-exist.

When we see this possibility, we know that we are in the highly creative zone of our brains (as opposed to the “lizard brain” that is concerned only with our physical survival).

Where do you notice competing values and conflicting desires in your life? How do you work with them? I’d love to hear from you.

P. S. My Stellar Self-Care (In an Overwhelming World) one-on-one coaching program will begin enrolling at the end of this month. Want to learn more? You can contact me through my Ways We Can Work Together page.

Above images © Daniel Janusauskas | Dreamstime Stock Photos, and © Thorsten | Dreamstime Stock Photos, respectively

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Why it’s okay to be “boring” in your journal (+ community call date change!)

/ Jill Winski / 6 Comments

A few weeks ago I received this email (and the writer gave me permission to share it here):

I have been subscribed to your blog for a while now and I notice you talk a lot about journaling and morning pages and how valuable they are to you. While I want to believe this is true, I have so much trouble actually writing in a journal. It seems like everything I write is so mundane I can’t stand seeing what’s in my own mind! So I quit. But then I’ll want to try again, and I do it for a few days and I can’t stand what I’m writing so I quit again. What is my problem? Should I be journaling or not? I feel like it would help me connect with myself, but I don’t actually seem to like it. Any suggestions?

I wanted to share this email here because this is so, so common. I hear similar reports from my life coaching clients and have heard them from so many others when I share that I’ve been journaling regularly for more than thirty years.

First of all, whenever something becomes a “should”, we naturally develop resistance to it. So, no, you “shouldn’t” be journaling. You shouldn’t be doing anything.

There are plenty of ways to connect with yourself besides journaling and/or morning pages. Just because you hear lots of people saying how great they are doesn’t mean you have to do them. Find another way of connecting with yourself on a regular basis if journaling doesn’t speak to you. Find some way of being in your own company and noticing what you’re thinking and feeling. It doesn’t have to be journaling.

But I want to point something out here: When journaling/morning pages feel “boring” or frustrating because everything spilling out of you onto the page seems “mundane”, it may just be that you are uncomfortable with connecting with yourself.

I write tons of mundane stuff in the pages of my journals. I write about how I couldn’t decide which pair of jeans to buy, because one fit better but I liked the topstitching on the other one better. I write about how I can tell I am getting a zit and how I would have died if you told me when I was sixteen that I would still sometimes have zits in my forties. I write about how we rearranged the living room furniture and how pleased I am with how it looks.

And you know what? I enjoy writing this mundane stuff in the pages of my journal. I enjoy it because I am not trying to be “extraordinary” on the pages of my journal — my purpose there, often, is simply to keep myself company, to know the contents of my mind.

We are all capable of focusing on lots and lots of mundane stuff. And if we like who we are, if we enjoy our own company, that’s not a bad thing.

And here’s the paradox: My purpose with journaling is to keep myself company on the page, to know my own thoughts and feelings. And a lot of times, yeah, that’s pretty “mundane”. But my purpose with journaling is also to break through all that stuff, to cut a layer deeper, to get underneath it all.

If I’m really freaking out because I have a zit, if that’s really bothering me on a particular day, what’s underneath that? What am I making it mean? That underneath it all I’m still an insecure sixteen-year-old? That my body is out of control? That just when I’m feeling good, I have to be reminded of how imperfect I am?

You see what I mean? We can use the mundane in our journaling as a jumping-off point to understanding ourselves better. And that self-connection and self-understanding connects us to others — because we’re not so different from anyone else. In keeping ourselves company on the page, we realize we are in lots of good company.

When people tell me “I hate journaling because I can’t stand how mundane I am and how I wallow in my own shitty inner stuff” I want to say: Welcome to the human race. We are all mundane and we all wallow, at times, in our own shitty inner stuff. And, we are all capable of going a layer deeper, or many layers deeper, and letting that very human stuff take us to the core of who we are.

I would say to the writer of this email: There’s a reason that even though you always seem to quit journaling after a few days, you keep on wanting to try it again. You want to know yourself. 

This is a very good thing. Because no one is ever going to know you as deeply as you can know yourself. Not a significant other, not a child, not a parent, not a friend. One of the huge gifts of being here on this earth is that you have the opportunity to know yourself.

People who have the desire to write, to create in any way, usually have a deep desire to know themselves. But sometimes we have a tendency to think this desire is “selfish,” because we are so mundane so much of the time. What if it turns out we’re not that extraordinary? 

Give yourself a break. Let yourself be mundane. When you make room for your “ordinariness”, you will find it so much easier to allow the parts of you that are extraordinary to surface. Because we all have so much of both. We all have so much of everything within us.

A dear teacher of mine once said, “Great writing is nothing more than the truth, plainly told.” You will never see this more clearly than on the pages of your journal. But you need to stick with it for more than a few days. You need to be so loving toward the mundane contents of your mind that you see that you are not so mundane, after all.

And: Due to a scheduling conflict, I’ve pushed out the start date of the Artist’s Nest community calls one month, to Wed. Feb. 28. Want to join me on these monthly calls? You can get the call-in info (which I’ll send out approximately 24 hours before the call) by signing up for my newsletter, here!

Above images: Top,  © Kasia Biel | Dreamstime Stock Photos; bottom, one of my earliest journals, with kitty.

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Why accepting where you are is powerful ( + join our community calls!)

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

(Scroll to the end of this post to find out how to get details on joining our Artist’s Nest community calls.)

One of the most challenging things about being human can be accepting this paradox: we need to truly accept where we are in order to move on from it.

That “moving on” might be actual, physical moving (from a home, job, relationship to a new situation) — or it can be inner, emotional “moving on” — our externals may look the same, but we’re shifting internally. (Often, it’s both!)

In my work as a life coach, I often hear some form of this: But if I accept where I am, doesn’t that mean I’m becoming complacent? Doesn’t it mean I’m settling for less than I want? Doesn’t it mean I’m giving up?

We live in a very action-oriented world. The problem is that we’ve been trained to be so action-focused that sometimes we don’t recognize the difference between action that is rooted in struggle, and action that is rooted in a sense of rightness (as in, “this feels like — from a place of peace or a place of knowing — the best next step to take”).

There is a subtle but powerful difference between true acceptance of where we are in our lives, and resignation. Acceptance is connected to an understanding of what we can control and what we can’t, whereas resignation is more like “I just can’t handle this. I give up.”

Sometimes we do need to be in that place of resignation — for a little while. It’s usually a sign that we’re overwhelmed and need to find ways of prioritizing and getting support.

It’s not, however, the same as acceptance. Acceptance has a different feel to it — it’s more like, “Okay — I’ve done what I can here, and now I’m open to seeing a different way. I’m going to take the risk of standing right where I am — because I can’t truly be anywhere else.”

Can you feel the difference? The great thing about embracing that place of deep acceptance is that we drop the rope. We stop struggling and resisting what is, and that creates a space, an opening, for wisdom to enter.

The wisdom we get is often something along the lines of “Let’s get quiet and take a time-out before we do anything else.”

***

Back in 2014 and the first half of 2015, I was wrestling with living in a house that was up for sale and not knowing when it would sell or where I was going to live. I have a lot of childhood triggers associated with moving, and for about a year, I periodically felt frantic. I would rush to half-baked actions where I’d consider to moving to places I didn’t really want to live, just so I could put a stop to the uncertainty and “be done”.

At the same time, a part of me really didn’t want to leave the house and I would scheme about ways I could stay in it (even though I had come to know that, energetically and financially, staying there was becoming a total struggle). It was a crazy time and I felt really ungrounded and just wanted it to end. (You can read more about this journey here.)

Then at some point — it was spring of 2015, I think — I got it. I realized I needed to accept where I was.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know when the house would sell or how quickly I’d need to get out. I didn’t know how I’d deal with the emotions I’d have about leaving the house. I didn’t know how my elderly cat would handle a move. I didn’t know how a move would affect my relationship. And a part of me still loved the house and didn’t want to go at all.

I remember sitting at the dining room table, looking out the window as winter melted away, and finally accepting the mess.

I didn’t accept ALL of it on that day — it had been a gradual process of accepting the external stuff and my own internal stuff. But on that day, I got clear enough to embrace the not knowing. I accepted where I was.

A decision bubbled up in me (to paraphrase Byron Katie, I didn’t make the decision, it made me). I was going to enjoy living in the house for as long as it felt right. I didn’t even know what that meant.

But it gave me some breathing room. That is what true acceptance does. We get off our own cases. We stop resisting the not knowing.

***

What happened after that? I enjoyed the house for a little longer, and by May, it felt right to look for a new place to live (even though the house hadn’t yet sold). Things seemed to fall into place without a lot of struggle — I was no longer wrestling with myself.

Looking back, it’s clear to me how my need to “know” before it was time to know caused me to try to control the situation and make decisions before they were ripe to be made. I think I needed to give myself the gift of a little more time to simply enjoy my longtime home, before I could truly embrace the idea of a new one.

And guess what? There was time. It was only my frantic mind that told me I needed to hurry up and get things decided. In my urge to move away from discomfort, I created more for myself.

This is another thing true acceptance gives us — time to be with our emotions. When we’re clear, we move on naturally. Things happen, and they don’t feel frantic. Acceptance didn’t cause me to cling to the house — it helped me let go of it.

What might change if you were to give yourself the gift of acceptance today? What do you notice when you allow yourself to accept where you are? What comes up for you? I’d love to hear from you.

And: I’ll be leading monthly Artist’s Nest Community Calls starting January 31. On these calls, we’ll be focusing on the challenges inherent in making yourself AND your creative work a priority. (As I often say, creativity and self-care go hand-in-hand — you can’t truly have one without the other.) The calls are free — to get the details, sign up for my Artist’s Nest newsletter, here. I’d love to have you there!

Above images are “Heart of Ice” © Olga Simakova | Dreamstime Stock Photos, and “House Buried in Snow” © Lane Erickson | Dreamstime Stock Photos, respectively

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Are you allowing the seasons of your life?

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

As summer winds down, I’m reminded of the summers when I was a kid, the easy, lazy feel of them. I can remember skipping down the street in my bare feet to watch the local music video station at my friend’s house. We particularly loved to catch Cyndi Lauper videos. (On one thrilling afternoon, my friend did my makeup like Cyndi’s in her “Time after Time” video.)

I don’t know what it’s like for kids today, but those summers of the 1980s feel, in memory, like such a contrast to the start-up of fall.

The summer was meant to be a season of fun, play, and intentional winding down. Fall had a tangibly different feel. I happen to love fall (it’s my favorite season), and part of why I love it is because it is, for me, about ushering in the new, while also feeling nostalgic for the falls of yesteryear. For the me who swore each school year that “this year I will show up at school as a completely different person!” (Which never really happened, but that’s a topic for another day.)

I love that the “me” of today doesn’t want to be a completely different person (thank God!), but there was something promising and exciting about that desire as a kid. The desire for the new, the sense that something amazing was just around the corner. Fall carries that energy for me, and mingled with it is a cozy feeling. New and cozy? Sounds good to me.

When I moved into “adult life” in my twenties, and even in college when I often worked through the summer and took classes, that “summer feeling” got lost somewhere.

There was also a period in my life when I lived in Hawaii for a time. While Hawaii was undeniably beautiful, I missed the seasons.  There is something about the seasons in the external world that mirrors our inner shifting, and vice versa.

***

When I work with my life coaching clients, particularly the ones who feel they are pushing themselves way too hard but aren’t quite sure how to stop, I sometimes ask this question: “Are you allowing your life to have its seasons?”

Just as summer has a different flavor and texture than fall, our lives shift and change as one “life season” moves into the next.

Here’s the tricky part: If we don’t ease up on ourselves, if we don’t tune into ourselves, we can’t see the change in seasons in our lives. In fact, our pushing and tuning out are sometimes exquisite protections against allowing our lives to shift seasons.

This is why I focus a lot on self-care in my coaching practice: Self-care is, ultimately, self-connection, and when our connection to ourselves is blocked, we’re not able to get a clear sense of where we are.

If we are connected to ourselves, we’re attuned to the subtleties that alert us that a new season of our lives may be on the horizon. We prepare to open to it. If it brings up fear for us, we can investigate it and get support.

When we’re pushing ourselves (to keep on doing what we’ve been doing, or to do more even if it doesn’t feel good), or tuning out, we’re far less aware of those subtle nudges that tell us a new season is approaching and change is near. That, in fact, our lives are changing (because nothing stays the same!).

So how do we stop pushing? How do we tune in to ourselves?

We take time to feel our feelings. It sounds simple, and it is, but it isn’t necessarily easy. So often our “pushing” is really avoiding. And when we’re avoiding, there’s only one thing we’re ever truly avoiding: feeling our feelings.

Here’s the thing: No feeling will destroy you.

As the poet Rilke wrote, “No feeling is final.” Feelings move. They shift (like the seasons). If you can take five minutes to let a feeling come up and be with it, you will notice it start to shift on its own. It may return, but it will not flatten you.

It’s when we avoid our feelings that we get overwhelmed — because we are using our energy to push away rather than be present to what is true for us.

So, when I pose the question, “Are you allowing your life to have its seasons?” what I am really asking is: Are you feeling your feelings? Are you allowing them?

If your life seems to want to be lazy summer right now, can you allow that? If it’s leaning toward a brisker, crisper fall feeling, can you allow that?

If you’re fighting a season of your life as it approaches, can you simply drop the fight, a little at a time? Can you simply notice the desire to fight the change?

Do you allow the seasons of your life? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Also: My Light Up Your Creative Self one-on-one coaching program will no longer be offered after September 30, 2017 (part of my practice of letting go of the old and welcoming the new!). If you’re feeling creatively blocked, stuck, or stagnant, you might want to check it out (and everyone who signs up prior to the end of the month will save $25). Find out more on my Ways We Can Work Together page.

Above images © Moonbloom, Dreamstime Stock Photos, and © Olga Drozdova, Dreamstime Stock Photos, respectively.

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Happy Halloween + last chance for an Autumn Transition Session

/ Jill Winski / 2 Comments

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(Because I can’t resist a Halloween post.)

Ah, how I love the “great in-between” of the fall season, and of course, Halloween, my favorite holiday (that’s me above at Brookfield Zoo, one of my favorite places to visit this time of year).

So much is shifting right now: colors changing, leaves crisply coating the sidewalks, and darkness creeping in earlier than before.

I have two favorite things about Halloween:

• It’s about play. We can get so very serious about our creative work, about our lives in general. The thing about all that seriousness is that, while commendable, it can actually be stultifying to our creativity, to the flow we need to access to allow things to change.

The solution to that impossible thing you’ve been struggling with, forever? I’m willing to bet it will come to you when you let go of some of that seriousness, if only for an hour or two, while you focus on the cobweb-and-pumpkin-and-haystack on the neighbor’s creaky porch, the sunlight dappling the squirrel digging in the peach-gold leaves, as I did today.

• It celebrates what is “beneath” (by the way, What Lies Beneath is a totally fun homage to Hitchcock to watch during the Halloween season). And for those of us who are the strivers (me!), the perfectionists (me!), the can’t-help-but-try-a-little-harder’s (me!) — the ones who are always pursuing what looks good and right and light — that trail of Halloween deep darkness can be oh-so-welcome. Like, oh yeah! I forgot. I am all these other things, too: lazy, bad, angry, mischievous, bouncing off the walls, hiding under the table — I am all these things.

And, at the same time, that “great in-between”, more-dark-than-light place in our lives can be tough to take. Gracefully and steadfastly handling the “in-betweens” is something to which I still aspire, but I’ve learned a few things about it over the years. If you’re in “creative transition” this fall and feeling stuck, scared, or simply needing some perspective, I’d love to help.

The deadline to sign up for one of my specially-priced Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions is tomorrow, November 1, 2016. There are still a couple of slots open, and I encourage you to check out the description here if you think one might be for you!

Until next time ~ here’s to ghouls, ghosts, goblins, and things that go purr in the night.

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