Tag Archives: Martha Beck

It’s scary to make changes others don’t like.

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Breaching whale

“The problem with living from your soul is that other people don’t like it.”

Last week I got a little more real about what living from soul rather than façade is looking like for me, boots on the ground. I told you that I’ve quit church, and how my brain is afraid that some of my Episcopal priest husband’s parishioners will be angry with me.

It’s scary to make changes that others don’t like.

So how do we do this hard thing? How do we resist the “change back attacks,” as Martha Beck calls them, that will inevitably follow when we make real change? Change that threatens the status quo. Change that rocks the family boat. Change that makes other people feel judged and defensive.***

Here are some suggestions, most inspired by Martha’s new book, The Way of Integrity.  

1. Remember that your body, being wordless, cannot lie. Imagine staying with the status quo, capitulating to the change back attack. Now imagine living your truth. Which feels better in your body?

2. If living from your soul, living your life based on your truth, feels better, ask yourself: “Why would I make choices that feel bad to me?” Then really listen to your brain’s responses. Question the truth of the thoughts causing you to suffer.

3. Know your values. When the going gets rough, when the grief hits, when loved ones and even strangers tell you to stop it already, know why you’re doing this hard thing. Write those values and put them where you’ll see them often. Make them part of your morning ritual. Do what you need to do to ground yourself in your values.

4. Create a mission statement to remind you of your intention and your values. Short is best. Strive for two or three words.

5. Make 1% shifts toward soul. Small shifts add up over time.

6. You can always choose to maintain the outward status quo. This is a perfectly valid choice. If you choose this course of action, you must always tell yourself the truth. You don’t have to make any outward changes at all, as long as you stop lying to yourself, and you intentionally choose incongruency between inner truth and outer life. Be warned, though. This is a costly choice to make. Incongruence will inevitably drain your energy and affect your wellbeing.  

7. Find your community. Despite your brain’s message that if you make changes others don’t like you’ll die alone on the savannah, your community exists. You find your community when you speak authentically.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks to this phenomenon in Women Who Run With the Wolves when she quotes poet Charles Simic (pronouns changed): “She who cannot howl, will not find her pack.”

And from Sue Monk Kidd, in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, her memoir exploring her spiritual journey from evangelical Christianity (façade) to the sacred feminine (soul):

“The reason I went ahead and wrote this book is difficult to express, so I will try to explain it this way. While I was writing it, a nature show came on television, a special about whales. I watched them on the screen as they flung themselves out of the sea, arced into the air, then fell back into the water. The behavior, the narrator said, is called breaching. He also said it may be the whales’ way of communicating when the seas get high and wild. He speculated it was a tracking system for rough weather, some kind of urgent and powerful ballet that allowed the whales to follow one another’s vibrations and not get lost. With each lunge, the whales marked their course, letting the others know where they were.

I thought to myself that women must have the whale’s instinct. When we set out on a woman’s journey, we are often swimming a high and unruly sea, and we seem to know that the important thing is to swim together—to send out our vibrations, our stories, so no one gets lost. I realized that writing my book was an act of breaching. I hoped my story might help you find or keep your bearings or encourage you to send out your own vibrations.”  

May we swim together, my sisters. May we show each other the way. May we be courage and inspiration and support for each other as we navigate this wild ocean of soul-based living and loving.

***Your actions, of course, don’t make others feel anything. It’s their thoughts about your actions that cause their feelings. You are not in charge of other people’s feelings. Just so we’re clear.

PS. Have you subscribed to my weekly newsletter? That’s where I’m sharing more about what I’m up to with coaching, writing, and workshops. It’s also where I’m inviting you to tell me what you’d like to hear more about. Come on over!

Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash

More soul. Less façade.

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Girl blowing out candles on a birthday cake

If you want to heal, you must live more from your soul and less from your façade. This is the first of four healing shifts I teach to my coaching clients.

I came face to face with this reality again on our recent Grand Canyon pilgrimage. I saw again, more deeply than before, how my insatiable search for safety after my dad died was driven by my social self. My façade. The part of me that desperately wanted to feel secure, and thought that following the rules and keeping everyone around me happy was the way to do that.

Our façade has many names. Martha Beck calls this part of us, constructed in response to social expectations that begin virtually at birth, our “social self.” Franciscan and prolific author Richard Rohr calls it our “false self.” Jungian James Hollis calls it our “psyche.” Buddhist teacher and psychologist Tara Brach calls it our “spacesuit self.” It’s the part of us that speaks in “should” and “have to.” The part that strives to be nice at all costs.

Our facades will never know peace. Only our souls know peace.

We all have facades. Our facades are necessary. Our social selves keep society’s gears running smoothly. Our social selves help us navigate four-way stops and dentist appointments. Our façade, our social self, the part that looks outside ourselves for direction and approval, has its place.

Maintaining our façade, our social self, requires energy. Façades, because they’re constructed and flimsy like false store fronts in old Western movies, take work to keep up. This is why many of my clients run out of steam in their middle decades. They’ve been working so hard to be who everyone outside themselves expects them to be, that they hit a wall.

The first half of life is often about running around accumulating identities – credentials, careers, achievements. The second half of life is often when we shed this surface stuff, because maintaining it takes energy we just don’t want to expend anymore.

This feeling of running out of steam, of hitting a wall, is commonly known as a “midlife crisis.” It’s when women wake up, look around at the life they’ve created with their choices, and decide to recommit to themselves and their priorities.

What’s the alternative to living from your façade?

Living from your soul. Your soul is sturdy, rooted, and peaceful. Your soul is who you came into this life as. The same teachers listed above also have many names for the soul: “True self.” “Essential self.” “Authentic self.” Your soul says “I want to” and “I yearn for.” Your soul craves real, kind, and good, not nice. 

Parker Palmer calls our soul the “taproot,” the part of us that connects us to what James Hollis calls the Divine Energy. Since my Camino vision of God as a deep Wombish Heart, I imagine my soul as an umbilical cord connecting me to that Divine Energy, my source and nourishment.

Your metaphor for your soul will be personal to you. You may have many metaphors for your soul. I hope you do, because something this foundational is too important to contain with only one label.

How do you know if you’re living from your façade or living from your soul?

They feel different in your body.

When we’re situated in and identified with our social selves, we won’t feel peaceful. When our social selves are driving the bus, we feel graspy. Anxious. Unrooted and ungrounded. And fearful.

Remember a time in your life when you experienced deep peace. What sensations did you feel in your body? That’s your soul’s signature. Hold onto that knowing. 

So what? Why does this matter?

Learning to discern whether you’re living from soul or façade is foundational to healing. When you choose to redirect your precious energy and attention away from maintaining your façade, when you focus instead on relearning the contours of your soul and regaining trust in yourself, you will, inevitably, recommit to your life and your priorities.

When you recommit to your life and your priorities, you bring your authentic, whole, messy self with all her strength, knowledge, and compassion to our shared world.

We don’t need you to be nice. We need you to be who you are, fully and honestly. We need you to bring your gifts to this wild party!

(For a light-hearted cinematic take on this shift, check out “Legally Blonde,” now streaming on Netflix.)

Want to explore this shift more deeply? Contact me to schedule a free, no-strings-attached conversation about coaching together. I’d love to connect! 

For my latest news about coaching, workshops, and pop-up opportunities, subscribe to my newsletter here. While this blog is great, my newsletter is where I go a little deeper into what I’m up to in my coaching practice, and how we can hang out together.

(Photo by Jorge Ibanez on Unsplash)

Breathing like a toddler through COVID-19

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1962, San Diego Zoo
Three-year-old me at the San Diego Zoo

How are your toddler disciplines going? Are you doing things that help you stay here and now?

My own life hasn’t changed all that much, yet waves of fear and grief wash over me unpredictably and I sometimes feel out of control. There’s a lot of that going around.

Panic comes from trying to resist and control what’s uncontrollable: the virus, the future, other people, those waves of grief and anxiety. Remember, this present moment is the only refuge from what we can’t control or predict.

Anchoring into your breath will help you stay present. You always have your breath, as long as you’re alive. And it’s the perfect metaphor for what we need to be about these days: accepting the reality of this present moment and surrendering attempts to control what isn’t ours to control.

Martha Beck, as well as many other mostly Buddhist teachers, teaches this “accept and surrender” meditation. Doing it once will help. Doing it for five minutes will help even more. Doing it for twenty minutes in the morning and again in the evening is ideal. But doing it is the helpful thing. Try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the done.

Ready? Here it is. Sit quietly. With every inhalation, say to yourself, “Accept.” With every exhale, say to yourself, “Surrender.” That’s it. That’s all you need to do. When your mind wanders, as it inevitably will, just gently return to your breath and these two words. This is all you do.

You can embellish if you choose. You can substitute other words. (I find “Let go” fits my brain better than “surrender.”) You can expand the words, maybe saying “I accept this world as it is” on the inbreath and “I surrender control of this world” on the outbreath. Whatever. Just, please, do it. It will help.

Every breath is a little resurrection. You drew your first inbreath when you were born, and your last exhale will be at the moment of your death. Every breath in between birth and death can be an acceptance of this life just as it is, followed by letting go of any attempt to control this amazing gift.

Another suggestion, lifted from Kara Loewentheil, is to write a manifesto or mission statement for yourself. I suggest following the “thoughts create feelings which lead to actions which create results” model. Here’s mine that I just wrote:

I believe that I’m strong enough and flexible enough to handle what comes my way, and I feel courageous in my vulnerability to this present miraculous moment. I will show up compassionately as my true self, rooted in Source, loving and free and available for my family, friends, community, and the world.

When I read this, I feel much more relaxed, present, and creative. Is this a manifesto a toddler would write? I think so! Maybe let your inner toddler help you write yours.

I invite you to share your manifesto in the comments, if you’re feeling brave. And let me know how those toddler disciplines are going!

There are so many generous creators offering resources to help us get through these COVID-19 times. Martha Beck is offering a newly-created course for a special corona rate. Registration is closing April 14th, so check it out if you’re interested. (I don’t get a commission. I just find her work insightful, useful, and fun!)

Change and COVID-19: We’re supposed to feel like toddlers.

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TL,DR: We humans, as members of an always-changing Universe, are subject to repeated cycles of death and rebirth. COVID-19 has pushed us into change. Change follows a predictable pattern. Understanding this pattern helps us ride the “Change Cycle” with more ease and better results. The first phase of the Change Cycle as described by Martha Beck is Square One, characterized by death and rebirth. Your job right now is to let your old pre-Coronavirus identity dissolve. This will probably feel painful and scary, and the pain is made worse by resistance. Care for yourself and others as though you’re in active grief, because you are. We are held in Love as we do this holy work.

The Change Cycle is a foundational component of Wayfinder Life Coach Training. I think it’s a necessary archetypal pattern to understand, especially during times of transition. And boy, howdy, are we in a time of transition right now!  

Everything in the Universe changes. Every single thing. We humans are members of the Universe. So change is built into our DNA, however much we try to deny or resist it. The Change Cycle, as taught by Martha Beck, is initiated by a catalytic event and has four phases.

Here’s a short overview, followed by a deeper dive into Square One.

The Change Cycle: Martha uses the metaphor of a butterfly when describing the Change Cycle.* Imagine a caterpillar melting down in its chrysalis. That’s Square One, the phase of death and rebirth. Square Two, the phase of dreaming and scheming, is when the former caterpillar, now “caterpillar soup,” begins to reform and coalesce as a new creation – a butterfly. Square Three is a Hero’s Journey, when the new butterfly does the hard work of emerging from the chrysalis. This is arduous work for the butterfly, and it can’t be short-circuited. Finally, our caterpillar, after going through a lot of acceptance and hard work, flies freely as a butterfly through Square Four! Square Four, because everything in the Universe is always changing, doesn’t last forever. Along comes another catalytic event, and bam! On to the next Square One! Every time you ride this cycle, you get bigger and wiser and more yourself. Unlike our caterpillar, humans ride the change cycle over and over again until we die, unless we resist it.   

The Change Cycle
Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star, p. 245

Caterpillars naturally enter their metamorphosis. Human beings usually need something to push us into change and transformation, because most of us resist. The catalytic event that pushes us into the Change Cycle may be something we longed for and planned for, like getting married or having a baby. Or it may be something we don’t want and didn’t plan for, like COVID-19.

Deeper into Square One: My friends, we are in a global Square One. This global lockdown accompanied by instant internet news is unprecedented. Coronavirus has forever altered our world. Remember that Square One is characterized by death of old identities. This pandemic has destroyed our identities as people who get to go where we want, do what we want, and control our own destinies.

Square One is painful, and it cannot be rushed. This square is overflowing with grief. Just like your grief when a parent or a spouse or a dear friend dies, this grief simply must have its way with you, and the best course of action is to accept it. As Tara Brach and other Buddhist teachers often say, “Pain x resistance = suffering. Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”

When my mom died, I felt like my world had altered irrevocably. My life had slipped off the rails. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel anything but pain again – joy and happiness seemed like they had fled and would never return. I know you’ve felt this grief, too. You’ve known the deep sadness of missing someone or something so much you’re afraid you’ll never recover.

The only thing to do when you’re grieving is to grieve. Grief can’t be rushed. It can’t be sidestepped. The dissolution of Square One simply has to happen. Just as the caterpillar turns to caterpillar soup, we become “person soup.” We have to let our former identities dissolve when the new identities aren’t yet clear. The imago cells that coalesce to form the new creation will only find each other when the old creation is completely fluid. Completely disaggregated.

This is how this has to go. Death and rebirth is how our world works. It’s the story of winter’s death and the rebirth of spring. It’s sunset and darkness preceding sunrise and a glorious new day. It’s a waning moon followed by a waxing moon becoming full and illuminating the night. This is how this has to go. It’s okay. You’re okay. Let go. Let death have its way with you.

The only way to come out on the other side of this process a realer, bigger, more present and authentic you is to let the Change Cycle have its way.

These days, just like after my mom died, I’m moving more slowly. I’m tired and inefficient. I’m forgetful and a little fuzzy around the edges. I’m craving several hours each day just to be with this new reality. I’m praying, walking, moving my body with love, sitting in meditation, while working harder than I ever have before. I’m being really gentle with myself – creating a cocoon for this metamorphosis. I suggest you do the same. Treat yourself as though you’re in active mourning, because you are. Life as you knew it, before the pandemic, is gone. It will never be like it was. Grieve the loss. Give yourself all the time you need.

If you don’t take all the time you need, if you push through or avoid or try to step off the cycle, you delay rebirth. I know this to be true. After my mom died and after other catalytic events in my life, before I knew about how change works, I resisted, sometimes for years. Resisting the pain caused me to suffer and stay stuck, completely unnecessariy.

How can you tell you’re resisting the death of Square One? Some classic symptoms of resistance are keeping busy all the time, indulging in addictions, numbing, dissociating, avoiding being in your body, obsessing and worrying, and saying things like “Why me?” and “This shouldn’t be happening.”

We’re supposed to feel like toddlers in Square One, not knowing what the hell is going on half the time, and needing lots of naps. If you’re completely bumfuzzled and often tired, you’re doing it right.

If you take all the time you need to dissolve, to grieve, to become “person soup,” one day you’ll feel a lightening of that load, and maybe just a glimmer of hope. You’ll catch a flash of light in the distance. That’s a sign that you’re moving onto the threshold of rebirth. Those holy imago cells swimming inside you are beginning to find each other and coalesce. A new you is beginning to form. And just like the caterpillar, your chrysalis will have done its work. You will be ready to do the hard work of emerging and flying. And we will be amazed by your beauty!

The Change Cycle is a holy cycle. Although you may not feel like it, although you’re hurting, know you’re held in Love as do this holy work. You will be okay. You will emerge from this experience – COVID 19 or any other catalytic event – as a new creation, and you will be okay.

Contact me if you’d like to delve into this further. I’d love to talk. Consultations are offered free of charge and obligation.

*See Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck, Ph.D., for an exhaustive overview of the Change Cycle.

Your feelings are not your problem. Your feelings are your solution.

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My mom was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer when she was 62. By the time it was found, the cancer had metastasized to her lungs, although we didn’t know that right away. The lung cancer would kill her a year later. My mom had been very healthy her whole life. Her plan to live to be 100 was one I heard often as a child. Her cancer was completely unexpected, which was why it was found too late to save her life. I was devastated. Everyone who knew her was devastated.

And she didn’t want to talk about dying.

We were living in Illinois, so I took both my kids, six and ten at the time, to Arizona with me for the summer. In June, the kids and I took a road trip with her to visit her favorite aunt in New Mexico. She went swimming with her grandkids. She took walks with her dog and her husband. She still didn’t want to talk about dying.

In July, my mom was slowing down. By August, I was doing all the cooking and cleaning for her and my stepfather. She had to sleep sitting up because she couldn’t breathe lying down. And she still didn’t want to talk about dying.

We went home to Illinois at the end of August. My mom’s last words to me were her promise that she’d call me when it was time for me to return and say good-bye.

She died September 1st, alone in her bed, never having asked me to come back.

I was heartbroken. I didn’t know I could hurt like that. I was also deeply angry. I was angry that she’d never let me tell her how much I loved her, and that she didn’t let any of us say goodbye. This was no accidental death, like my dad’s. My mom had plenty of advance warning. Hers could have been a much better death. It didn’t have to hurt so much. She could have died surrounded by people who loved her. She was a nurse. She knew how to do this right.

Grieving her death while I was so angry was harder and took a lot longer than it would have if she’d done it better.

I held onto this anger for years. I tried to let it go, but it stuck around. It persisted, despite therapy and many attempts to forgive.

I didn’t know at the time that I was carrying a lot of what the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model calls “dirty pain.” Mixed in with the clean pain of my heart-rending grief was a ton of unnecessary suffering. (The Buddha and many healers since have put it this way: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” In other words, pain comes and goes, as a result of injury or loss. Suffering hangs around, tied like a yoke to the thoughts we’re having about our pain.)

And then one day, almost twenty years after her death, I did something that helped my anger loosen its grasp. I filled out an Awareness Wheel about how much I still missed my mom, as a teaching example for a small group I was facilitating. (Download one here. The rest of this will make much more sense. And here’s a previous post about the Awareness Wheel.) I was encouraging this group of wise women to go deep in their choice of issue to work with. They encouraged me to be brave, too. What follows is verbatim from my Awareness Wheel that day.

 

In the middle, in the Issue circle, I wrote “I miss my mom.”

I Notice/Observed: “Tears, heaviness in chest, avoidance of talking about her, distracting myself, tightness in arms/neck/shoulders.”

I Think: “She shouldn’t have died so young. I wonder how she is. I hope she’s happy. I wish she’d had a better death. I wish I’d been able to say goodbye. She was selfish in her dying. I wish she was still alive. People should have talked about the family history of cancer.”

I Feel: “Sad, furious, love.”

I Want (for myself): “To feel at peace. To have you back. I Want (for you): That you’re happy. I Want (for us): That you know I love and forgive you.”

I Do (Past): “Stuff feelings. Be mad. Grieve.” I Do (Present): “Feel my grief. Acknowledge loss and your impact on my life.”

 

It’s useful simply to fill in a wheel when uncomfortable feelings arrive. It’s even more useful, after you do your wheel, to identify which thought is causing the most suffering. You do this by reading the thoughts you wrote and feeling how they feel in your body. Many of my thoughts were painful, but “She was selfish in her dying” felt like a knife to my gut.

I questioned that thought using Byron Katie’s method called The Work. (More on questioning our painful thoughts next time.) Simply put, through a series of questions, we get very clear on the results our thoughts are producing in our lives. Then, we turn the thought around and kindly investigate how the opposite might be true. This process wiggles the thought loose just a little and begins to grow new brain connections. Healing begins at the cellular level. We feel a little relief, at last.

When I gently investigated my thought “My mom was selfish in her dying,” I began to see how my mom had been generous in her dying. She let me take care of her. She spent time with her grandkids. She was trying to protect us.

When I let go of the thought that she’d been selfish, I can just love her and miss her. I can see that she was doing the best she could with an incredibly scary sad thing. I can see the ways I’d been selfish in her dying, by wanting her to do it my way.

This is how healing has happened, for me. I still miss my mom, of course, and letting go of my anger is ongoing. Now, though, my grief is mostly good, clean, healing grief. I can tell when it’s mixed up with dirty pain, because they feel different in my body.

Martha Beck has said, “If a thought causes suffering, it isn’t true.” That’s an audacious statement. It’s a core belief of my coaching work, because I’ve found it to be true.

When you pay attention to uncomfortable feelings using an Awareness Wheel, you find the thoughts causing suffering. When you question the thoughts that cause you to suffer, you begin to change your brain. When you begin to change your brain, you heal. And that’s how your feelings aren’t your problem, but your solution.

Interested in talking further about this? Contact me here to schedule a conversation. I’d love to explore with you!