Fankle 1#

You know how sometimes you are ready to pop – to leave the old stuck encrusted place and get your love going? I coach ready-to-pop people and last week I coached Lisa Sonora Beam and she is popping and flying and you can benefit.

Introducing her Creative Entrepreneur Strategy Sessions

You want a systematic, doable, step-by-step plan to develop a very healthy relationship with your creative process and your business, so you can follow your bliss? Hello! Of course you do.

Lisa, I’m dancing with you!

Fankle 2#

Thanks to Claire for this:

I read the phrase “Satisfaction Finder and I’ve never read anything which resonated more!  I love it!  It’s so simple, and it’s where its grace lies – little by little, small step by small step.  Thank you Jen, for reminding us that we are “enough”!

And Vicki,  your Comfort Cafe post made me grin and grin,

I’m already am beginning to feel happier.  I don’t have to do it all, and I certainly don’t have to do it all right now!!  That realization was HUGE for me.  Thank you, Jen!”

It’s only been two weeks and the kit is flying out the door – 121 sold as of 5/25/10 – but you know what really makes me hop and twirl and leap around my studio? Your life is no longer spilling away while you fret about what is enough or what to choose or how to feel good about what you are doing!

I talked to a coaching client yesterday who bought the bonus package (I think there is one session left) and she had all these great insights from reading The Satisfaction Finder, and we spent the hour working on her freedom to want what she wants, to do the things that get her excited, for the love of it.

Her courage and insight and resolve took my breath away.

In the end, that’s the coolest thing about knowing how to find satisfaction –  you get to declare happiness for yourself.

Fankle #3

Havi is my guest teacher again this year The Luscious, Nurturing Get Your Writing Done While Laughing Your Butt Off and Maybe Crying a little Too Writer’s Retreat which is the best thing ever. I love doing Shiva Nata with her and her wisdom brings an extra lovely shine of learning and permission to the retreat.

Havi’s doing this sweet small thing, opening her own yoga studio, in Portland, OR. She needs help. So get some of her groovy stuff so she can get a floor installed so I can drive down and do Shiva Nata with her and then hang out with Mark and Charlie and maybe finally meet Chris and Jolie, then go down to Salem and hug Naseem.

Fankle #4

Speaking of Naseem, she has written the best novel I have read in years. It is the perfect book club book, the perfect book to read with your family this summer - oh my god, read this with your family – that would be so brilliant! She is my new friend and I love her. But her writing? It will change you so deeply and call you out of the cave of your heart to love even more.

Fankle #5

Pace and Kyeli are hosting this incredibly well organized, deeply amazing World Changing Writing Workshop with the wisest bloggers and writers teaching… and me. If you write, you must check it out.

What’s your wiry fankle? Tell me what’s up in your world, what you are excited about, I’d love to hear!

Choose Your Life Monday is an invitation to name what pattern you will lovingly notice this week and to do so in community. Join in when and however suits you.

I’m writing this in the Albuquerque airport after spending a delicious stupendous perfectly extraordinary week with a group of powerful, smart, talented, brave, loving women.

And I can’t write BOO about it.

I’m as blank as fresh paper.

You see, when I have the privilege of creating a retreat for such gorgeous souls, time ceases to exist. I’m so immersed in the experience, I can’t process it.

It unfolds, I respond, it passes away.

Like an extended meditation.

I love that Havi, who was our super amazing Dance of Shiva teacher this week – the women loved the dance, we nicknamed it the “shiva shit” – wrote a number of super juicy and super articulate blog posts during the retreat.

It was so wonderful to witness her process.

I, on the other hand, am mute.

Mute with awe.

In awe of the courage of the women who showed up and dove in.

In awe of the miracles of retreats – yet again, the container works its magic.

In awe of the theme of self-trust and sovereignty.

The breakthroughs! The renewal! The stories! The writing!!!!!

Yes, lots and lots of awe.

Which doesn’t make for the best blog posts, however.

So This Week

I’m going to be resting in gratitude, and resting in general. I’m going to be living my affirmation from our magical ending circle:

My life is easy, fun, and light.

There will be time for play – which is the theme at the Comfort Cafe this month. Today, we’re having a Playshop with Victoria Castle – can’t wait.

Time for summer fun!

Time for hanging out.

Time to nest and paint my studio floor the deepest shade of blue so my floor is a sky and an ocean.

What about you? What will you lovingly notice this week? Does it have anything to do with summer play or fun?

Oh be still my beating heart.

Won’t You Join us Energetically?

So many of you wanted to be here but could not so I thought “What if we retreated together in spirit? What if the women who are here supported the women who are not, and vice-versa?”

You send your energy, prayers, and intentions to the women who are here, this weekend and next week, and I will ask women to send the energy of the retreats to you.

And

What if you took a mini-retreat between tonight and next Friday at noon and let the energy of my Kripalu retreats hold you and inspire you?

You could use the Virtual Retreat sessions (The Retreat is available again with a Refresher Day on April 25th) as one way to structure your time, like my sessions do for the women here.

Won’t you take even a half an hour in the next week to rest in the abiding peace that is your true nature, to calm your well-meaning but often rather busy mind, and to comfort yourself in ways that bring you toward life, rather than away?

If you do retreat, please share your intention and experiences here. Let us feel the ripples of retreats around the world!

Sending you the peace of true comfort and the power of women slowing down, listening, and remembering.

Part of the power of retreat is in doing things differently. This comment from Suzane after the first session yesterday – Getting Centered and Finding the Flow of the Retreat with Me – captures so well how simple shifting our awareness is — and how illuminating.

What really resonated with me with in the first session is finding the way my body moves in retreat space. I was so struck by throwing my arms and legs out and using my space in confidence and how I don’t do that in ordinary time. I seem to apologize for the space that I take in this world. Wow! Big insight and runs very deep for me. So, I had to journal some and have lots of questions for myself — live with the questions, right? Hard for me. I want answers and I want them yesterday!”

Of course you want answers now, Suzane, who doesn’t?  What I have found, much to my ever-loving chagrin, is wanting answers is fine, it is insisting I get them that can keep me stuck.

Answers can feel like a safe place to rest yet so easily turn into a cul de sac of fear and pleasing others.

The retreat container (I always wish I could come up a better word because it sounds like friggin’ Tupperware) creates a safe, comfortable place for us to be with our yearning and itch to know. We don’t have to push away the need to know nor collapse into the false security of future projections.

Retreating gives us a place to become more familiar and comfortable with uncertainty.

Today at the Virtual Retreat

We will be supporting you to explore purpose, breaking free from emotional eating, and relaxation… because, for so many of us, finding calm, confidence and contentment are linked to knowing we are living with purpose, dissolving shadow comforts that block our energy and knowing how to calm our body and mind.

Our first Mini-Retreat of the Day

How To Create Your Life Purpose

Saturday, 1/17 at 8am – 9 am Pacific / 11 am – 12 pm Eastern

with my dear friend and my wise excellent amazing coach Laura Berman Fortgang

Stop worrying about the expectations of others and decide what your true life’s purpose should be by taking an active role in its creation. Bestselling author Laura Berman Fortgang will walk you through how to connect with the “real you” and develop the confidence and courage to live a life that fulfills and exhilarates you.

So join us and if you cannot, the recording will be up within an hour or so in the members area. Check back here for more updates as the day unfolds!

======================== 1 PM (PST) UPDATE =======================

I am eating up your comments and how you are supporting each other! Join the conversation in the comment section.

Laura’s audio is up and chock full of powerful questions to ask yourself on retreat to help you discover – or rediscover – your purpose.

Geneen’s call is up and available for download, too!

“Are there ways I am willing to cherish myself other than food? “Do I feel I am worth cherishing? Am I willing to take the time to do it?”

One of the many gems I will take from Geneen’s very wide and nourishing mini-retreat.

There are a number of common themes emerging from all the speakers– as you listen, notice what the themes are for you — perhaps share your insights in the comment section!

We are getting a master class in being comfortable in the deepest richest sense of the word.

Do visit the membership area to send your questions to the speakers!

======================== 6:30 PM (PST) UPDATE =======================

The right-on galvanizing get-your-feet- under you conversation with Barbara Sher will be posted to the members area – holy smokes, what a wonderful day!

Thank you all!

And if you still want to join us, do! Get all the skinny here at Comfortretreats.com and a download all the previous mini-reteats and other goodies now.

Uncertain times can bring fear, worry, anxiety and overwhelm with them. They seem to walk hand-in-hand. Not knowing what’s going to happen stirs a prehistoric fear in most of us and has since the beginning of humanity.

On the many occasions when I felt paralyzed by uncertainty and fear and worry, I remember saying to myself,

I’ve got to get moving, got to get writing, but first I have to stop feeling afraid. I can’t do anything while I’m afraid.”

So I folded a lot of laundry, checked a lot of email, posted to Twitter, walked the dogs, checked email again, whined to wise friends, started projects that fizzled because they “didn’t feel right,” (which really meant I was too afraid to keep going), ate a lot of chocolate, and felt more and more frantic and paralyzed.

When you are fearful (or anxious, overwhelmed, worried, fretful), even if you don’t know you are, it’s pretty automatic to interpret your body’s natural fear response as a call to action – a directive to “Get busy! Do something to save us.”

But random action doesn’t take care of your real needs

The problem with trying to “busy” your way out of paralysis is that you don’t really know what’s the right thing to do because you haven’t addressed the real issue yet-you haven’t sat down with your fear so that you can learn what you really need.

You may not even know you’re afraid! I didn’t.

It wasn’t until my boyfriend Bob gently pointed out I was afraid that I began to see the role fear was playing in my stuckness. In fact, my paralysis was a direct result of my fear. I’ve since talked with wise people about this – especially the Comfort Conversations I had with Molly Gordon and Pam Slim (by the way, five of these fear-breaking Comfort Conversations are part of my upcoming Virtual Retreat)- and these talks explored  how avoiding feeling our fear is often the real reason we stay stuck – not whatever it is we’re afraid of but our running away from the scary feelings.

Who can blame us?

And sometimes, we get stuck because we think we shouldn’t be afraid as in, “I have a roof over my head, enough to eat, a toilet that flushes, others are so much worse off, what do I have to be afraid of? It’s just silly I can’t get going on marketing my business or meeting someone new or getting in shape, it’s just silly.” When we don’t allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling, the feeling grows, like a tired two-year-old who wants some attention.

Don’t overlook the biology of fear

When you feel the fear response in your body- the cascade of stress hormones, popularly called fight or flight — you automatically want to do something – anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s moving you toward your dreams or moving you sideways or even backwards. The key is to keep moving. Moving at least discharges some of your anxious energy and you feel like you are doing “something.”

The only problem is that this running can become habitual, creating a sort of anxiety fog that makes it very difficult to identify your next true step, so you become lost in a haze of inconsequential yet obviously very important actions. In other words – in a haze of procrastination, self-blame and general guilty “shoulding on yourself” (yuck).

My client Amy, a coach working with nurses in upper management, described her haze this way:

When my business was still pretty new, I fell into a good year of procrastination. It started when I had two major clients quit in one week. This was the first time I had been fired – I was mortified and certain I would have to go back to my previous job as a hospital administrator, which felt like dying to me. I began avoiding actual marketing in the most creative ways.

I got very busy drafting intricate plans. I signed up for a million how-to-market-yourself classes. I attended networking conferences. I even learned how to build my own website.  Then there were the causes I volunteered for – I don’t think I said no once that year.  It wasn’t until I saw the connection between my fear of being a failure and my lack of action that I was able to see how fast I was running away from my self and my business.

When I was able to start to taking care of the fearful part of me, able to sit down with the fear, rather than all my stories about the future, I was, slowly, able to move into action and save my business.  When I look back, there was this underlying feeling of not being okay and trying to get away from that feeling as fast I could that I kept trying to distract myself from. It seems so simple and obvious now.”

What Amy discovered is that often the only way to dissolve fear (and fear’s toxic hand-maidens, shame, guilt and self-loathing) is to be with it, to see it, to sit with it, even to talk to it to discover what emotional needs are hiding within it, instead of trying to outrun it.

Acknowledge your fear.  Like you, it wants to be listened to.

The first step is to acknowledge fear’s presence and give yourself time and space to be with fear. The Sufi mystic poet Rumi said it best,

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

Treating fear as, if not a welcome guest, a guest who is, without question, here, shifts you out of running and into the present. Allowing fear to come in temporarily does not mean you must give it the run of your house or that it gets to run your life. The exact opposite is true: when you can see your fear and put your focus on the fear itself rather than your story (how badly you screwed up or unlovable you are or that you can’t get a job that pays as much as your old job, etc), fear, like pain, moves and shifts and even dissolves.

Fear will always visit and it can teach you but it does not ever get to rule you

Several of the Virtual Retreat sessions deal with exactly this topic, as it is so central to dealing with uncertainty, especially Emergency Calming Techniques and Dissolving Procrastination with Havi Brooks and Emotional Freedom with Judith Orloff and Healthy Comfort and Heart Felt Permission with me.

In the meantime, join me in a short guided imagery to help you feel grounded.

A little audio love with Jen (click to listen, right-click to download)

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post: What to Do when you Feel Alone and Scared.