I’m in that betwixt-between place that I often find myself after creating a retreat with 40 remarkable, sparkling, kick-ass courageous women.
These mini-retreats are so good - I shiver with awe at the aha’s that pop and sizzle around the room- and for me, they are a bit frustrating, because they are only one day. I want to keep going! I want to keep learning together!
Strength and Weakness – The Thin Line
One of my strength is loving. I love to love. It strengthens me. But love can pass over the thin line into grasping. I feel that when I finish a mini-retreat. I want to hold on.
Do you see a pattern?
Momentum = strength
Doing too much for too long = zap
Tenacity + persistence = strength
Inability to let go = zap
Eye/ear for detail= strength
Perfectionism so nothing gets started or finished or enjoyed–zap
Sensitivity= strength
Princess and the Pea = zap
Creative/ing=strength
Must Be Productive at All Moments = zap
Thanks for these brilliant strength/weakness comparisons from Fabeku, Living Savvy and Carol from the Strengths post.
The pattern I see in myself and my friends and readers?
What strengthens you can become what weakens you when you don’t know what enough is.
Your strengths need a container, a form, something to work within.
In my call with Mark Silver last week, Mark talked about how you have a path in life. Your strengths help you recognize your path. But having a path in life does not mean you will automatically follow it. You need help staying with it. Mark used the metaphor of wire tomato plant cages, the kind you use to hold up your very abundant but floppy tomato plants.
The cages support your tomato plants to grow to their full potential.
Conditions of enoughness do for your strengths what the cage does for the tomato plant.
COE’s give you rails for your path, something to bump up against, to lean on, to resist even. A way to know where you are.
Without COE’s, I’ve seen so many wondrously talented loving people’s desires disspate into resentment and resignation.
Back to Love
I’m feeling twitchy today because I forgot to set COE’s for myself for the Ohio retreat. I forgot because what should have taken 1 hour of travel time took 11, plus no luggage, plus the giant yuck of dealing with an incredibly rude and resigned United airlines. (At least, it is fun to blame somebody.)
But without my own COE’s, my strength of love slinks over into whining and grasping, and then can turn on me, “Did you really do a good job? Did you really help those women? Is this really the work you should be doing in the world?”
Without COE’s, your strengths cannot help you shape the life you want – or see the good life you already have.
So this is new understanding about COE’s and strengths is very exciting to me because I’ve been musing on enoughness as a key piece to a good life for years and writing about it and I’m almost ready to share what I wrote. Maybe tomorrow. To get a first dibs on my new book/video/kit thing, please get on my newsletter list today.
But for now, I’m just grinning and grinning at how knowing what is enough can help you stay with your strengths and your life’s path. Can help you feel free and full and alive. Can help you know your unstainable goodness again.
What do you think? As always, I’d love love love to hear.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Lissa Boles May 10, 2010
Delicious – and so, so true. The bumper-rails of my path do help me help myself stay true WHEN I recognize them and don’t fight them or make myself wrong for their being there.
We have some weird and whacked-out ideas about ‘resistance’ don’t you find?
Where things sometimes get hard for me is when I’m discovering (for the first time, at least consciously!) a new strength – or the edge of the next development of a strength – and I’m in new-territory/baby-step mode. Scary and plops me out of trust as fast as I can blink. When I remember to trust, the love’s there and I respect and move within the boundaries along my path.
Craziest thing? That caring for myself – and staying in my strengths – is a changing thing from day to day. Oh, there’s some some solid consistencies down the middle of it, but it’s never the same two days in a row (or two hours in a row!) which necessitates staying in touch with myself, my heart and my strengths. Funny how that carrot-thing works, ain’ it?
P.S. Your writing these last few weeks has been particularly yummy.
2 Jennifer May 10, 2010
Thanks Lissa – your writing and reflections are always deep and true and yummy.
3 Susan Gallacher-Turner May 10, 2010
I love this idea …containers of enoughness…but not sure I understand what that means.
What example do you and others have?
I know with every fiber of my being that my creative tomato plant needs support, but wouldn’t a cage inhibit its growth?
Funny thing, for my new sculpture series to go outside in the garden, guess what I used for support? Yup. Tomato cages.
4 Mark Silver May 10, 2010
I finally got to read this, Jen. I love the COE=tomato cage thingamoodle. I want to read more from you about the COEs. It feels like a real breakthrough idea for me.
5 Danielle LaPorte May 10, 2010
COE’s = my new thing.
thank you!
xo
6 Renee Michelle May 10, 2010
I am also in a “betwixt” place. I Love that word. It fits my place, although I did not come home from a retreat…
Loving to LOve. You “love to love”, as do I. That crazy Love force which fuels many of us, yet equally causes pain?!? There appears to be a thin line separating the correct balance for loving and living ?!?
The pattern analogies you list are brilliant, and so helpful to keep in mind. Thank you
~ Renee (micheamustro)
7 Juli May 10, 2010
Jen,
I teach a creativity in business course and in it I always speak of one needing a container in which to create. Just as in any art project there is a container, in anything in life we need a container. Without one we either have chaos or not enough room for our creativity to ignite.
I really like how you speak of them here, especially with regard to perfectionism.
Thank you for a great article.
Julie
8 Marcia Francois May 13, 2010
Oh, I love this post! Love it!
I have a HUGE problem with letting go. I actually wrote a blog just tonight (it will only publish next week sometime) about how I’m self-coaching and training myself to let go.
I started with something teeny-tiny – a diary (planner) that’s no longer working for me.