Category Archives: Coaching Tools

Climbing a mountain in red stilettos.

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Imagine you’re at a trailhead in the wilderness. Sunrise is lightening the eastern sky, birds are singing their dawn song in the tops of the firs, and the creek beside your trail is burbling happily, full of fresh snowmelt, beckoning you upward.

You’re excited to climb to the top of the mountain on the horizon, with the last of the night’s stars fading away behind it. You’ve wanted to climb this mountain for years, and today is the day. You take one last drink of water, shoulder your pack, strap on your hiking poles, and embrace the journey ahead.
 
But then. A voice. It belongs to a young man emerging from the trees. He wears an official uniform and a badge, and he tells you to stop. “Hold up,” he says. “I’m going to give you some of these before you go.”

He gestures to a table laden with a strange assortment of objects: rocks in ten-pound bags, pairs of shiny red stilettos, rolls of Cling Wrap, and heavy mittens. He tells you to remove your sturdy trail shoes and replace them with the stilettos, puts two bags of rocks in your backpack, and wraps your head in Cling Wrap in which he’s poked tiny holes for your nose and your mouth.
 
You object, although it’s difficult through the plastic wrapped around your head.
 
He says, “Sorry, ma’am. This is how it is. I don’t make the rules. Oh. I almost forgot. You have to give me half your food.”
 
This seems strange to you. You wonder who’s making these rules, but you give the young man most of your lunch and start up the trail.
 
You’re beginning to wonder if you’ll make it up that mountain.
 
 
Thoughts create feelings which lead to actions that accumulate as results. Period.

That’s what I learned in Wayfinder coach training, and it’s what I’ve taught clients myself. The idea is that once we can catch a thought causing suffering, we can do the work to change the thought. Because, thankfully, thoughts, unlike feelings, are changeable. (Changing an action without changing the thought(s) motivating the action is white-knuckling ourselves into a desired state. This “change through brute force” takes lots of will power, a finite resource.)

This black and white, clear cut, linear formulation is the foundation of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and it’s been helpful for many.

Well. Turns out it’s not true, that feelings are always, 100%, no exceptions, caused by thoughts. Researchers are finding that what eases suffering isn’t changing the thought, but getting distance from it. Learning to detach from a thought causing suffering is one of the pillars of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

I now have a broader understanding and therefore a more nuanced perspective on thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Thoughtwork is great for thoughts causing suffering. We suffer when we take life’s inevitable pain personally. Thoughtwork used on pain, not suffering, is ineffective and potentially harmful.

That said, “unhelpful thoughts create unhelpful feelings that lead to unhelpful actions” is true often enough that it’s worth having some basic thoughtwork tools in your toolbox to ease your suffering. I’ve been playing around with a new one, and want to share it with you. It’s called “Cruel, Sadistic Operating Instructions.”
 


Cruel, Sadistic Operating Instructions

I found this one in Carolyn Elliott’s book Existential Kink. (The book has a lot of wacky stuff IMO, but this tool is priceless.) She calls it “How to Beat Yourself Up (the Fun Way).” In Carolyn’s words: “Make your cruel, sadistic ‘operating instructions’ radically explicit.”

Here’s how it goes.

Dig deep and see if you can uncover the real rules you live by—your cruel, sadistic operating instructions.

We find our cruel, sadistic operating instructions when we investigate where we’re suffering. You know what suffering feels like. It feels weighty, stuck, trapped, caged, stagnant, frustrating. Anger that never goes away. Despair that persists. Attempts to control the uncontrollable.

Pain, by contrast, moves through us. Pain ebbs and flows. Pain is alive.  

Look where you feel deadness, and you will find your suffering.

Here are some of my cruel, sadistic operating instructions:
I must never, ever, ever expand and grow bigger than my childhood roles and identity.
I must never, ever, ever, create something original—art, writing, a coaching process, a business—because it might be flawed or ugly and therefore unworthy of existence.
The only thoughts that matter are the ones others think or have thought.
I must always listen and never speak.
I must never, ever, ever decide anything for myself. I must never, ever, ever feel exuberant happiness.
I must never, ever, ever do anything I might not get perfect the first time. No mistakes, ever.
And so on.
 
Now, of course these aren’t true. They’re ridiculous—statements I would never, ever, ever say to my kids or to anyone else. I have managed to expand, create, think for myself, speak up, feel happy, and make decisions.

But doing those things has been harder than they needed to be, because of my buried operating instructions.

Articulating my actual cruel, sadistic operating instructions helps me see how they’re still controlling me.

I’ve been white-knuckling myself past my operating instructions, feeling anxious and guilty when I break them. They’re buried deep.

Like vampires, exposing these rules to the light takes away their power.

Uninstalling the operating instructions that no longer serve me is a skill. And that’s where thoughtwork comes in.
 

So, what’s going on with you, dear mountain climber?

Well, you’re doing your best to get up that trail with all those impediments. After all, you think, this is how he said it needed to be. I don’t understand, but I don’t have a choice. This must be how everyone does it.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, that this is so hard.

You walk and you walk and you walk, grinding out step after step in those god-awful shoes, sweat pooling under the Cling Wrap, trying to see through the layers of plastic film, carrying that heavy, heavy backpack.

Until you just can’t anymore. You teeter your way to the creek bank, heels catching on rocks, ankles twisting, and slide down onto the grass. You shrug off your backpack, kick off those ridiculous shoes, rip the Cling Wrap from your head, and put your feet in the water. Cold water flows over your blistered feet, fir-scented breezes cool your sweaty head, your shoulders relax and soften.

A Dipper flies downstream.

You’re tapped out. You’ve hit a wall. You know you can’t go any further, and you so badly wanted to get to the mountain top. You sit, trying to accept your disappointment. Then you notice that the Dipper is in the creek in front of you, watching you. She’s been there for some time, perched on top of a log in the water on the other side of the creek, singing and dipping as Dippers do.

The log is hollow, and inside the log is a box.

You wade toward the log. The Dipper watches your steady progress, bopping up and down encouragingly. You reach the log and pull out the box.

Behind the box, deep in the hollow log, is a pair of sturdy trail shoes, your size, in the color you always wanted but REI was always sold out of. Oh, hell no, you think. I am not wearing those ridiculous stilettos one more goddamn minute. You carry the shoes and the box back across the creek.

Sitting there with your feet in the water, the fir-scented breeze playing with your hair, the sound of the creek in your ears, you open the box. Inside is the food you left with the young man at the trailhead—your turkey sandwich, your bag of Fritos, and your oatmeal cookie.

You’re beginning to believe you can get to the top of the mountain after all.

Why would I keep carrying this stuff?, you think. You pull the bags of rocks out of your backpack and empty them into the creek. You stuff the empty bags, the wad of sweaty Cling Wrap, and your lunch into the backpack, dry your feet, and put on your beautiful new shoes. They feel so good. You return to the trail and resume your journey toward the mountain that is your goal: snow-capped, sturdy, shining in the morning sun. You’re strong. You’re brave. And you’re really looking forward to getting to the top of that mountain.

Those stilettos? They’re swinging jauntily off your backpack by their sparkly straps. You’re not sure yet what you’ll do with them, but you know it’ll be something good.



PS. If you’d like to share your Cruel, Sadistic Operating Instructions, hit reply.  Confidentiality guaranteed. You can also tell me what you’ll do with those damn stilettos. I’d love to know!

PPS. If you’d like to explore your operating instructions together, I offer a no-cost, no-obligation Clarity Call.   

PPPS. Thoughtwork is an integral component of Being Embodied, my intensive coaching program. I’ve offered Being Embodied in a private format for two years. I’m excited to announce that I’m offering it as a group program for the first time, starting on April 19th. More information will be coming next week!

My weekly-ish newsletter is where I share my latest writing, offerings, and news. You can subscribe here, and thank you! 

Photo credit: Amazon. 


   

 

Are the Himalayas Far?

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Climber asking high-heeled woman in bar to go to the Himalayas. She responds, "Well, thank you, I'd love to. Are the Himalayas far?"

It’s 1983. I’m sitting behind our apartment in Tucson, the desert sunlight dappling down through pomegranates, creosote, and a grapefruit tree, doing homework from my University of Arizona post-bachelor’s teacher prep program. I’m 25 years old.
 
My husband joins me and says, “I’m thinking about starting the ordination process.”
 
“Oh. Okay,” I say. I remember feeling excited about a new adventure, and happy to go along for the ride.   
 
“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”
 
Jed’s vocation has taken me places I never would have landed otherwise. Four years of seminary. Two babies. Six cities and five states—Massachusetts, New Mexico, Missouri, Illinois, and Oregon. Twelve houses. Nine jobs (for me).
 
I have friends all over the US, and a few in Europe. I’ve had a unique perspective on Church in action, both good and bad. I’ve enjoyed the benefits of Jed’s sabbaticals: England and Ireland, Iona, the Camino de Santiago.
 
This life has also been costly. 25-year-old Barb had no idea what she was saying yes to.
 
I’ve been doing this clergy spouse thing in one form or another for forty years, since the day Jed told me he wanted to pursue ordination as an Episcopal priest.
 
 “Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”
 
Jed recently announced that he’s retiring this summer. (Trinity, Bend readers: You’re awesome! I love you so much.)
 
We’ve been anticipating his retirement for years, imagining what it might be like and what we might do.
 
But now that it’s here, I’m noticing a part of me hanging on for dear life, resisting the upcoming seismic shift. As costly, painful, crazy-making, and occasionally lonely as these decades have been, this is the life and the marriage I know. This is the life I’ve conformed myself around. This is the life I’ve cut off pieces of myself to fit into.
 
Two primary threads weave this web of resistance, I think: my relationship to change, and the difference between soul and façade.

First, change.
We’ve all been doing this change thing since puberty, really. Followed by leaving home for the first time. Graduating from college. Committing to a life partner, and maybe deciding to become parents. These celebratory changes in the first half of life are then followed by a smorgasbord of the more complicated changes: Divorces. Serious Illness. Retirements. Big moves. Deaths.  
 
Just because we’ve been doing the “Change Cha-Cha” for our entire lives doesn’t mean we know how to do it well. 

Marriages, births, divorces, deaths, retirements, serious illnesses, big moves—they’re all Square One dissolution events. 
 
Wayfinder Life Coaches learn this mantra for Square One: “I don’t know what the hell is going to happen … and that’s okay.” I’m changing this to: “I don’t know what the hell is going to happen … and I’m okay.” 
 
To complicate matters, Jed and I have also got our feet in Square Two, as we begin to imagine concretely what these actual bodies of ours will do beginning in August. The Square Two mantra? “There are no rules … and that’s okay.” Modifying again: “There are no rules … and I’m okay.”
 
I’m also grappling with the loss that accompanies change. We’ll be leaving a community that is dear to us. Places that are dear to us. And people that are dear to us.
 
 
Underneath those obvious losses is a more subtle, sneaky thing poking my heart. I can’t tend to this sneaky thing until I see it. And to see it, I’ve had to sit still for a long time, look within, and listen to myself.
 
Which brings me to Soul and Façade:
That part of me that’s hanging on, asking for attention and poking me until I listen? It’s that social self I’ve constructed over more than six decades, buttressed by being “the rector’s wife” for so many years. It’s my façade, feeling itself in danger, clinging desperately for survival.
 
Social Self, False Self, Ego, Façade, Cultural Self—all are labels for the same necessary part of ourselves: the part we show to the world in order to get through our days. This façade, first formed in infancy and childhood, is continually refined throughout our first four or five decades. Finally, hopefully, we begin to let go of that false front in midlife, when it gets too damn heavy to carry around. If we do the work.
 
For so many years, it was just easier to be who I was expected to be than to seek for the pure strength of my Soul within me. And, of course, as kids we don’t have the option to say, “Screw you and your bullshit cultural rules. I’m gonna be ME!” We must figure out what behaviors will keep us alive, and those behaviors get wired in.
 
For the first time in our adult lives, Jed and I can let those roles drop away. We can be whoever we want to be, individually and together. Oh, the freedom of that! And the anxiety. We’re a little “deer in the headlights” right now. When those roles drop away, we’ll be vulnerable and naked. And new.
 
Who will I be?

Who will he be?

Who will we be?
 
“Well, thank you, I’d love to. Are the Himalayas far?”

Here’s what’s helping me to stay over my feet right now, this minute:
 
1. I’m remembering that the Change Cycle is baked into our Earthling DNA. Death and rebirth, over and over and over, is what life on Earth is all about. Even rocks get into it. Resistance is futile. I have the tools to ride this wheel. I have understanding. I have my mantras. I’m okay.
 
2. I’m intentionally discerning who’s speaking, who’s running the show. Is it my Social Self/False Self/Façade? Or is it my Soul? The façade part of me is scared shitless, really worried about doing this right, and bracing herself against all the impending loss. My Soul, however, when I get down to her, is peaceful, connected, and not the least bit worried. So I’m spending a lot of time being quiet and listening.
 
3. I’m paying attention to what feels good in my body. My body came into this world knowing what’s true for me. She still does. I simply need to use my skills, pay attention, and trust her guidance. Staying present and connected feels good. Worrying does not. 
 
(These skills—Embodiment, Soul-based Living, and Skillful Change—are components of my Coaching Intensive program.)
 
What does this mean for my coaching practice? I feel comfortable committing to this work through June. After that, who knows? Not me. So if you’re feeling the nudge for private coaching, now is the time to connect for a Clarity Call.
 
I’m also creating a three-month Group Coaching Intensive to begin in March. Details to come! If you’d like more information about that, let me know.
 
Ooof! This is a long one. Thank you for hanging in with me!
 
Gratefully yours,
Barb

P.S. This is the blog version of my weekly-ish newsletter. That’s where I share my latest writing, news, and coaching offerings. You can subscribe here, and thank you! 

Image: New Yorker cartoon, by Robert Weber 

Complaining? Maybe try creating instead.

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Six hand-painted letters spelling "create"

When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness. ~Eckhart Tolle

This annoying piece of wisdom from Eckhart Tolle reminds me of the opening lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

I’ve seen so many references these last two weeks to 2021 (and 2020) as “dumpster fires” and “shit storms.” Yet these are the years of our lives. We will never get them back. We can never have them be different than they have been. All we can do is live as well as we can, moment by precious moment.

Yes, these years have been painful. We feel grief for what we’ve lost. We feel anger toward those who refuse to do what they can to keep our communities safe. We feel afraid of the next variant, the next school closure, the next eruption of rage in Costco.

What we don’t have to feel is the malaise and ennui of suffering and stuckness. Suffering and stuckness result from thinking things should be different, by God, from how they actually are. {Shakes fist at sky.}

So many changes in our lives come unbidden and unwanted. People get sick. People die. People leave. People refuse to change and we have to leave. We change and we have to leave. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about those unbidden changes but accept them and move on.

Acceptance can take time. Years sometimes. Even decades.

Complaining is an outward manifestation of internal suffering. Unlike pain, suffering isn’t inevitable. It’s optional. It’s a choice. That’s why Eckhart Tolle’s wisdom is so annoying to me. Complaining, although it might feel comfortable and familiar in the moment, does absolutely no good and only delays the healing ushered in by acceptance.

So why do we do it? I don’t know about you, but I complain because sometimes I want to be a victim, at least in the short term. When I’m being a victim, I don’t have to take responsibility for adulting—for running situations through the filter—for asking myself if this thing that’s cropped up requires serenity to accept or courage to change. I can just point fingers at others and not look at myself. I can make other people or the world wrong and myself right. That’s so much easier. Self-righteous complaining feels so comfortable.  

But being a long term victim gets old, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

Life as Earthlings is change. Change follows a predictable pattern, and we do best when we allow it to have its way with us. Change, accepted and absorbed, is holy. Resisting change only causes suffering.

If this resonates, you could choose to notice complaining, your own and other people’s, in 2022. You don’t have to stop, or ask others to stop. Just notice with kindness. Maybe be willing to ask yourself what you’re gaining from complaining. Or think you’re gaining. Because I promise you that whatever you think you’re getting from complaining, you’re not actually getting it. All you’re getting is the false peace of a short-term pressure release, not a reality-based long-term solution ushering in healing and growth.

It wasn’t 2021’s fault that we’re feeling angry, afraid, and sad. It wasn’t 2020’s fault. It won’t be 2022’s fault. It’s just reality. The sooner we face this new reality, accept responsibility for our responses, and grieve our losses, the sooner we’ll be able to access our creativity and live our precious lives well.

Complaining makes you a victim. Creating is the opposite of being a victim. Instead of complaining, maybe choose to create instead.

You create your life with the choices you make.

Live well, one choice at a time. Moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, and year by year.

Happy 2022!


PS. I have four openings in my Coaching Intensive “Spring Semester” starting in February. Reply to this newsletter if you’re interested in the possibility of diving deeply together for twelve weeks, and I’ll send you next steps.

PPS. I’m breaking all the writing advice and working on two books: the continuation of Martha’s story begun in Lost and Found, and a workbook based on my Coaching Intensive. Stay tuned!

PPPS. This newsletter will be monthly starting with this issue. I’ll write more frequently when I have news to share.

PPPPS. Artist and teacher Connie Solera’s new year-long program, Monopalette, is now open. It’s free and you can join anytime. Every month is devoted to exploring one color. (January’s color is Prussian Blue.) Connie’s Paint Wisdom Studio is delicious nourishment for my artist’s soul, and it might be for yours, too.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Loosen your unworthiness habit.

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Girl in field of daisies: You are holy. You are perfect. You are beloved. You are safe.

“I hope she always looks at herself like that … “ This is my friend’s wish for her four-year-old daughter. Her photo shows her daughter looking in the mirror, admiring her new French braid, and she’s simply ecstatic with herself.

We all used to look in the mirror like that. When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and were completely satisfied, even ecstatic, with the woman looking back?

What happened?

What happened is culture, family, church, school, patriarchy. We’ve been told so many lies about women’s worth – our bodies, our voices, our places. We absorb them from birth, if not before. They’re in the air we breathe.

I spent three days last week in a quarterly retreat with 65 other mostly women entrepreneurs. We were asked to reflect on our biggest obstacle. Hands down the biggest obstacle was that we were “playing small.”

Why? Because we’re afraid that if we go big, get visible, and say exactly what we mean, we won’t be safe. Here’s what I wrote: “I believe that the real me is unlovable. So I have to send out fake me to fool everyone with my perfect façade. Staying small and fuzzy keeps me safe, and I have to feel safe at all times.”

I know that none of this is true. Yet my default pattern when I’m about to say something that I think someone might not like is to freak out and silence myself in advance. I default to “I have to prove that I’m lovable. And being lovable means no one will ever get mad at me and everything will always go smoothly.” 

Ownership of ourselves comes after awareness of our patterns. I’m noticing this pattern, finally, and dismantling the thoughts that make me suffer. Because they’re lies.

You heal this oh-so-painful pattern by gradually, one-by-one, relieving yourself of the weight of those lies. Your belief in your belovedness is down there, underneath all the garbage. Beloved shiny you, the you who looks in the mirror ecstatically, will rise up, expand, and gradually take her rightful place as you lift off the garbage piece by piece.

How to lift off the garbage? Here are a few suggestions, in order of time commitment required.

High Five Habit: Basically all you do here is look yourself in the mirror and give yourself a high-five. For more, check out Kara’s Unf*ck Your Brain episode with Mel Robbins.

RAIN: Dr. Tara Brach’s four-step process for becoming aware of what’s going on with us and giving ourselves kind regard. 

Awareness Wheel: A simple tool for self-awareness. 

Thought Work: Dismantle those lies through gentle, self-compassionate inquiry. 

And finally, find a photo of yourself as a child, frame it nicely if you want, and put it where you’ll see it all the time. Ask yourself if that kid is unworthy. Does she need to prove her belovedness? Would you let anyone else tell her she’s not okay just as she is?

Our habits of unworthiness are based on false beliefs.

There is no lasting safety in playing small.

There is no true joy in smooshing ourselves into little appropriate boxes.

Making our belovedness dependent on how others treat us only leaves us bereft of our own kindness and compassionate self-regard.   
 
We’re still the beautiful beings we were when we were babies, toddlers, and four-year-olds, before we started to believe the hurtful lies. Beloved, your belovedness is a given. Your belovedness hasn’t gone anywhere. Your belovedness is within you, waiting for you to remember.

Who do you think you are? How do you treat yourself? These are ultimately theological questions, deeply related to our conceptions of Being and our place in the cosmos.

Want to go deeper? Contact me for a free no-strings-attached conversation.

PS. Happy holidays and happy New Year! I’ll see you in January, beloveds. 

Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash

How to use the holidays to grow your self-awareness.

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The Journey is On
Wheels help you go where you want to go faster.

The Way Out is a book about healing chronic pain, written by Alan Gordon. Gordon says the process he teaches is best used when you’re in pain. (Highly recommend, BTW.) He wants you in pain, but not too much pain.

The same is true for working with your emotional pain and suffering. You want to be in your pain enough that it’s easy to notice and feel, but not so much that you’re incapacitated. So, the holiday season might be just the ticket for unraveling an emotional knot or two. Thanks, holidays!

If you want to use these day to gain a little more self-knowledge, do I have a tool for you! The Awareness Wheel, mentioned in last week’s newsletter, is the best tool I know for noticing thoughts that cause suffering.

A holiday gift: my first video on my brand new YouTube channel. Download your blank Awareness Wheel here, then come join me as we work through it together on this 15-minute video. Thank you in advance for your gracious hospitality as I figure out how to do this. (I didn’t realize how often I coach with my eyes closed!)

Wheel by wheel, you can begin to unravel the gnarly clusterf*cks (technical coachy jargon) that cause you to suffer. Awareness is the ground of healing. Awareness is crucial. Awareness doesn’t obligate you to change anything. You can practice awareness without ownership, but you can’t practice ownership without awareness.

Wheels help you go places faster and more efficiently. As always, I’m here for a free, no-strings-attached Clarity Call.

Happy holidays, dear readers. Thank you for being here. I am deeply grateful. 

PS. We’ll focus on Awareness Wheels during our December Community Conversation. Join me on Saturday, December 18th at 9:00 am Pacific to work through one together. I’ll send the link in next Thursday’s newsletter and again the morning of. You can subscribe here.

PPS. As a perfectionist in recovery, it’s hard for me to post this video when I see so much I could have done better. This is spur of the moment, completely unedited. And, I’m doing it anyway! Maybe I’ll do a wheel on the need to be perfect. I hope you enjoy it, and that you find it useful.

Photo by Maxime Horlaville on Unsplash

Four shifts to heal your life.

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Sun shining through fingers

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But making the shifts without the foundations is like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here if this was forwarded to you.)

Shift #1: More soul, less façade. Explore the difference between your essential self and your social self. We all have both, and we all need both. Learn which one is in the driver’s seat, and how to change drivers if you choose to.

Many writers and thinkers have explored this core concept, often using different labels for these two parts of ourselves. Other names for “Soul” include Nature, Essential Self, Heart, True Self, and Must. Other names for “Façade” include culture, false self, space suit self, and should.

A couple of ways to begin to work with soul and façade:
1. Ask yourself these questions: What do you do because you should? What do you do just because you want to? What’s the payoff in doing things you don’t want to do but you believe you should? What’s the proportion of “should” vs “want to”? Are you happy with this?

2. If you played with last week’s “If God is … then I am … and my soul is ….” exercise, ask yourself what the opposite is. Is this a good metaphor for your façade?
Example: If God is an infinite underground river of living water, then I am a spring, and my soul is the place in the Earth where water emerges. The opposite of this could be something like “I am a Costco parking lot. I keep water from moving freely through the earth underneath me.” This feels like a good metaphor for façade to me, because wildness erupts when water is free to flow where it wants to go. So then I would ask myself where I’m hard and unyielding, stopping up living water.


Shift #2: More acceptance, less resistance. Explore your beliefs about the inevitable changes of being alive. To live is to change. Much of our suffering comes from misunderstanding and resisting change.

Change is a feature of this human life, not a bug. Because to live is to change, we have infinite chances to begin again, over and over. Every loss leads to new life. Where are you resisting change? Do you have losses to grieve? Thoughts about change to disbelieve?

Here are two blog posts from the archive for exploring this core concept further.
Seven things I wish I’d known about change fifty years ago.
Change and Covid.  (Written early in the pandemic, when we didn’t know what the hell was happening.)



Shift #3: More intention, less reaction. Explore how your thoughts cause your feelings, not the other way around. This is good news, because you can learn to choose your thoughts.

Learning to hear and question the thoughts that precede your feelings is the work of a lifetime. And it’s so worth it. When we’re in charge of our brain, we can choose thoughts that make us happier, healthier, and more whole. It’s that simple.

The most powerful tool I know to start hearing your thoughts is the Awareness Wheel. Remember, if a thought causes suffering, it isn’t true.  

Post from the archives: Thoughts create feelings. Feelings motivate actions. Actions determine results. Your results become your life.
If you want more of my writing about the Change Cycle, there’s lots. Just search “change” on the top right corner of the blog. 

Shift #4: More creator, less victim. Explore the victim triangle and the empowerment dynamic. Create the life you want, instead of passively settling for the life you have.

To what are you acquiescing? To what do you aspire? That’s all you really need to notice. Then ask yourself Dr. Edith Eger’s Four Questions:
1. What do you want?
2. Who wants it? (You, someone else, the culture, etc.?)
3. What are you going to do about it?
4. When?

Blog post from the archives: This will change your life. I’m not kidding. 


PS. We’re approaching the Winter Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere. I love this time of year, not because of holiday energy but because of the growing dark. Despite the frantic nature of holiday preparations all around, this growing dark feels to me like a time for letting go. A time to embrace emptiness, silence, and waiting.

I’ve been doing this work for ten years now. I feel a new thing wanting to emerge, and I want to honor that feeling. So I’m trusting the cycle and letting go of my coaching practice as currently constituted. My surgery and subsequent newsletter hiatus created a lull in my client roster, so this is a perfect time. 

I don’t know what my coaching work will look like going forward. I have a hunch I’ll be writing and offering classes, workshops, and retreats. I’ll be organizing ten years worth of blog posts into categories and putting them under a coaching tab on my website as PDFs. I’ll continue to writing books, both fiction and nonfiction. I’ll continue to send this email as I have news and writing to share. Probably. What I do know is that I love this work, and I want to honor my soul’s mysterious “musts.” I also know that new life grows in the dark, and emerges on its own time. 

So much change happens in the dark. I’m wishing you abundant blessings of this dark time and the return of the light, and I look forward to connecting in the new year.
What does it mean that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?  ~Mary Oliver

Photo credit: Natalie Rhea Rigg on Unsplash

Foundation #3: Ownership

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Sun shining through fingers

Foundation #3: Ownership. Your theology is the matrix in which healing happens. Examine your theology. Deconstruct and reconstruct as you choose.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. ~Mary Oliver

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But making the shifts without the foundations is like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here.)

First, a caveat:
I write these newsletters as the “me” who knows these things I write. I am still also the “me” who forgets them. I am still also the “me” who commits to this open-ended soul pilgrimage, gets scared, and returns to the safety of culture’s prescribed path. I commit to my journey, lose my way, and then find my way back to commitment, over and over and over. This seems to be how it works for most of us. Deep change takes time, usually. Time, and continuous recommitment.   

An audacious statement:
Theology should not hurt. Theological beliefs that cause pain aren’t true. It’s that simple. If a belief or a system of beliefs hurts, let it go and choose holier, healthier, more whole beliefs instead.

You get to do this.
You are a theologian. We are all theologians, whether we want to be or not. Many of us are passive theologians—taking what we’ve been told as the gospel truth, whether these beliefs about God*, creation, and our place in the cosmos cause harm or not.

When you’re more bodyful and mindful, you become aware of what hurts. You become aware of forces and ideas you may have endured for decades, believing you had no choice. After all, you’ve been taught, implicitly or explicitly, that theology is done by other people—more qualified, authoritative, male people.

Dr. Diana Butler Bass (author of Freeing Jesus, most recently) describes a moment in graduate school when another student referred to a woman author as a “theologian.” Diana’s male professor corrected them: “Women don’t write theology. Women write memoir.” (Or self-help.)

You get to choose your beliefs. If the theology implanted in your brain before you had the capacity to think about it critically works for you, rock on! If not, it’s your calling and your responsibility to create new theological pathways for yourself, and possibly for others.

These beliefs might be hurting you:

  • God* is male, therefore maleness is superior. Maleness is superior, therefore God* is male.
  • Bodies are bad, especially female bodies.
  • Earth and earthly things are profane.
  • My sexuality is dangerous, must be controlled, and is to be expressed only in the context of heterosexual marriage, if then.
  • One marriage only.
  • Religion is about following rules, being good, and getting to heaven.
  • Sin is breaking rules.
  • Jesus died for my sins.

Some alternatives to try on:

  • God* is love. God* is in everything and every thing is in God*.
  • All bodies are holy.
  • Earth, the body of God*, is sacred. There is no such thing as “profane.”
  • Sexuality is a gift to be cherished, explored, and shared if I wish.
  • People change. People grow. Sometimes that change and growth requires leaving a marriage.
  • Religion (the Latin root means to reconnect, retie, realign) is how I outwardly express my inward beliefs. Religion is how I tie myself to the holy.
  • Sin is refusing to heal and be whole. 
  • Jesus’ radical beliefs about human belovedness and the loving heart of God* led him to the cross. His fidelity to his beliefs and his willingness to die for them are what saves.

Some ways to begin:
1. Awareness = bodyfulness + mindfulness. Pay attention to how different thoughts feel in your body. Say a thought out loud or to yourself. What do you notice? What’s going on with your breathing? Your heart rate? Your muscles, especially in your upper body? Your abdomen? Truth feels like freedom. For most of us, freedom feels expansive, light, open, and warm.

2. Remember your experiences of holiness, if you have them.
Ask yourself questions, and listen for your answers.

  • Do I really believe in God*? (Maybe you don’t.)
  • If yes, why?
  • Have I ever experienced the Sacred/More/Holy/Love/God*? (Maybe you haven’t.)
  • If yes, how? Where? When?  

Attend to what you know is true. Truth feels good in your body. Perhaps unsettling, but good. False thoughts and beliefs do not feel good in your body.

3. You could play with this sentence: “If God* is …, then I am …, and my soul is ….” Using my Camino deep womb-like heart experience, I might say “If God is a deep womb-like heart connecting everything, then I am a child of God, and my soul is an umbilical cord.” Here are more examples.

This above all: Trust your knowing. Trust your experience. Your knowing is more valid than beliefs formulated by others, passed along as truth. Stop trying to make yourself believe things you know not to be true. Stop pushing those uncomfortable thoughts of disbelief aside. Believe yourself. Be truthful with yourself. Know what you know, at least internally. Claim your integrity.

If all you know to be true is the sweetness of an apple, or the feel of water on your feet, or the sound of birdsong? That’s okay. That’s real. That’s authentic. Trust yourself. Believe yourself.

Stop cutting off parts of yourself to fit into others’ theological boxes.

This work is too important to delegate. Be your own theologian. Take ownership of your fundamental beliefs.

*** ”God” is a commonly-used name for unknowable, unnamable, animating energy. How does “God” feel to you? If that name feels good, use it if you want to. If not, trust your knowing and use another name, or no name at all.  

 PS. Happy Thanksgiving to my readers in the United States. I’m thankful for each of you. Here are a couple of resources if, in addition to giving thanks, you want to think critically about this day.

To know more about, and perhaps acknowledge, Indigenous people who occupied your home before you, check out this resource. Bend, Oregon, is located in the homelands of the Tenino and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, comprised of Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute people. Members of these Tribes, and others, live here still. 

And here’s a video by Robin Wall Kimmerer about “The Honorable Harvest,” which describes an ethical relationship with plants upon whom we depend. 

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash