Allow yourself comfort — and see what happens

November 13, 2017November 13, 2017 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Toward the end of the year, I always find myself thinking back on the dear one-on-one coaching clients I’ve worked with, and what comes back to me about the work we’ve done together.

This year, I notice I’m thinking about comfort.

It seems there was a theme this year of my clients realizing that it was okay to allow themselves comfort.

That comfort did not have to be used as a reward, for when they were done with “the hard work” — it did not have to be dangled as a carrot to be consumed at the end of a lot of toil.

Comfort — amazingly! — could actually be part of the process.

I think I’ve written here before that “break out of your comfort zone” is not one of my favorite phrases. I’ve just never found it inspiring (though I totally get the meaning behind it).

There are a couple of reasons I dislike this saying. One of them is that I’ve seen many people — including myself — push themselves way too far out of their so-called “comfort zones”, to the point of having panic attacks, meltdowns, even breaking bones or pushing themselves through illness to try to compete in some way.

The other is that it indicates that being “comfortable” is somehow bad or wrong or self-indulgent. But for those of us who, perhaps, grew up without an adequate feeling of comfort and/or safety in our lives, this is inaccurate.

As I’ve written before, if you have a tendency to push yourself really hard (as most of my clients do), you probably need more comfort, not more withholding comfort from yourself.

And is it true that adding comfort to your “hard work” will keep you from getting it done?

Here’s what some of my clients found this year:

• The client who rewarded himself for completing his work on his writing project by taking his dog for a walk discovered that when he took his dog for a walk before he started writing, it actually helped him write better. He felt more centered and more creative. His body felt better because he’d moved it before sitting down (and his dog slept through the writing period rather than reminding him that it was time to go out!).

• The client who rewarded herself with a hot cup of tea after getting through a challenging weekly meeting found that allowing herself the tea during the meeting actually reminded her it was okay to show up as herself and be gentler with herself (and that warmth was an important thing to focus on when the “tough stuff” in these meetings arose!).

• The client who had recently left a long-term relationship found that allowing herself to stay home on the weekends wrapped in a blanket on the couch and watching Netflix was helping her grief process a lot more than “being productive” on the weekends (which was her usual approach!).

When we allow ourselves comfort, we are also choosing to trust ourselves, and to trust the process of life.

When I work with people who are in the midst of major transitions in their lives, 99.9 percent of the time they say that they just want to be out of the transition and that they are “moving too slowly” and that they need me to help them hurry up.

And I always say exactly what they think they don’t want to hear (but that brings some part of them deep relief): When we’re in a stressful transition, it’s helpful to allow ourselves to go slow. It’s not the time to make big moves and it’s definitely not the time to “break out of our comfort zone”.

In fact, we’re in transition because either we’ve chosen to leave the known and familiar behind — or because it’s been ripped away from us (and we had no choice in the matter).

What I have continually found in my own life is that when I’m in the midst of something really hard and I finally surrender to the fact that it is hard, and I can’t go as fast as I’d like because there is so much internal and external stuff to work through — when I accept that this is where I am and actually allow myself some comfort, that is exactly when things begin to transform. It’s exactly when I begin to relax into the new “me” I’m becoming.

But as long as I’m fighting things and trying to “tough my way through” what’s already hard, I am not allowing the space (or the comfort) to relax enough to welcome the new.

I’ve also noticed (as I wrote about here) that when I allow more softness into a task or a journey that feels hard, I do not become an overindulged mess. I actually feel far more capable, confident, and I enjoy what I’m doing a heck of a lot more.

I invite you to test this out for yourself. Where can you allow yourself a little more comfort? What happens when you do? I’d love to hear from you.

Speaking of transitions, the deadline to sign up for one of my specially-priced Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions is Wednesday, November 22. If you’re in an “in-between” place (with your creative work, a relationship, or some other aspect of your life) this fall and needing some support, I’d love to help. You can learn more about my Autumn Transition Sessions here.

Above images of tea cup © Jill Battaglia | Dreamstime Stock Photos, and candles © Diana Constantin | Dreamstime Stock Photos, respectively

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Are you allowing the seasons of your life?

September 9, 2017September 9, 2017 / 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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The question that cuts through your overwhelm

February 18, 2017February 18, 2017 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

sadgirl

A week ago I returned from a coaching intensive (which I’ll no doubt share more about in the future), feeling one part energized, two parts exhausted. I had that good feeling of having stretched myself a lot, but a quieter part of me recognized that I couldn’t keep going at that pace for much longer without losing touch with what I truly needed.

Hmm. What I truly needed. How interesting that it took me almost a week to get there.

As the week wore on, and my after-stretching-myself buzz began to wear off, I noticed I felt scattered, pressured, pressed. By Thursday, I realized I had arrived at that most dreaded of states: full on overwhelm.

Friday morning, “to-do’s” spinning in my brain, I recognized I didn’t want to continue feeling the way I was feeling. And, regarding my rather pinched expression in the bathroom mirror, I asked myself this question: “What do you need right now?”

It seems like a pretty obvious question — doesn’t it?

The thing is, when I get into the spin cycle of “I want to rest — but there’s so much to do — but I want to rest — but there’s too much to do”, I do not see this question.

It was only pausing and noticing how I was feeling, and seeing that feeling conveyed on my face in the mirror, that brought me to this truth. I had a need, and it wasn’t being met. And I didn’t even know what the need was.

Asking yourself “What do I need right now?” grounds you in the present moment, in what is true for you.

Often, when we are in that “too much to do” place, we get caught up trying to plan for and control a future that is not here yet. If I don’t get it done now, X, Y, and Z might happen, our minds tell us.

And our activity becomes more and more frantic. We may get something done, maybe a lot of things done — but we don’t feel productive. “To-do-list” brain just keeps churning out more to-do’s.

When I asked myself, “What do you need right now?”, I received a few answers.

• I need to permission to do it all wrong.

• I need permission to not do it all.

• I need to be kinder to myself.

• I need to recognize where my true responsibility lies.

• I need to take a long walk.

I stopped there, lest “what I need” started to sound to me like another “to-do” list.

And I decided to meet two needs — the need to be kinder to myself, and the need for a long walk. My walk turned into what Julia Cameron calls an “Artist’s Date”, where I found myself meandering in my neighborhood, noticing the squirrels leaping around in the unusually warm weather, and I bought myself a new lipstick at Ulta Beauty.

On the way home from the walk, I realized just how much I’d needed that “settling down” time — that bridge between the high, intense activity of stretching myself, and moving back into my regular routine. It just took me a week to give it to myself.

As I write this, I do not feel overwhelmed. I feel present. In fact, after my walk I found myself — quite naturally — doing several things I needed to do, from a settled-down place of peace, of groundedness.

Now, here’s an interesting thing: This whole week, upon my return from my travels, I’ve been taking a morning walk each day, because that’s what I do. That’s part of my morning ritual. But my morning ritual didn’t seem to be “taking hold” as it usually does. I still felt keyed up, worried, anxious.

I see now that it’s because I didn’t ask myself what I needed. I kept taking the actions I usually took, without checking in first to see what was up for me.

The experience I’d had away had shifted my needs. I was needing a different flavor of self-care post-trip that I’d had before I’d left.

But I didn’t know it for almost a week, because I forgot to ask myself what I needed.

Live and learn, my friends. I offer a coaching program on practicing excellent self-care, and yet it took me a week to see how I needed to care for myself. We are always beginners in the ever-changing landscapes of our inner lives.

Are you overwhelmed right now? How does the question “What do I need right now?” sit with you? Is there another question that helps you cut through overwhelm? I’d love to hear from you.

And: I will begin enrolling clients in my one-on-one coaching program, Stellar Self-Care, on March 6, 2017. If your life feels overwhelming and you’re needing support, I encourage you to check it out! I will also be offering a small group version of the program this time around — please contact me for more info if you’re interested in that format. You can also learn about other ways we can work together, here.

Above image © Jose Antonio Sánchez Reyes | Dreamstime Stock Photos

There’s no right way to process change

November 12, 2016November 12, 2016 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

Many of us here in the U.S. are struggling to cope with our feelings about the results of our election this week.

One of the themes I’ve noticed over the past several days, for myself as well as clients, colleagues, and community I’ve connected with is something like this: I’m not sure how, or when, or where, to express what I’m feeling.

I’ve heard several people say — as soon as a few hours after the election results came in — “It’s time to move on and stop talking about it.”

Whoa! This is big, for all of us (including those who are happy with the results of the election). How about allowing ourselves a little time to process this change, if that’s what we need?

I’ve also noticed myself feeling compelled to respond to others’ pain when I had nothing left in me to give. I’ve felt both comforted and exhausted by social media posts. I’ve wanted to grieve and process alone, and then very quickly wanted to grieve and process with others.

I’ve noticed that there’s a difference in feel between those who seem to want to hurry on to avoid what they’re feeling, and those who want to move on to create positive change without dwelling on what’s done. And probably many of us are experiencing all of the above.

I have so much compassion for all of this. When we’re hit with big change, each of us will respond based on our past experiences, who we are today, our unique temperaments, and the way we’re wired.

The bottom line for me: I want to feel safe, and I want others to feel safe. I want to be kind, and I want to honestly express what I’m experiencing when and where that feels safe and necessary to me. I don’t want to trample on anyone’s beliefs, and I need to honor my own.

I can care about you and disagree with you. I can love you, and need to process what I’m feeling in a way that is quite different from your way.

What if, as long as we are not intentionally hurting anyone else, it’s okay to process big change in whatever way we need to process it? As quickly or as slowly, as outwardly or inwardly, publicly or privately? With lots of talking it out, lots of contemplation, or a combination of both?

What if whatever we need is just okay? And what if, by open-handedly giving ourselves what we need, it helps us feel okay with others taking care of themselves in whatever way they need to as well?

I write a lot about self-care here, and how we really can’t totally separate self-care from other-care. What if the ultimate act of self-care is gentleness toward ourselves when we’re just not quite sure what we need? And that, in cultivating this gentleness toward ourselves, we’ll be better able to extend it to others as well?

How do you know how to best take care of yourself — and respond to the needs of others — during challenging times? Do you tend to move through big changes quickly, or do you need to process more slowly? I’d love to hear from you.

Above image © Madartists | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Happy Halloween + last chance for an Autumn Transition Session

October 31, 2016October 31, 2016 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

(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.

Intuition — or something else?

October 27, 2016October 27, 2016 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

(Scroll to the end of this post to learn about two important deadlines.)

Something that often comes up for the clients I work with is confusion around the concept of intuition. When are we acting on our intuition, and when are other forces at play, that may look like intuition, but actually aren’t?

I used to believe that strong emotions and my intuition were the same thing. It took a few very painful experiences for me to come to terms with the realization that this wasn’t true.

At that time in my life, just getting in touch with my emotions was huge for me, because I had learned to disconnect from what I was feeling over the years. So when I got back in touch with my feelings, I began to act on them, usually extremely quickly.

This looked like: Getting and quitting jobs, without much forethought at all; getting into (and out of) relationships without pausing to reflect on whether they were what I actually wanted; expressing my feelings to others, even when it wasn’t helpful or necessary; buying things on the spur of the moment; staying up and active when I needed sleep — the list goes on.

All of the above, I came to discover, was not acting on my intuition — it was acting impulsively. It was an important place for me to be for a while, since I’d learned so well during my teen years to bury my feelings and disconnect from them (and my body, where feelings reside).

There’s certainly nothing wrong with being impulsive here and there. (It can be fun, for sure!) But ultimately, I had to face the truth that this impulsive behavior was not necessarily helping me.

And then I began to wonder: what IS intuition, then?

Let’s start with what intuition ISN’T:

• It’s not action that comes purely from emotion (many times we think we are acting from intuition when in fact we are being driven by fear or anger).

• It’s not wishful thinking (sometimes we can confuse the hope that something will happen with the idea that it’s meant to happen).

• It’s not predicting the future (though acting on our intuition can certainly guide us toward important growth experiences, they may not look like we thought they would!).

Because we live in a very action-oriented culture, one of the most difficult things for us to do can be sitting with discomfort. (It can be hard to even give ourselves permission to do that!)

What I learned from my experiences was that my impulsive actions were often born of an unwillingness to sit with that discomfort. I thought I had to do something to alleviate it — and more often than not, I’d just create more mess for myself (like the time, at about twenty-one, when I cut my own hair, screwed it up, and then shaved half my head to “cover up” the screw-up).

Sitting with our discomfort and letting muddy water become clear, to paraphrase Lao-Tzu, is key to getting in touch with our intuition.

True intuition has a detached feel to it. There will NOT be strong emotion hanging onto a true intuitive prompting — it will feel simple, more like “I want to do this” or “I don’t want to do that.” Sometimes people describe it as simply “a knowing”. (It’s the stressful thinking we pile on top of an intuitive prompting that makes it seem complicated!)

Intuition does not explain itself, either. If you hear a lot of “Well, I want to do this because of this and this and this and then hopefully this will happen but maybe Mom will be mad if it happens but I’ll figure out a way to deal with that and oh yeah maybe Bob won’t like it either if I do that but I’ll show him!” — that is NOT intuition, it’s your mind rationalizing an action you’re not clear you want to take (yet).

This is why it’s so important, when we’re unclear, that we start with our bodies and notice what we’re feeling, then let the emotions come up and through us, and then, when we’re in a calmer, more settled place, see what we know.

Because intuition, I’ve noticed, tends to hide from drama. Intuition is always there, and can always be accessed, so it’s not truly hiding; it’s just that the drama drowns it out and is so noisy intuition can’t be bothered with it.

(Intuition is kind of like my cat, who slinks off to hang out under the dresser when there’s too much company. It’s not that my cat hates the company; he just figures it’s not worth the trouble and will reappear when the environment is quiet and peaceful.)

Now, intuition does take our emotions into account. It uses them as information. And that’s an important point: intuition needs information to function.

Even “intuitive flashes” that happen seemingly instantaneously occur in part because our subconscious mind has picked up on various cues in our environments and factored in our reactions to them — all so quickly our conscious mind may not notice. (Here the classic example of choosing not to get on an elevator with a person who gives you a “creepy” vibe applies. You’ve only seen the person for a second or two, but something feels “off.”)

Our desire to please others, or our fear of loss and change, can sometimes keep us from being willing to access our intuition. I always encourage my clients to allow themselves to know what they know and to give themselves permission not to act on it right away. It sounds, um, counter-intuitive, but sometimes this is the safety we need in order to allow our intuition to emerge — particularly if we grew up in an environment where speaking our truth was not encouraged or accepted.

How do you discern between your intuition and other energies within you? What helps you access your intuition? I’d love to hear from you.

P. S. There’s still time to sign up for one of my Autumn Transition Coaching Sessions. If you’re in a life transition this fall and need some clarity about your next step, I encourage you to check them out, here. You can sign up through November 1, 2016.

Also, if you’re a woman at midlife who’s feeling stuck and yearning for change, I hope you’ll take a look at my dear friend Theresa Trosky’s program, What’s Next? Theresa is an extremely gifted Master Certified Life Coach, and she’s helped me (brilliantly) through some of my own challenges. Her program begins on November 2, and you can find out more about it here.

Above image is “Moon Night”, © Paolo De Santis | Dreamstime Stock Photos

The choices that make you who you are

July 9, 2016July 9, 2016 / Jill Winski / 14 Comments

From my living room windows, as I sit in my blue chair, I often see a woman out on her balcony in the condo building across the way.

Her balcony is filled with beautiful plants and flowers and even a small tree in a terra cotta base. She’s about my age — 40s — and seems peaceful and purposeful as she moves with her watering pitcher from plant to plant, disappearing inside occasionally and reemerging with a full pitcher through the sliding glass door.

I think I am living vicariously through this woman — just a little — because I like the idea of lots of plants, but I’ve learned I don’t want them.

In my old home, from which I moved last year (and wrote about here), I had a room devoted solely to plants.

Many of them were my mother’s plants, lovingly tended for years and years, which I inherited when she moved to the East Coast in 2005. And in 2014, when my sister moved to Michigan, I took her plants as well, several cacti and some succulents known as “chickens and hens”.

The plant room got to be very full, and although I had liked the idea of all these plants when I moved into the house, over time I came to realize that I am simply not a plant person. I am an animal person, and I adore taking care of pets, but plants exhaust me.

A little orange tree that had thrived under my mother’s care for more than thirty years eventually withered under mine. Most of my sister’s plants died after she gave them to me.

A friend of mine saw the metaphor in all this and pointed out to me that I’d been taking care of plants all these years that did not truly belong to me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the plants, but I admit I cared for them resentfully. I didn’t really want all these plants but had taken them on because I felt like if I didn’t, they’d end up on the trash heap.

My friend said, “Of course you don’t want them — they’re other people’s cast-offs. You never did want them; you just couldn’t say no.” (I make it sound like she was brutally blunt, but she is actually very kind when she says things like this.)

My friend had a point. It was my mother, not me, who desired a large house filled with plants. And my sister’s plants had been given to her mostly by my mother. And why was I caring for the parts of people’s lives that they’d left behind, when they were no longer willing to do it?

Today, the plant room of my old house a thing of the past, I stare out my window at this woman tending her plants and wonder: what if I actually do want a balcony full of plants? What if I actually want a life like this woman’s? (I have no idea what kind of life this woman has — only that, when the weather turns warm, she turns her attention to her plants). Shouldn’t I have what she has?

***

In truth, I can say for sure — yes, for sure — that I do not want to care for a balcony full of plants.

At least once a week — more than ten months after my move — I feel relief and peace in the fact that I no longer care for those plants.

But I notice — in myself, in the clients I work with, in the communities of which I am part — that we so often look out at others and make assumptions about their lives, and believe we should have what they have, do what they do, be what we perceive them to be.

I’ve noticed myself assuming that the woman across the way must be “successful” in life because she has all these beautiful plants and is able to help them thrive. She’s willing to put in that time and energy and devotion to plants, and I am not. That must mean something good about her, and something bad about me, right?

The fact that I actually do not enjoy caring for plants does not register to my critical mind when it’s comparing my insides to other people’s outsides.

And maybe, just maybe, this woman actually truly wanted all these plants and picked each one out with care, herself. Maybe they were not an inheritance she never wanted to begin with.

Two things bubble to the surface for me as I write this:

1) In the future, starting now, I will remember to say no more to things I really do not want. I will remember that my “no” does not necessarily relegate innocent plants to the trash heap — in fact, my “no” may create currently unseen possibilities, for plants AND people.

2) When I’m comparing myself to “surely-more-successful-than-me” others, I will remember that I have good reasons for my choices, and that making choices based on who I really am and what I truly want is one of my definitions of success. So while a balcony full of thriving plants may equal success for my neighbor, it doesn’t for me — even though I can deeply appreciate the view it creates.

What do you notice about the difference between who you truly are and who you (sometimes) think you should be? How do you connect with what you truly want, as opposed to what you think you should have? I’d love to hear from you.

Do you need support in making your creative work a priority, in a way that works for YOU (not the way you think you should do it)? I’d love to help. Find out if we might be a fit, here.

Above image is “Future Forest”, © Deca Raluca | Dreamstime Stock Photos

When the ideal meets the real

April 18, 2016April 18, 2016 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

One thing getting into my forties has shown me is that a lot of the “ideals” of my twenties and thirties haven’t truly meshed with “the real”.

Now, when I say “the real” here, I’m not necessarily talking about “the real world” — not exactly. I’m talking about what is, when it comes down to it, real and true for me — for the whole of who I am.

It’s easy for me to hang out in the land of the ideal. I remember one time, in my twenties, I was explaining to my therapist how disappointed I was in someone I was dating. She nodded and smiled and said, “As usual, your standards are very high.”

She didn’t say it with judgment at all, but with love — in fact, because I felt very accepted by her, I took it as a compliment. (She managed to say this when she could finally get a word in — at least once a session she would have to hold up her hand and say, “Jill, excuse me, may I say something?” Introvert that I am, when I am feeling safe, I can talk and talk and talk.)

I did have high standards — but I think it’s more accurate to say I had certain ideals that I was absolutely certain I needed to live by. And, as life plays out, as we live it, sometimes those ideals crash upon the shores of the real.

It’s not that the ideals are ridiculous or naive (as certain adults used to tell me about my “big dreams” when I was a teenager). It’s not even that the ideals are unattainable (sometimes ideals are very possible for us, especially when they are in keeping with our essential selves).

It’s more that reality provides constraints for our ideals to push up against. And that who we think we are when we connect to certain ideals may not be who we truly are — or maybe it is, but we change, and our old ideals start to feel more punishing than inspiring.

And this is not a bad thing (though tell that to my twenty-five-year-old self!). In fact, creativity often thrives within constraints. (Why do we need to be creative if there’s nothing to work out, nothing to understand, nothing to make better or see more clearly?!)

When the ideal meets the real, that is when we get to know who we truly are.

I wrote several years ago about my early dream of being an actress, and how I discovered over time that the life of an actor was really not the life I wanted. If I hadn’t given it a shot, though, I never would have understood why.

The reality of me is that I’m much more a writer than an actor. And, as I’ve brought my “ideals around being a writer” into reality, I’ve also learned a lot about what kind of writer I am, and what kind I’m not. I’ve learned a lot about what writing means to me, and what it doesn’t. (In other words, I’m more than a writer. “Writer” is one aspect of me, and writing is a tool through which I express the whole of me. And I’m still learning here.)

***

Spiritual teacher Adyashanti has said that you can have all the ideals you want, but it’s your life experience — your daily reality — that shows you what is true for you.

I had to confront this in my relationships for a lot of years. Although I said I wanted to be with a partner who was fully there for me, the people I allowed into my life back then weren’t really partners at all — they were never truly available to me.

Reality for me clashed with my ideal — what was true for me, I came to see, was that I didn’t really want a partner who was actually there — I wanted the idea of a partner.

It took a lot of peeling back the layers of my ideal for me to comes to terms with what was real — and true — for me. (It’s extremely common in the work I do with clients for them to test out an ideal and discover that they liked the idea of it, but the reality of it is not necessarily a good fit for who they truly are. This is wonderful news: now they get to see what it was in the essence of that ideal that they wanted. Very often, it is the essence we crave, not the actual thing itself.)

If you find your reality pushing up against an ideal, ask yourself:

• What is it about this ideal that inspires me, that moves me? Is there a way I can have the essence of this in my life without needing particular external circumstances?

• Does this ideal even fit me — the real me — anymore?

• Do I simply need more support in order to really live this ideal in my daily life?

What do you notice about how your ideals mesh with reality in your own life? I’d love to hear how this works (or doesn’t!) for you.

This is tough stuff. If you’re in this space and needing support, check out my options for one-on-one coaching and see if you think we might be a good fit. I’d love to help.

Embracing the beauty of being on the fence

March 29, 2016March 29, 2016 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

One of the most painful things we can experience, at times, is that feeling of being “on the fence.”

We’re not quite at “yes”, but it doesn’t exactly feel like a “no” either. This can happen with a creative project, a relationship, a job, or even an event we’re not sure we want to attend.

I know I can be a world-class waffler. Sometimes something is clearly a “hell yes” or a “hell no”, and there’s always a sense of relief for me when that’s the case. Because often, I have a whole bundle of feelings around something — an unwieldy mix of half-yeses, half-no’s, and everything in between.

I have a fascination for the murky, the muddy, the not-quite-clear. My partner said the other day, while I was debating whether or not I wanted to go out of town with him, that while he sees about two and a half sides to every situation and thinks that’s enough, I see eight sides and like to go for thirty.

Fair enough. Sometimes I love that I embrace the gray areas, the not-quite-defined. But it can also make life harder than it needs to be.

Because sometimes, I think I’m on the fence but I’m just plain fooling myself. Sometimes, I’m not on the fence at all but I’m afraid to own my “hell no” or my “hell yes.”

I’ve discovered over the years that there’s a true difference in feel between times I am genuinely on the fence and times when my “I’m not sure” is actually a cover-up for a yes or a no I’m afraid to see.

It’s all about how it feels in my body.

A true “hell no” for me feels like a hand pressing again my abdomen — a firm, strong hand. It’s a boundary; it makes me think of a drum skin pulled taut, with no give left. No. Not going there. Done. Or, eh, that just doesn’t feel right to me, for now.

A true “hell yes” for me feels like an opening. A “yes” for me is in my chest. My body lifts up and forward when I feel a true yes — it’s like an invisible string extends from my breastbone, right around the area of my heart, and pulls me toward what I want.

A true yes does not actually feel like a decision at all, much of the time — I simply find myself moving toward whatever it is. (As Byron Katie says, when we have the necessary information, decisions tend to make themselves.)

So what does the dreaded “fence” feel like? I’d like to first point out that, largely, what makes the fence painful is the belief that we should be off it. That being “on the fence”, feeling “maybe” instead of yes or no, means something is wrong.

When I’m genuinely on the fence (and not pretending to be there because I’m afraid of my yes or my no and what they might mean), there is a true sense of curiosity. Again, I feel it in my body. Curiosity shows up in my abdomen, chest, throat and jaw. It starts in my abdomen and moves upward — there’s a ticklish quality to it, a momentum that is born of wonder.

In fact, a good sign that I’m genuinely unsure is I hear myself saying “I wonder” and “what if?” a lot, in a musing, reverent way. I don’t mean “what if” here in the worrying, fearful sense. I mean it in the creative sense.

It’s like when I’m writing fiction, and I’m testing out story possibilities. What if she does this? And then he reacts by doing that? And then that causes this? It feels more like playing than the tense, cramped feeling that comes from analysis paralysis, from trying to “figure it all out and get it right.”

There is nothing wrong with being “on the fence”, unless we are perpetually there. In fact, when we are on the fence, it is a great opportunity to know ourselves intimately. It is autobiographical. No two people will be “on the fence” about the same situation in the same way.

I do a lot of “fence work” with my coaching clients because people often seek out a coach when they’re struggling with a big decision. Sometimes their truth is that they’ve already reached a “hell yes” or a “hell no” and they simply need to permission to see it and support in owning it.

And sometimes, they need support in embracing the beauty of their particular fence.

Very often, we can only step off the fence into the lush grass on the other side when we deeply get how the fence is serving us. It’s okay to be there for a while, as long as our being there is true for us. And if our truth is that we’re ready to jump off the fence — or shimmy down ever so gently — it’s okay to get support in doing that.

How do you know the difference between a true yes and a true no for yourself? How do they feel different than when you are genuinely “on the fence”? I’d love to hear your take on this!

Slowing down to speed up: embracing gentle on Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2015 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I gave myself a Valentine’s gift today: the gift of sleeping in. I slept until 9:30 (though not without the usual 4 a.m. wake-up call from kitty!).

This was a conscious choice — I decided yesterday evening that I would allow myself to sleep in this morning, since I had nothing on my schedule early.

And there’s something about consciously choosing that makes a real difference. It was a much different feeling than, “Damn, I slept late! Now I’m already behind!” You can feel the difference, right?

I woke up having already honored myself (with extra sleep) the way I’d planned to. And I feel really happy that I actually put “allow myself to sleep in” on my schedule for the day. I made it that important.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I entered 2015 with a feeling of burnout. And little by little over the weeks, I’ve been feeling myself move out of it, in teeny, tiny increments.

Small glimmers of new energy have arrived; I’ve been working with a wonderful mentor (Yollana Shore of Heart of Business) to expand into new directions with my coaching work.

Sometimes almost imperceptibly, I can feel myself moving forward in small but important ways.

But here’s the thing: When I start putting pressure on myself to move more quickly, I can feel myself shrinking back.

This has been a longstanding pattern with me — wanting myself to move more quickly than the whole of me can actually capably move.

I’ve learned something over the years that has been reinforced by my work with my coaching clients. Many of us have a “visionary” part of our selves that moves very quickly and can often manifest things in the physical world with a lot of speed.

But this visionary aspect of us is only one aspect. There are other parts of us, too, which may need to move at a different pace.

I learned this bigtime when I was in my mid twenties. I bottomed out on my inner visionary’s need for speed.

It wanted to move so quickly that it didn’t take the “slower” parts of me into account: the child in me who feels vulnerable and needs a safe space (and, as Julia Cameron points out in The Artist’s Way, the “inner child” is very much connected to the part of us that creates); and my (highly sensitive) physical body which can become overstimulated by too much activity and movement and needs slowness and quiet to recharge itself.

When I bottomed out, I developed a chronic illness which eventually put a halt to my ability to hold a job and to create at all. For much of my twenty-fifth year, I was too ill to function “normally”. My “new normal” was lying in bed or dragging myself down the hall to use the bathroom. I eventually ended up in the hospital, dehydrated and being fed through a tube.

When I came out of the hospital, the realization crept in over time that I had to learn to take care of the part of me that needed to move slowly.

I had to learn to accept — in fact, to love — the part of me that needed to move at its own pace (which to the visionary part of myself sometimes seems excruciatingly glacial).

The fact is, we are all touched by a constellation of components — heart, soul, physical body, genetics, our family history and any trauma from “back then” that may still get triggered from time to time, our changing needs and selves, our current and past relationships and the ways they affect us and we affect them, and the culture and environment we live in. Although we in Western culture are often encouraged to be “independent”, we are, without exception, interdependent.

And this means that, sometimes, in acknowledging the needs of all parts of us, we move more slowly than we’d like.

A while back I gave a presentation and after it a man in the audience came up and remarked on how gentle I was in answering questions from the audience. Yes, I am gentle when I sense struggle. But I’ve had to learn to be gentle. I learned it because it was necessary for me to be gentle with myself in order to grow.

I found during my illness all those years ago that the harder I was on myself, the more I demanded of myself that I get well quickly, the sicker I felt. I finally had to accept that I might stay sick forever, and I had to learn to be okay with that. Only gentleness — treating myself with kindness and softness, even though it felt foreign to me — allowed me to rest fully enough to get well.

I think, many years later, this learning is circling back around to me as I’m navigating the current transition in my life. And I’ve seen it in various forms with my coaching clients, too. The more I notice myself putting pressure on myself to move quickly, the more imperative it is that I allow myself to slow down.

This is especially true when we are going through difficult transition periods. We want to be out of them quickly because they are so uncomfortable, but the irony is that the more we try to rush them along, the longer they last!

So: I look around at my life right now and I notice that I am not sick. I notice all the ways I am better at taking care of myself than I was at twenty-five. I notice that I no longer hold my breath and leap in order to ignore the fear that comes with transitions. I notice I am more able to be present with what is coming up for me.

I notice that it is Valentine’s Day and I am in a loving relationship — and while I do have a significant other I love very much, that is not the relationship I’m referring to here. I am talking about me. My loving relationship with me. It’s been a long road and I look forward to where it leads next.

Wishing you a Valentine’s Day filled with love, whether you are spending it with yourself or with someone else. (And I love Robyn Posin’s article here, on “going only as fast as the slowest part of you feels safe to go”. Her site is wonderful.)

What do you notice about navigating transitions? What helps you move at the speed that feels right to all of you?

And: In the coming weeks, I will be making some changes to my coaching offerings. If you’d like to work with me in the current way, you can take a look at my offerings here.