I was experimenting with taking a spontaneous day off: off-line, off-limits, and off my own back.
That day, “doing nothing,” I ended up journaling, resting the cells in my body, forgiving myself for forgetting myself in any way, cradling a part of me who’d suffered disappointments, and not pushing myself to do or be anything.
And when I least expected it, another part of my mind woke up. It felt like the stone had been rolled away from the gate. In the quiet, self-love and creative ideas deluged my mind. I couldn’t write fast enough. I chased the bursts of illumination and ideas that flew at me like a pack of butterflies, and forced my “practical” mind to take a backseat.
Then, later, I even wrote the newsletter for my business, the main task that I’d set aside that day. It was suddenly easy. Everything felt like mind candy. Work that would have taken me hours took minutes and came out better. No, I was not on drugs. But the lack of self-judgment is intoxicating. And if I could bottle this mystical superpower I would.
I felt like Thoreau, who wrote in Walden about his time just being still and in reverie: “I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.”
Checklists, shmecklists. It’s so much more productive to be inspired.
Believe me, I know about inspired space. I work in this realm with others.
I’ve been leading retreats in nurturing, scenic places for years. I am the one who encourages others to let go and trust the process. Participants arrive tired, excited, and some slightly frightened with faces white as goat cheese. I sometimes wonder if they think I am going to make them call their bosses, quit their jobs, and run away with me to follow their bliss—or maybe join a new age circus. Some may be secretly hoping I will.
Naturally the bright-eyed overachievers want to get their money’s worth. They are hoping that in the opening circle I can start giving them exercises to figure out their lives now, before they unpack their luggage. I feel the need pulsing within them to attack the problem at hand. I tell them we are going to spend the weekend relaxing, undoing conditioning, and receiving what is already within. I am setting them up to be guided.
Some look at me with relief in their eyes, as though someone has finally invited them to stop running a decade-long marathon and sit down in the shade, wipe their sweat, and sip lemonade. Others look at me like this better not be a trick. I better get an answer by Sunday, their body postures threaten. And I want to assure them that they will be answered by Sunday. They will receive the juice, resurrection, and clarity they do not even know they crave.
I’m not being arrogant. It’s just that through the years, I have come to trust the wild efficiency of the Universe, which uses these intentional “time out of time” occasions like one of those Japanese chefs at a Benihana restaurant, tossing knives into the air, carving carrots into roses, then handing you sustenance in the wink of an eye. It’s like Anne Lamott writes: “Even a moment’s transcendence changes us.”
I know that emotional safety and relaxation are the most critical ingredients in creating inspired time.
As a facilitator, I am trying to sweet-talk my students into releasing expectations of themselves. I am escorting and training them into radical receptivity. “The more you relax, the more you will receive from this time,” I say. I’m not interested in lecturing their know-it-all brains or their ordinary identities—the surface level of who they really are. I am beckoning the extraordinary within them. I don’t want to ask the most important questions to the least literate part of their brains. I don’t want to engage their tired, angry, habitual selves in a dialogue about joy, meaning, and desire.
I need the daily self to take a nap. I want this self to bathe, to scrub off the layers and veneers of disillusionment, resentment, and toxic self-talk. I am eager to engage their Inspired Self, the one with an unlimited love that lights up memories, inclinations, and clarity. I know that if I can engage this self for even an instant, the real work is done.
Inspired time is indescribable. It’s like skipping steps in a long, cumbersome equation. It’s as though you’re suddenly on the moon, where concrete boots and money issues are weightless; it’s easy to move or to change anything. Believe me, it’s constructive.
And it’s a magic I want to experience as much as possible in my daily life. This is what it means to be productive to me.
Just like my students and everyone else, I have had to understand the rites of the realm.
When I want unpredictable and unprecedented healing and abundance in my life, I know I need to feed myself time and space. Orchids don’t grow in sand. My revelations require the loamy earth of love, space, time, meandering, and permission. So do yours. Some of you might think taking time for yourself is impossible, with kids, jobs, deadlines, making payroll, and dependent relatives. It’s a tough choice to make. Yet an exquisite life requires exquisite choices.
“When I want unpredictable and unprecedented healing and abundance in my life, I know I need to feed myself time and space. Orchids don’t grow in sand.”
I get it. You have so much to do. But that doing may be about sustaining a life that may not be sustaining you. Or you might want to rush the process, take an express train to your expressed life. My clients often want to just “get there” as they traverse the middle of a life that is changing. They do not easily trust the idea of “meandering,” allowing, or resting, though they are gung ho for receiving. “It takes an intermission to find a mission,” I say, then wait for the groan. I also know I’ll hear a sparkling voice when we next speak.
Take some time to consciously do less. Rest. Be. Get yourself to a lake, a park, a beach, some nature if you can. But a flowered couch will do. Let go of self-judgment as it arises. See what wants to happen. You may want to paint or walk or write or cry. Be still. Be moved. Be forgiving. Be curious. Breathe. This is important work to do. It’s the most important work you can do.
TURNING POINTS:
How to Be Unabashedly Alive
Learning how to be unabashedly alive is a very productive goal.
Freedom doesn’t mean you’ll run away to Istanbul or forget to pay the rent. It’s a remembrance, not a forgetting. It’s remembering who you really are.
It’s preconceived ideas about what we “should” be doing that prevent us from listening to our hearts in any given moment.
You might think you’re just being “responsible.” But you have a higher responsibility to listen to the part of you that honors the higher promise of your life. Why would any of us choose a routine instead of a miracle?
We don’t always realize what we’re not getting done by “getting things done.”
When I want unpredictable and unprecedented healing and abundance in my life, I know I need to feed myself time and space. Orchids don’t grow in sand.
An exquisite life requires exquisite choices.
You have so much to do. But that doing may be about sustaining a life that may not be sustaining you.
DROP YOUR DEMANDS, RAISE YOUR POSSIBILITIES
Being overwhelmed does not come from too much to do. It comes from lack of clarity. When you’re clear, you know you don’t need to do everything. You just have to do the right thing. The right thing is always the one step that you feel guided to do right now.
TAMA KIEVES (from A Year Without Fear)
I am working on accepting myself where I am. It’s okay to be someone who is, at times, on fire in her life, and someone who is frightened, paralyzed, and feels broken. I am all of it. And in the end, if the gurus and philosophers are right, I’m sure I’m none of it. But either way, I’m going with it.
TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)
I know I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed at times. While the White Queen in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlan
d says, “Why sometimes I’ve believed at least six impossible things before breakfast,” I believe we’re expected to do at least ten of them now. We’re pelted by the Internet and media. Forget about raising a healthy child. That kid needs to be on America’s Got Talent. Be tweeting by the time she’s seven. Getting ready to leave a legacy.
And when we’re in transition, that squishy, vulnerable place, that’s when expectations swarm like killer bees. The more disempowered we feel, the more desperately we hope to shoot out of the gate like a prodigy or a silver bullet.
Yet these high expectations do not come from abundance. They come from scarcity.
Expectations of scarcity assume that we are not enough the way we are. And that when we achieve more, our value will increase. It’s a setup for failure. Because an inspired life does not come from self-improvement. It comes from self-acceptance and expansion.
Mind you, I want you to feel like you’re moving forward. But I want you to achieve your true goals, your reason-to-be-here goals. With all due respect to your intellect—heart-stopping desires do not come from the head. Your most essential direction comes from love.
I’ve had to continually learn how to let go of my ego’s plans so that my soul’s plans could make their way through to the light. Sometimes everything I think I need to do actually keeps me from the only thing I need to do. The only thing I need to do is to diminish fear. Because when I let go of fear, I feel my light. And when I’m in my light, I know what to do in each moment.
It doesn’t matter what the overwhelm is about. Really, a sense of overwhelm is a dire lack of self-love. I know this turf. I have a graduate degree in overwhelm from Punish Yourself University.
I felt ridiculously tense before launching my second book, Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work!, into the world. I wanted to “make up” for everything I “didn’t do right” in the past, which is the cardinal ingredient in a recipe for disappointment. My mind teemed with tasks. One night, I noticed that even in my yoga class I’m churning with fear.
The teacher guides us into downward dog, and a pack of stray mangy dogs begin yipping in my head. “You’re never going to get everything done,” they bark. “Here you are stretching, when you should be writing stellar convert-to-cash website copy. You’re going to fail big time now.” Then Yoga Dog interrupts, “Shhh, you’re not in the present moment,” and I swear Achievement Dog bites his ear and goes for blood. Namaste, it’s a party to be me.
Later that night I journal about the things I’m thinking I need to do. It is even more sickening in print. I have a new website to design, workshops and online products to create, a book launch campaign, tour and media appearances to schedule, or more accurately, to beg from the powers that be. Each of these projects triggers my sense of inadequacy. There are learning curves I will never master in this time frame, even if I had the desire, which I don’t, which makes me feel like the big fat loser lunkhead my ego tells me I am. Do more, more, more, screams my ego, while also making it abominably clear that even if I pull it off, it will still never be enough.
I feel so behind. I always feel so behind the smart, together, on-top-of-it-all crowd. Basically, I feel like I’m being asked to run up a spiral staircase that leads to an ocean to swim across like I’m in an Ironman competition or something—just to get to the dusty starting point, where everyone else took off so long ago, their grandkids are starting with me. It’s that old Pink Floyd song where I missed the starting gun. Plus, I’m old and know the old Pink Floyd song.
I begin to cry and sort of pray or intend to listen to a higher voice within me, while melting down. Mucus is the prelude to all my miracles, by the way. And when I finally feel my feelings, just cry with helplessness, my inner voice speaks with authority and self-advocacy: “Lower your expectations.” Whoa, this is not my ordinary self-talk. This is a life raft. I am a bit stunned, suspicious, and radically comforted.
Suddenly I remember a therapist from many years ago telling me, “I want you to think about doing less.” Her eyes were wise and bright like a chess master’s. “If the goals are less threatening, you will show up with more joy.” What a concept. Showing up with enjoyment. “You don’t want to work from effort,” she said. “You want to work from effortlessness.” She assured the achievement freak within me that I’d accomplish more in the long run. The woman was smart; she knew who buttered her rolls.
I can only imagine the eye roll I gave her at the time. Yet over time, I grew. The lack of pressure allowed me to breathe and embrace my own rhythm. It was as though sunlight fed my veins. And working from alignment, I experienced real progress. I didn’t achieve my urgent, flustered, maniacal goals, most of which had come from a fearful mind generating an unrealistic wish list. But I moved forward elegantly. I also discovered this lesson: Simplicity encourages mastery.
I remembered this experience as I approached creating a new website for my book and more. “Lower your expectations,” reiterates the sane voice in my mind. “Design the website adequately. Pick one section and do what you can. You can improve it later. Choose a simple target. Don’t try to do everything at once, or maybe ever. Give yourself time to grow or express in stages. Drop your demands. Raise your possibilities.”
“Sometimes everything I think I need to do actually keeps me from the only thing I need to do. The only thing I need to do is to diminish fear.”
That night I journaled: “Fear will never take you where you want to go. You cannot be afraid and soar at the same time. You will not hear the bell ring inside of you, the place where you are whole and all is well and everything comes together—the only success there is on this planet. You will not remember your true name when you’re anxious. And if you don’t remember who you really are, you cannot express your full potential. Flying is the path of undoing fear, not increasing it.”
I have to say, this wisdom was better than a thousand downward-facing dogs.
I want you to give yourself permission to not catch up, to not blog, to not eat vegan this week, to not please your boss, your needy sister, or your narcissistic father. Or maybe to acquiesce to a humbled, tired body. What would be unthinkable to you? Unforgivable? This is the part of you that requires acceptance and love. Yes, I get it. You’d rather bake cookies for Hitler. But what you cannot allow yourself to be holds you back from being everything you want to be.
This is what the Buddhists call attachment, a form or condition you think you need more than freedom. I’m not asking you to give up what’s important to you. I’m asking you to give up the idea that you have to do these things to be okay. I’m talking about moving forward toward your desires, while feeling good enough no matter what. Otherwise, your expectations aren’t just “standards”; they’re conditions on self-love. And when you limit your self-love, you limit your spirit’s oxygen.
Give yourself permission to be—acceptable, blessed, and unstoppable—no matter what. Unconditional acceptance pulls the plug on anxiety. This is better than an elephant tranquilizer, friends. It is this acceptance that allows you to breathe when everything is changing or nothing is changing and it seems you lack control. It stops you from fighting yourself and draining the life out of your life. This acceptance is divine, and emboldens you to show up as much as you can, instead of focusing on what you haven’t done.
The world is asking you to run faster. I’m asking you to breathe slower. I’m asking you to be truly great, by allowing yourself to do less than what you think you have to do to be great. Allow yourself to be led instead of threatened. This is the beginning of effortless accomplishment.
I see this wildness in my clients, a desperation to get things done. I know their healing comes from undoing the old programming that has them wanting certain results at the cost of attaining other results, inner shifts that may be far more important. Of course, I’d never ask you to let go of your dreams. I am asking you to let go of your idea of how you
need to get there.
Life is more expansive than your constructs or timelines. Soften your expectations, and allow the freed-up energy to surprise you with support. Don’t ever give up desires; give up your scarcity thinking and need. Really, I am asking you to give up reasons for withholding love from yourself.
Nothing you think you need will give you the freedom you already have within you but deny yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Start anywhere. Do what you can and allow this to be enough. Follow what makes your heart feel full, not what alleviates a sense of guilt—because guilt does not belong in the equation of radical freedom. You are never failing by being who and where you are.
If you think you’re behind the eight ball, you’ll always be behind the eight ball. Yet there is no eight ball. There is no behind. There is now. Do you want to go forward? Take the most easeful action possible. This is not complacency. This is agency.
I’ve always been afraid of “settling” by being less than I could be—but now I think it is a form of settling to succeed, if you do it in ways that exhaust or emotionally bankrupt you. I’m finally realizing this, late in the game: Striving is settling, at least for people like me. Being driven by unconscious ambition isn’t, as I’ve imagined before, being someone who refuses to accept less. It’s being someone who always accepts less—because it’s aiming for the achievement of my smaller self, which is far less than I am meant to be.
I am meant to succeed through wild love, not fear. I am meant to take inspired direction, not control every detail and pound out results. I am meant to fly, be lifted by something dynamic and true, not to crawl and fight for every crumb. I don’t want to succeed because I’m a superior monkey who can jump through more hoops while still living in chains. I want to succeed because I’m free of chains, free of guilt, and trusting in a higher power, the power we all have when we’re listening.
Thriving Through Uncertainty Page 14