Pausing is not the same as stopping

May 6, 2013 / Jill Winski / 9 Comments

Sometimes it is incredibly, excruciatingly hard for me to step away from something, when stepping away is exactly what I need to do.

Step away from that phone call that is not going anywhere and sucking up a lot of time.

Step away from my novel when I keep forcing it even though I’m beyond frustrated and realize I have gotten so far away from the heart of the story that I have no investment in what I’m writing.

Step away from the problem I’m desperately trying to solve (when it’s becoming more and more obvious that the mind that created the problem is not the one that can solve it).

Step away from the internet. Because, it’s the internet. And I need sizeable breaks from it if I’m going to remain sane.

I think one of the reasons it’s hard for me to step away is because of the idea that I am supposed to tackle things. Take control of them, wrestle them to the ground, and force them to cry uncle. This is the way I was taught to solve problems when I was very small, and, even though I’ve never been very good at it, it’s deeply engrained in me.

Only, sometimes — often — it just isn’t effective. There’s a point where I’m trying so hard to control the outcome of something that I am way too emotional to be effective. It’s at this point that pressing the pause button can be so essential.

But there’s another reason it’s hard for me to step away. It’s because of trust, or the lack of it. Allowing myself to step away means I am trusting that I will get back to whatever it is I’m struggling with — whether it’s a phone conversation or a tough scene in my novel.

And this kind of trust takes some practice to cultivate. I’ve been working with this for years and yet I can still go way too far out of fear.

We can never solve an internal problem by changing an external circumstance. If something within me feels out of control, no amount of controlling the external world will change that. This is the recipe for compulsion and, eventually, addiction. I’ve got to get back into balance within myself before I meet the world again.

This is why I suggest to my coaching clients that they not make huge decisions when they’re feeling intense emotions. We don’t know what the truth is for us until we come back to center. Our emotions are messengers, but they’re often not the message. (Extreme anger at your boss may just be saying, hey, let’s take a look at what’s happening here, not hey, let’s quit!)

So we’ve got to make it okay for ourselves to step away when we’re getting into a place that feels out of balance — no matter how important we’re making what we’re doing. Stepping away for now does not mean stopping altogether — in fact, it can mean letting another part of us — our subconscious — take the wheel for a while.

So, how do we do this?

1) If you’re struggling with something you’re creating (a painting, a novel, a website) and you’re ready to take a knife to the canvas or put your fist through the computer screen, know you’ve reached that point where you need a little less perspiration and a little more inspiration.

I know, I know, there’s that awful saying about how creating is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration. Please. I don’t believe we need to feel inspired all the time to create — inspiration often comes in the course of creating, and some days it doesn’t come at all — but if, in the long haul, you’re only feeling one-percent inspired, you need more inspiration. If the whole thing feels like a struggle every step of the way, you’re forgetting how important it is to fill your creative well.

2) If you’re having a really hard time in several areas of your life (if you’re in what we Martha Beck life coaches refer to as “Square One”, where you’re going through a massive identity shift and you don’t know what the hell is happening), realize you may need to move much more slowly.

You may need to take more time-outs. You need to practice really good self-care during these times. If you’re in Square One, the question is never “how can I get out of Square One?” but “how can I make it okay to go slow?” (I love Kristin Neff’s guided meditations on self-compassion for these times, and all times, really.)

3) Know the point at which you are getting in your own way. See if you can step outside of your emotional self and be the observer. What do you look like when you’re in need of pressing the pause button? What happens with your body, your behavior?

A few years ago, I was walking home in a seriously foul mood, and a car rolled through the stop instead of letting me cross the street. I actually reached out and hit the back of the car as I walked behind it. Feeling the sting of the hot metal on my fingers (it was like a 100-degree day, which was part of why I was ready to maim), I knew I’d crossed one of my personal boundaries into nutso territory, territory I did not want to stay in. It was time for me to stop wrestling and take a time out. Know these places in yourself, and find ways to clue yourself in to when you’re getting into this territory. Hopefully you will not have to slap a defenseless Honda Civic to know you’ve entered “that zone.”

4) Above all, cultivate trust in yourself. Take baby steps. If you’d normally force yourself through something to the point of frustration, try stepping back even five minutes before you usually would.

One of my clients recently made the decision, for a number of reasons, to take a month off from her artwork. (Namely, because it was feeling too much like art-WORK. She said she didn’t want to return to it until it felt like art-PLAY. I love this!) She was afraid a month was too long, but she felt like she needed it. The need for the break felt like it was coming from her intuition, not from a place of fear. It felt deeply right.

A week into the month off, she emailed me. As of today, she said, I am back to my art-PLAY. It turned out she didn’t need an entire month off after all. Something in her was more than willing to return to creating when it was ready. Now that’s self-trust.

For an article on a similar theme, check out Practicing Reverent Curiosity.

Image is “Reflected Stop Sign” © Vladimir Zanadvorov | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Feed yourself images — it’s good for you

March 3, 2013 / Jill Winski / 7 Comments

“Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail.” — Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Yesterday I slept in because I had woken up in the middle of the night, scared by a dream. (When I came to consciousness, I was lying flat on my back shouting “death angel!” My boyfriend tells me he thinks Death Angel was an ’80s metal band — can anyone confirm this? — but that is not what my dream was about.)

I was so afraid I’d see a death angel in my bedroom mirror that I got up and went into the living room and watched TV until my bedroom didn’t seem so scary anymore.

Anyway, because I let myself sleep late to compensate for being up in the middle of the night, I walked out of the house at 10:30 to get my morning coffee with my mind full of all I had to do, feeling irritated and stressed. I hate starting the day late. It screws up my to-do list, makes me feel I’m already behind just by virtue of not beginning when I thought I would.

I got my coffee and then walked over to the hardware store to buy some lightbulbs. The person working at the front desk was tied up with a return, so I walked to the back of the store to the other register.

And I noticed the store had an old-fashioned red-and-gold popcorn cart set up back there, complete with little bags of popcorn and a hand-written sign that said “Take one!” I didn’t take one — I was working on my coffee — but I loved this. It brought back another memory of free popcorn, when I was a kid, maybe in a similar setting, and my mom grabbing two little bags of popcorn just like this, and handing one to me.

And then I began to think about how I really like my hardware store. The employees are always friendly, and customers are allowed to bring their dogs in, and when I go in there I feel like I’ve stepped back into the 1980s, in a very good way.

The popcorn cart made me feel happy and I left the store with my lightbulbs feeling a little less stressed. And I thought, you know, it’s Saturday. There was a time when Saturday was my day of relaxation. Now I too often make it my day to “get a lot done that I didn’t get done earlier in the week.”

So I decided I would reclaim some of that old Saturday relaxed energy and take a little walk.

When I returned from it, I scribbled down bits of what I remembered from the walk in my journal:

A snowman dressed like he was on a tropical vacation — Hawaiian shirt, grass skirt, sunglasses perched above his carrot nose — with a tube of SPF 50 lying in the snow next to him.

A sleek black dog in a red collar, digging in the snow and retrieving a tennis ball. The dog pranced around its fenced-in yard with the ball in its mouth, peppy and proud. It was an adult dog, but it bounded and flopped like a puppy. It saw me, dropped the ball to its feet, and froze, staring at me brightly with its ears perked and a dusting of snow on its chin that looked like cake frosting.

The dog and I exchanged a long, contemplative look, and then I rounded the corner and saw the sheets of snow coating yard after yard. The snow appeared perfectly smooth, but when I looked closely, I saw that hundreds of tiny rabbit tracks peppered each blanket. Now, I haven’t actually seen a rabbit in months — unlike squirrels, who are the chatty, ever-visible extroverts of the neighborhood animal kingdom, rabbits keep their distance and when you do see them, they freeze until you move on. But I love that rabbits leave traces of themselves, so we know they’re around.

The popcorn cart in the hardware store drew me into the present moment, and I moved on through my day more alert to the sights around me. Filling up on these images and then writing them down felt so nourishing. It connected me with the wonder that is the world around me, and I forgot about the to-do list that had been hanging over me when I’d left the house. When I returned to it, I felt more grounded and saw that not everything on the to-do list needed to be done. The peace I thought I would have when I had completed everything on the list was already within me.

My walk turned into what Julia Cameron calls an Artist’s Date. The purpose of an Artist’s Date is to fill your “creative well” with nourishment, in whatever form that takes for you. For me it is often the beauty of the everyday. How could so much amazingness be just outside my door? Well, it’s always there, but most of the time I don’t see it. I had to consciously open myself to it — which I did by choosing to slow down and have a leisurely walk — in order for it to find me.

This kind of nourishment is always available, and it’s totally free.

Try this: Make a practice of writing down images that inspire you, in as much detail as you can. See how you feel while you do it, and afterward.

Image is “Benches in Snow”, © David Coleman | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Taking action on what you know

February 19, 2013April 3, 2013 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

One thing that I really like to drive home to my coaching clients is the importance of knowing ourselves.

I mean, really, really knowing ourselves — and particularly, the things we have a tendency to do that create chaos and disconnection for us.

Because very often, we know what doesn’t work for us, but we do it anyway.

Particularly if you are highly sensitive or an introvert, or both, the “general way” our society does things may not work for you. But it’s easy to toss away our particular, unique self-understanding when we convince ourselves that “everybody else” seems to be living, well, differently.

When we’ve been through the hell of learning something that brings us to our knees and connects us with our core (or, to put it another way, our essential self), we need to actually own that and act from what we know.

I call this acting from exquisite self-knowledge.

It is powerful to put this stuff into action. And you can often tell when you’re not putting it into action, by the way you feel.

This is true on both smaller points and large ones.

Like today, I was writing in my journal and I was completely caught up in the flow. As I’ve written about before, when my journal is truly calling to me, I have got to heed that call. Journaling has been, for many years now, the way I process and ultimately integrate what’s happening for me. It is my practice. If I don’t do it — especially when it’s really calling to me — I keep spinning my wheels and I don’t move forward.

But: I get really antsy and am easily distracted when I can feel something big about to come through in my journal. And I have a tendency to sabotage these “hardcore” journaling sessions by reacting to stuff in the external environment.

Today I actually grabbed my iPad in the middle of my journaling session — even though it was going brilliantly — and searched for youtube videos on Jaws 2. (Okay, not even a good movie, but I’ve been feeling oddly nostalgic for it lately.)

Before I knew it, I was watching shark attack videos which were obviously fake (and why in the heck would I do that to my HSP self?), and then somehow I was watching videos of cats stuffing themselves into small boxes (how do I always end up there?).

So I moved away from the iPad and picked the journaling session back up. A couple minutes later, the phone rang. I am like one of Pavlov’s dogs when the phone rings. I don’t know why I think I have to get up and see who it is. But get up I did.

It was a friend of mine who I really wanted to talk to. Normally, when the caller ID comes up as a close friend or a family member, it’s almost impossible for me not to pick up. I pick up as a kind of reflex. I figure I’ll make up the journaling time later; I tell myself the call will only take a couple minutes and then I’ll get back to my writing.

But experience has shown, this isn’t what happens. I get sucked into the call and when I get off the phone it’s hard to get my flow back. I put the journaling off. I toss away my practice. And I feel disconnected from myself.

So today, I didn’t pick up the phone. Why? Because I finally know myself well enough to know that if I pick up the phone during sacred journaling time, I will regret it.

And I have to tell you, acting on that exquisite self-knowledge felt really powerful. It felt congruent.

This might sound like a small point, not picking up the phone during a journaling session, but all these seemingly “small” points add up over the long haul. When I toss the needs of my essential self away on a regular basis and tell myself these “little things” don’t matter, I end up disconnected from myself, over time, in a big way.

There are larger points, too — like going back, out of fear or familiarity, to that job or that relationship we just know in our gut isn’t good for us. Or saying “yes” to something that we know from experience we simply have no desire to do.

None of this is about “doing it right” all the time or never making choices that don’t feel good to us. Part of the process of knowing ourselves is learning through trial and error what doesn’t work for us.

And sometimes, like with my Pavlovian response to the ringing phone, we have a very long learning curve. But when we do finally learn, it’s important to own what we know and take action on that knowing.

Try this: Make a habit of keeping a written record of things you’ve learned — the hard way — about yourself but have a tendency to forget. (I call this my Exquisite Self-Knowledge List.) Then check in with it from time to time, particularly if you’re feeling crappy and you’re not sure why.

What do you absolutely know about yourself that you might put on your own list? I’d love to hear from you.

And: Speaking of putting pen to paper, Thursday, Feb. 21, is the last day to register for the next session of Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’ve been a member of this group for going on a year and a half, and I’m also one of the coaches. You can read about the strides I’ve made with my writing in this group here. We’d love to have you join us! You can check it out here.

Image is “Doves” © Cook | Dreamstime.com

Sometimes it’s simpler than we think

February 8, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I often write here about how anything we struggle with is usually more complex, and less black-and-white, than we make it. Which is good news. Black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking is at least part of the issue about 99% of the time we’re stuck in fear.

But for some of us, and particularly for those of us who fall into my just-created category of “so-beautifully-complex-it’s-ridiculous” (and I say this with deep love and respect because I adore people who are ultra-complex), it can be good to remind ourselves that sometimes it’s actually kinda simple.

I’m thinking of that useful acronym, H.A.L.T. It stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. When we’re feeling crappy, it helps to ask if one of these things is going on for us. Hunger is one that sometimes sneaks up on me. If I don’t catch hunger before it becomes full-blown, I get into low-blood-sugar panic. This happened to me last week and I found myself grabbing food I’d never normally buy off the shelves in CVS, then ripping open a package of cookies in the car. I got so hungry I went into survival mode — food, now!

Luckily, this rarely happens because I don’t allow myself to get that hungry. But it was pretty simple: I derailed my afternoon because I convinced myself it was important to run errands before eating lunch. I didn’t need to make it mean anything other than that, even though I caught myself having thoughts about how clearly my life was spinning out of control as I stared through my windshield eating Mint Milanos in the CVS parking lot.

It’s good to notice what we’re making something mean. (In fact, if I were forced to choose my all-time favorite coaching question, it would be “What are you making that mean?”) Feeling crappy doesn’t always mean so awfully much.

Like today, I was sitting in my office about to start working on this blog post, and I started feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable. I often feel uncomfortable and vulnerable before I start writing a blog post. But in this case, I was also cold. (The heat doesn’t reach from the living room into my office very well, so I need to be extra-bundled-up while I’m in here during the winter months.) I put on a warmer sweater and I felt instantly more comfortable and a lot less vulnerable.

My writer friends and I have noted that when we’re tired, we’re a lot more judgmental about our writing. Geesh, when I’m tired, everything looks a little bit bleaker. And the same for when I’m dehydrated.

Sometimes, things truly are complex and need some heavy untangling. But sometimes, it really is as simple as putting on a sweater or drinking a glass of water or getting more sleep. When you’re so-beautifully-complex-it’s-ridiculous, this can be deeply comforting to remember.

Try this: The next time you find yourself grid-locked by analysis paralysis, apply H.A.L.T. (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) to your situation and see what you comes up for you. The last time I did this, I discovered I was actually lonely, called a close friend, and emerged from the conversation with an entirely new — and workable — perspective on my situation, even though we hadn’t actually discussed what I was worried about.

You can check out my previous article on analysis paralysis, here.

Image is “Sunrise Solitude” © Lyn Adams | Dreamstime.com

Creating rituals around the tough stuff

January 30, 2013February 2, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

For almost everything we call “hard,” it’s hard in part because our tendency is to force ourselves to jump in and “just do it.” We live in a culture that loves the idea of “just do it”.

And sometimes just doing it is totally helpful and appropriate.

And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it makes the hard stuff harder.

When we think of something we want to do that scares us as a big, solid mass, like some monolithic thing rising up out of the sea, and we tell ourselves to “just jump over that!”, of course it’s going to feel really hard.

Everything that we think is hard has many, many increments and layers to it. And we can approach it this way, too.

Once, I was asked to create a piece of writing around a photograph in a museum exhibit, then read the piece to an audience as part of a writing festival. I had only about a week to get to the museum, look at the photograph, write the piece, and practice the reading.

A week goes fast, and I had lots of other stuff going on that week, too, so in reality, I knew I’d only have a few hours to do this. But it felt fun and challenging, so I decided to take it on.

Except when I looked at it all as a whole, it felt really hard. And when I say hard, I mean it actually felt hard, like a glinting black bowling ball. I could feel my abdomen contract just thinking about having to write this thing.

And this is what we often do when we’re confronted with something difficult that needs to be done: we get really hard and rigid ourselves around that thing. We set up walls around it and then we talk about “breaking through them.”

What if we set up softness around the tough stuff? What if we created a relationship with it that we enter and exit?

If I go back to my example of that piece of writing, I notice that there was a lot of entering and exiting the hard parts, within the whole process of getting it written.

There was going to the museum to look at the photograph. I made that softer by wandering around the exhibit for a while, letting the work of these photographers sink in and appreciating it. I made it softer by doodling stars and cat faces in my notebook before I started taking notes. I made it softer by treating myself to coffee on the way home.

Then I made the process softer by giving myself some time after I got home to sit with my notes and the feeling I got from the photograph. I let my notebook simmer next to my computer before I sat down to write. I let myself take a little time to get a good sense of what the picture conjured up in me.

And when I sat down to write, I made that process softer by reminding myself that right now, I was just writing, not sharing. I wasn’t thinking about the sharing until I was good and done with the writing. And I was writing one sentence at a time.

And within that writing, I took little breaks from time to time where I exited the process.

On the day of the actual reading, there was a lot of entering and exiting, too.

I didn’t turn it into, “Just do the reading! Just Do It!!!” Instead, it was more like: Get up. Have coffee while taking ten minutes to do a run-through of the reading. Keep enjoying that coffee while choosing an outfit. Ride train to reading, and while on train, start getting into reading mode — start entering reading mode and preparing for the reading.

Ahhh. Being allowed to enter and prepare, and making that a completely separate thing of its own, made the impending reading feel so much more soft.

There was a little period before the reading, where I congregated with the other readers, who were also freaked out, and acknowledging each other’s freaked-out-ness made it all feel much softer.

And then there was the reading itself, and meeting the warm eyes of certain appreciative audience members. And that made the reading itself so much softer, so much less like a glinty, flinty bowling ball and much more like a marshmallow or some Silly Putty.

Fast-forward to the present. When I sit down to work on my novel, it often feels hard, until I remember about creating rituals of softness.

There’s getting coffee and feeling the warm cup in my hand. There’s turning on my computer and watching my wallpaper come up (it’s a picture of my cat stretched out on the couch, sleeping). There’s opening my document and noticing all the other documents alongside this one, documents full of things I’ve written in the past, and that makes me happy and gives me courage: Oh, yeah, I’ve done this before, this writing.

And then there’s the first sentence of the day. I make that softer by allowing it to be a totally crappy sentence. And I make that softer by reminding myself that I can go back and change it later. And then, nine times out of ten, I’m off and writing. If I get stuck (which I often do), I make the stuckness softer by allowing myself another crappy sentence which I can change later. A lot of days, my cat jumps into my lap while I sit at my computer.

Ahhhh. So soft.

How do you create tiny rituals of softness around the tough stuff? I’d love to know.

Image is “Necessities” © Liz Van Steenburgh | Dreamstime.com

The power of tiny new things

January 17, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I was talking with one of my clients the other day about how when we’re getting ready to let go of an old, painful pattern, it usually seems to get worse. It seems worse because (yay!) we notice it more. We’re really, really aware of how terribly incongruent this pattern is with the new-us-we-are-becoming. So of course it feels more painful than it ever has before.

When a pattern is really painful, I know my tendency can be to get really hard on myself about it. “How could you create this mess?” “How can you be here, again?” “Are you never going to learn from your stuff?”

These kinds of thoughts are like a smokescreen, or code, for: big internal changes are happening, and they scare me, so I need to slow down the process by being really hard on myself. Then I have something to struggle with and rail against, so I can ensure that the change is as slow as a part of me needs it to be.

The part of me who is deep and wise knows that I don’t need to do this; I don’t need to make the process harder than it is. Actually, when a pattern is playing itself out and it’s really, really painful, this is the time to step back and be the observer. I don’t have to do anything; I don’t have to fight with the pattern or try to get rid of it.

By the time I’m noticing how acutely painful it is, it’s already on its way out.

Mixed in with the pain of “this so doesn’t work for me anymore” is, believe it or not, some grief — sometimes a lot of grief. A coping mechanism that, on some level, has been useful for (often) many years is being let go. There’s sadness in that. That coping mechanism has become part of my identity, so, truly, I am letting go of something that feels like me (even if it isn’t).

In these periods of watching old patterns rev themselves up to high speed until they burn up and work themselves out of my system, it can be so gratifying to notice tiny new good-feeling things that enter my life. As the old stuff is leaving, I like to set an intention to notice what feels new and good and light.

The new and the good and the light are so often commonplace AND unexpected. Like this morning when I was getting dressed, I saw this sweater in the bottom of my drawer that I’d bought a long time ago but never really worn. I put it on and smelled the sharp, fresh scent of new wool and it felt so snuggly and cocoon-like.

And then when I was reaching into my drawer for my earrings, I noticed this blue jay pin I love but haven’t ever worn much, either, and I put it on the sweater. And it looked like it was made for that sweater, like, how could I not have put these two things together before?

A tiny thing, yes, putting a pin on a sweater. But tiny bits of newness can be powerful. Because I’ve never put this sweater and this blue jay together before, they are already creating a tiny new alchemy that is about now, not then. Good to notice as the old stuff comes up to be kissed goodbye and released.

Try this: Experiment with tiny change. Move two tiny things in your house to new places, or put two things next to each other that have never shared the same space before. Notice what this tiny change sets into motion for you.

Coaching in the New Year: I have limited open slots for new coaching clients. If change is on the horizon for you, or you’re already knee-deep in it and need some support, check out my one-on-one coaching. Consultations are always free!

Making Room for Everything

December 17, 2012December 17, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

Twenty years ago, my father gave me a copy of Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews. I devoured this book. I was fascinated by the words these writers used to talk about their process, and about their relationship with writing. In some ways, I cared less about what they wrote than I did about what writing meant to them, its connection to who they were, and how it made meaning for them.

One interview stood out for me the most, and that was with the Irish writer Edna O’Brien, author of many novels and short stories. I returned to this interview again and again. Edna O’Brien was so herself, so full of contradictions and so open and accepting of them. The interviewer mentioned Philip Roth’s rumored habit of writing 365 days a year, and asked O’Brien if she shared this habit. O’Brien said that, actually, she did not write 365 days a year, because she wasn’t “that kind of writer”.

She also said that part of her process was moping. “Did Philip Roth say that he moped?” she asked.

I loved this. Permission to mope! I was twenty-one at the time, and for years I’d been trying to get rid of the part of myself that was mopey, the part of myself that actually needed time to just be with whatever I was feeling. Because no one in my life had ever given me permission to just feel bad, and to take that time. And, up until I read that interview with Edna O’Brien, I wasn’t able to give it to myself.

I didn’t know it could be okay to allow myself to feel like crap, let the feeling be there, and trust that this feeling would move and shift, as feelings do. I’d always been taught to get rid of that stuff — if I allowed myself to get in touch with it at all — and to move on from it as soon as possible.

Which hadn’t worked very well.

Because sometimes I need that. I need to putter around the house with these feelings and just give them space. I need to allow them to be, instead of engaging in the inner tug of war that happens when I feel a little mopey and I tell myself, “You don’t have any real reason to feel that way!”

As a creativity coach, a frequent refrain I hear from clients who feel sad, tired, or drained is, “I know I shouldn’t be letting this get in the way of my [writing, artwork, coaching — fill in the blank].”

We have this idea that “creating” means doing — all the time — and we’re somehow “lesser” writers or artists or coaches if we’re not always doing something that looks like creating. We get into either/or: I’m either doing it, or I’m not.

We don’t see the whole of our process — we might not even be aware of the whole of our process. The root system of a tree plunges deep, deep into the earth — but we only see the leaves, the trunk, the branches. And in winter, we don’t even see leaves.

What if we included all of ourselves in our process? What if we saw all of our emotions as helping our creative process, rather than hurting it?

In attending to, making space for, our own emotional core, we feed our creativity, over time.

We may have days that look like puttering, or moping, or just curling up on the couch, and not much else.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t creating. We’re just in the unseen part of our process. We’re just underground for a while.

The holidays are a good time to remember this. We often feel frazzled, disconnected from ourselves, due to extra activities and the “stuff” the holidays can bring up for many of us. What part of your process are you in right now? Can you give yourself permission to be there, or at least, to notice where you are? Can you make room for whatever’s coming up?

Happy Holidays to my beautiful readers, clients, and friends.

And here’s a great opportunity for more permission-building insights: My friend and mentor, the wonderful writer and coach Jenna Avery, is offering a free teleseries on Creative Productivity, starting this Wednesday, Dec. 19! You can check it out and sign up, here.

Support, Part 2: Reaching Out of the Vortex

November 18, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

In my last post, I talked about how things that look, sound and smell like support may not actually be support. And I mentioned that dark, swirling, sucking vortex I can get into when I need support but I’m not sure how to get the kind I need — or maybe I’m not even sure what kind of support I need to begin with.

So, if we find ourselves in the vortex, how do we get out?

First, remember that being in the vortex is only scary because we believe we shouldn’t be there and we need to get out, now.

As Byron Katie might say, we should be there because we are there. Being there is just another opportunity to look around and learn.

Second, there are two parts to support — self-support and support from others that feels supportive. (Hiro Boga commented, brilliantly, in a recording I listened to on her site recently, that it’s not support if it doesn’t feel supportive!)

So, when you’re swirling in the Vortex of Need, ask the wise part of yourself: What might feel truly supportive right now? And see what bubbles up. (It’s really important to ask your inner wisdom for this information, and not the part of you that is spinning in need and angry or sad or desperate that it’s not getting its needs met. This part of you does not need to be burdened with questions right now.)

Usually, I get a response that is very simple. It might be to call a particular person I trust. It might be to tell any one of my private, virtual support networks that I’m feeling like crap. It might be to do the dishes, watch a movie, take a nap, open a particular book. It’s never about the long-term– it’s always a very small, specific thing I can do in this moment.

Thinking too long-term can make getting the kind of support we need feel completely overwhelming. It’s not possible to know what kind of support we’re going to need next year, or even next week. We can only know what we need in this moment.

So, what if it feels hard to get in touch with our inner wisdom? What if it’s crowded out by the voice of need? What if our inner wisdom suggests calling Suzy, but even though we know we deeply trust Suzy, we’re so far into the vortex that, in this moment, calling Suzy feels unsafe?

This is where the self-support piece comes in. Sometimes, I need to practice self-support before I can reach out for support from others. This is one of those steps that often gets left out. “Reach out, ask for help, have courage,” we’re told. But there’s an intermediate step that gets skipped over, and that’s kindness.

Can I access that space within me that is exquisitely kind, warm, and accepting — toward myself? It’s often easy to generate this type of kindness toward others, but what about turning it inward, toward me? This means having total reverence and respect for whatever it is I’m feeling. Giving it permission to be there, and legitimacy, and validity.

We often skip completely over this step, and then wonder why, when someone else does offer support, it doesn’t “land.” Usually it doesn’t land because there’s still a part of us judging and beating ourselves up for feeling whatever it is in the first place — for needing to begin with.

The beautiful thing is that when I practice this type of kindness toward myself, I am put immediately in touch with my inner wisdom. There’s nothing like kindness to lift me out of the vortex of need. In fact, reminding myself to treat myself with exquisite kindness points out the places where I’ve been harsh, or where others (not meaning to) have triggered my own harshness toward myself. But it’s hard to see the harshness when I’m living by its rules. I need to shift into kindness in order to see it.

So, the quick version of this process:

1) Accept that you are In the Vortex of Need, and it’s totally okay. You should be there because you are there.

2) Ask your inner wisdom, what might feel truly supportive right now? See what bubbles up. Take action on whatever comes.

3) If you can’t access your inner wisdom, or if what bubbles up from your inner wisdom feels too scary, practice kindness toward yourself. Deep, radical, kindness. Notice what shifts in practicing this. If it feels hard or awkward, imagine the kindness you’d feel toward a struggling friend, or your cat or dog — someone you find it really easy to be deeply kind to — and direct that kindness toward yourself.

The quick and dirty version:

Skip to number #3 and keep doing it. From deep, radical kindness, all Vortexes of Need dissolve and transform into Foundations of Support.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you reach out for support. What makes it feel easier?

And: Wednesday, Nov. 21, is the last day to sign up for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’m both a participant and a coach for this group, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking for support in creating a daily writing habit!

Support: What it is, what it’s not

November 7, 2012 / Jill Winski

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of support. There are few things more frustrating and alienating than reaching out for support and getting something that feels like the opposite, even if support is what’s intended.

I like to say, “It begins with us.”

And this is true. Self-support is the cornerstone of any true support. Sometimes it’s impossible to let support from “out there” truly land if we aren’t first practicing self-support.

But, said one of my dear clients the other day, what if I’m in a place where I simply can’t access my self-support system? What if I’m so turned around and upside down and frantic that I just can’t get to that place in myself?

Of course. This happens. That’s when support from “the outside” can be most valuable. That gentleness from a trusted friend that we can’t seem to manage to give ourselves. That perspective we just never would have considered if left to our own devices. So. Important.

But: sometimes it’s when I’m in need of support the most that I am the most reluctant to reach out for it. In fact, this is usually what happens. The more I feel like a black hole of sucking need and desperation, the less I want to reach out, and the more I get sucked down, down, down into the vortex.

And, sometimes, into that vortex is exactly where I need to go. It’s not about “forcing myself” out of the vortex to ask for help. This doesn’t necessarily feel safe, and I’m also not necessarily in a place where I can receive any external support when I’ve gotten to this point. (More on this in my next post.)

True support meets us where we are. It doesn’t force, criticize, or project. It’s curious, interested; it asks open-ended questions. (See my previous post on true support, here).

There are, however, a few things I’ve learned that can contribute to getting into the vortex of swirling, sucking need that feels like it will never end and will never be met. Here are some I’ve noticed:

1) Calling something “support” that doesn’t feel like support. For example, the internet. There’s more than enough information for any of us to digest on any topic we want to do a search on for the next bazillion years. But information is not the same thing as support. And getting overwhelmed by information definitely doesn’t feel like being supported. Posting a question on Facebook and getting fifty different “here’s what I’d do” responses is not necessarily support; it just might be overwhelm — more to process, more to weed through.

2) Going for support, again and again, to people who just aren’t able to provide the kind of support you need. Different people provide different types of support. One of my ingenious ways of alienating myself for many years was going to people who weren’t able to give me the kind of support I needed in the past, hoping that this time they’d show up for me the way I wanted them to. It didn’t happen. Embracing reality: always a good thing.

3) Expecting people to support you exactly the way you’d like them to, without telling them the kind of support you need. If you just want to vent and you don’t want to be coached, you can let someone know that — even if they’re your coach. I used to have a habit of just accepting whatever support was offered, even if it was so not what I needed in that moment. I’d feel alienated by the other person, but really I was alienating myself by not stating what I needed. (This isn’t always, easy, of course. Sometimes, we’re just not sure what we need. We need to be really, really compassionate with ourselves here. We’ll figure it out.)

4) Thinking we need a LOT of support, when what we actually need is the right KIND of support. (See #1.)

5) Thinking that what feels supportive to others should feel supportive to us — even when it doesn’t. The same week my cat died two years ago, I had a trip planned. I literally had no energy for travel and wanted to be at home with my grief, even though other people told me the trip “might be just what you need!” It wasn’t; puttering at home feeling totally safe to burst into tears at any moment was.

In my next post, I’ll write about what to do — or not do — when we’re swirling in the vortex of need and we don’t know how to support ourselves.

What are your thoughts about support? Where do you look for it? What works for you and what doesn’t? I’d love to know.

Work with me! Check out my one-on-one coaching opportunities.

How to Take a Pretend Vacation

October 25, 2012October 28, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I realized this afternoon that, kind of without being totally aware of it, I’ve slid into one of my oh-so-rare “pretend vacations.”

A Pretend Vacation is something I give myself when I’m a little overwhelmed, a little run-down, or maybe just feeling more reflective and inward than usual. It might last a day; it might last three. It’s never a planned thing. It’s like a need that asserts itself in a small voice; if I don’t listen, it speaks up more sharply.

I suspect the need for a Pretend Vacation has been coming on for several weeks. Maybe it’s kicked in because of the events of this past weekend: Saturday morning, while eating a Larabar, my crown popped off and I almost swallowed it. Did you know when a crown comes completely off, it has a little pointy screw thing sticking out of it? Be warned.

Then, Saturday night, there was a party. I have an interesting relationship with parties. If I can get myself to them, I like them. For about twenty minutes. I stayed at this one for three hours. (But it was a Halloween party! Costumes! Gummy worms soaked in vodka! And “Poltergeist” and “The Exorcist” on TV all night! My inner scary-movie-lover was happy; my inner HSP-introvert was overstimulated.)

I spent Wednesday morning in my lovely dentist’s office as she dealt with the gaping hole in my gum. Throw in a couple other unexpected and stress-inducing issues over the past few days and, on cue, need for Pretend Vacation makes itself known.

A real vacation is planned in advance. It involves taking time away from work, maybe more time with family or friends, or not, maybe traveling to another place, or not, but there is an interruption of one’s normal routine.

In my Pretend Vacations, my normal routine goes on. I just scale it back as much as possible. I do everything that’s a priority — keep my appointments with clients, do my writing, feed my cat. But I cut out anything I might normally do but don’t really need to. Today, for example, laundry and the dishes fell right off the list so I could sit quietly and drink Midnight Velvet tea. I haven’t been on social media much. I let a couple of phone calls go to voice mail.

The intention behind a Pretend Vacation is to create a container for the part of me that is vulnerable, tired, and wants to move inward to reflect or rest, while not completely removing myself from my life. I’ve noticed on a Pretend Vacation, choices I might usually waver over become really, really clear. I also notice I’m gentler with myself than I usually am, and I’m less likely to respond to things that don’t really require a response from me.

There’s something to be learned here, methinks. Can I invoke this Pretend Vacation mindset for the parts of me that are vulnerable, overwhelmed, or scared, while still attending to the parts of me that don’t want to leave the party because “The Exorcist” hasn’t gotten to the really good parts yet?

I can’t necessarily care for all these parts of myself — all these selves — on the same day, in the same moment, but I can let them all know that they will get their say, they will be heard by me, and none of them will be left out.

I can also let the sensation-seeking parts of me — my inner adventurer, my inner scary movie buff — and the driven, perfectionistic parts — know that, in the long run, a Pretend Vacation is good for all of us.

And a Real Vacation is even better.

For a related article, click here.