Comfort Queen » retreat

The Farm Fantasy Complete with Yurt

Jennifer — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:31:40 +0000

I was hanging with another self-employed coach/ writer / speaker friend this past week and we were both having a horrible no-good very bad day.

You know, one of those days in which you wonder, “What is it I do?” And you bemoan not becoming a nuclear physicist because at least they know how to split atoms.

One of those days in which all your plans, which just a moment ago were so shiny and promising, suddenly resemble false fronts on a movie set.

One of those days when you calculate how little money you can live on.

Otherwise known as a farm-fantasy day. Or move-to-the-ashram day. Or find-a-cozy-cave-in-Greece day.

You are going to give it all up for the simple life.

Give up the struggle, the effort, the bustle, the doing, whatever it is that feels so hard right now.

Yurts are always part of this fantasy. As well as spaciousness and time to do what you want. Shelling peas also shows up for me, not sure why.

There is a desire for wholeness and rest in the farm fantasy – you want to heed that.

There is also a desire to be rescued, to not have to be a grown up anymore – you don’t want to heed that.

Hold the desire for spaciousness, living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal in one hand and

in the other,

hold the exhilarating, humbling truth that choosing your life is damn hard work, putting yourself out there takes a huge amount of courage (whether selling your paintings or putting up a profile on Match.com), not to mention brain glucose, and being conscious,in general, is rewarding, sure, but also very, very taxing.

Farm fantasies are fun as long as you don’t confuse them with finally being safe. Finally being enough.

Watch a BBC period drama, read a historical novel, churn some butter and get back to putting one foot in front of the other. You aren’t doing anything wrong – it’s hard, it’s scary, and you are so not alone.

P.S. Non-farm fantasy retreat this weekend at Kripalu with me. You get to give up the struggle while staying awake. That’s good stuff.

P.P.S. Links: Living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal, enough.

The Business Side of Self-Care

Jennifer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:01:21 +0000

I was raised in the religion called “Self-Employment.”

As a child, I remember many a summer evening, lounging on the floor of my uncle Walter’s house in Bedford, Indiana, listening to my dad and Walter and Uncle Pryce talk business.

No. Not talk, pontificate. Extol. Preach.

The theme was always the same: be in business for yourself. Business was god. With a small g.

But still, god. (Yes, we went to church, too.)

When I got my first job out of film school, as an assistant to a literary agent in LA, my dad said, “Why did you get a job? I thought you wanted to be a writer?“

Oh no, Dad was not a patron of the arts. He believed that I would make more money working for myself than working for the Man.

My Dad did not have in his possession the statistics that most writers earn poop.

This week I feel like I returned to my family roots by writing about being self-employed.

It may be a new direction for me, working with self-employed women (and maybe men, I like men, I live with two of them and they are very lovely) around the inner work of being self-employed.

I’m feeling such a nice tickling about this idea.

In the meantime, in case you missed them, here are some great things to know about – not just for the self-employed.

Swooning

I’ve only been reading Danielle LaPorte for a few months. Oh the grief over all the juicy good I have missed. She’s sexy, truthful and loving. Good stuff.

Swigging Tequila

I sometimes paint myself into a corner with my writing, feeling I have to be serious or comforting or… Why do I tell myself that? That’s a topic for another post.

I love reading the very naughty Naomi Dunford’s very very very popular blog.

(I wrote a guest post this week. I don’t really swig tequila. It’s a metaphor. Or a joke. Or both. )

Admitting Mistakes

I’m putting on the Big Virtual Retreat next week. I made some marketing mistakes promoting it. I feel bad about them. Here is where I talk with the uber smart and very grounded Dave Navarro about what I learned doing this project.

Do I really make these faces?

You know Molly Gordon’s brilliance, right? If not, you are missing out big time. I made a video blog post for her and you have to got to see the very odd expression the video froze on. I laughed out loud when I clicked over.

Everybody loves Christine!

Christine Kane and I met when we did an event together a few years back. I fell in love with her immediately, everybody does. But what has made me sit up and take notice is how she has gone from struggling artist to paying off her mortgage! Read my post about depletion, and learn more about the amazing Ms. Kane!

Hungry Ghosts, Part 2

Where the sexy sharp ass Jennifer Howard tells you how everything is really going to be alright. This woman has a brain and half. Plus she’s intuitive! Plus she’s really really cool.

I hope all these goodies help you remember that life is a wondrous game for playing and failure is just another label.

Virtual and Mini-Retreat Winners

Jennifer — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:01:50 +0000

Wowza – retreats are needed - that’s what I got from your responses to my Big Virtual Retreat Contest.

It is a holy need.

Sometimes in a “holy crap! I need a break” or in a “I’m full of holes, I’m ready for mending” or in a celebration of wholeness kind of way. All holy.

Here are a couple of excerpts from your entries:

Gail said:

You know, when I first watched the video all I could think was, “Oh my gosh, Jen can see what a total stressed out mess my life / business / life has become, and she’s here to rescue me. Has she been sitting in the corner watching me? Where are you hiding, Jen?”

Retreat. Wow! The word even feels delightful just rolling it around on my tongue. I can’t imagine giving myself permission for such a thing. But I would surely like to try. I’m exhausted, and accomplishing very little as a result – which exhausts me even more. I know better, but knowing doesn’t necessarily change anything.”

I promise I’m have no such video camera, sweetie. We all get trapped in the cycle of depletion, it’s so utterly convincing and feels so real – this is just the way it has to be, we mutter – that we’re like the proverbial frog in the pot with the water s-l-o-w-l-y heating up.

It. Does. Not. Have. To. Be. This. Way.

Fernanda said:

I have never been on a retreat before – it is scary how much I could learn about myself if indeed I had a chance. I am at a major crossroads in my life – do I pursue the career I had before staying home with my son? Or do I just get a job that will provide the hours that would make it possible for me to spend more time with him? Time vs money but also so much more…

I have felt like people’s cash cow since I was 14 years old. I started working full time then and my parents took my pay checks. I got married and the same happened with my husband. “For our future” I was told.

Now at the age of 37 I have absolutely nothing to my name.

This is not a time vs money thing – it is so much deeper than that!!!

Fernanda, it is! When we value ourselves, we refuse to be anybody’s cash cow or 24/7 doormat. Self-care = self-dignity and the right to choose our lives.

Ellen wrote a hysterical entry that ended with the plaintive question many of us ask ourselves:

So what does retreat mean to me? A chance to quiet the voices in my head running my to-do lists, the opportunity to see who it is I want to be, to look in the mirror and see who I actually am. A chance to be REAL. This is a gift to give oneself but finding the time and finances can be a burden. The question is: am I really worth it?

I don’t think I’ll ever do a contest again because this was so hard.

Yet maybe it helped some of you see your needs and consider you can get them meet, even if you can’t retreat with me. YES? Maybe?

I had to choose the winner using a random number generator.

AND

I’m giving away a ticket to one of my live retreats so one more person gets to retreat.

And an extra seat at the Virtual Retreat, too.

The Nano with last year and this year’s virtual retreat sessions pre-loaded goes to Lisa comment #49

The free seat to this year Big Virtual Retreat with 13 heart expanding teachers, live support, and e-book goes to Marcy comment #21 and Barbara #101

A free ticket to one of my one day live retreats – your choice of Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio or Maryland – goes to Carrie comment #53

Please contact me by putting your email in comments or here to claim your prize.

Together, may we slay the dragons that hiss, “”YOU CANNOT PAUSE. YOU CANNOT GO WITHIN. YOU CANNOT REST.”

The Silence of Becoming A Linchpin

Jennifer — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:01:58 +0000

I’ve been reading Linchpin, Seth Godin’s new book, (pubs. January 26th) and you can see by my liberal use of little plastic flags, I’m finding a lot to mull over.

I even woke up this morning with one of the little plastic buggers in my hair.

What I’m loving about Seth’s book he has taken the ideas that I’ve been passionate about for lots o’ years and brought them together – linked them in a very linchpin way – to create a manifesto for how to thrive in this flat world and make the world a much better place.

It’s a kick-in-the-butt for becoming an artist who gives freely to her / his world, and thus, becomes indispensable.

Reading his book is like getting a letter from someone very, very smart that says,

“Dear Jen,

What you care about – what you get out of bed to do everyday – really does matter and really does make a difference.

Carry on.”

I know, I’m 47 and not supposed to need outside validation but c’mon, we who live on the fringes of the mainstream world like to know where not always so weird.

My favorite part of the book so far – the part that made it hard to sleep last night - is on page 135 where Seth reveals why he has been able to create so much since 1999 – 12 books, a successful Internet company, top 25 blog, a ton of brilliant speeches, another Internet company.

“I ship. I don’t get in the way of muse, I fight the resistance, and I ship. I do this by not doing an enormous number of tasks that are perfect stalling devices, ideal ways of introducing the resistance into our lives.

“A workaholic brings fear into the equation. She works all the time to be sure everything is all right, and she experiences resistance all the time. She satisfies the raging fear of her lizard brain by being at the job site all the time, just to be sure.”

I’d add, you don’t just distract yourself by staying at the job site. You distract yourself, sometimes for years and years, from what you really care about (just read some of the comments on the Win a Retreat post) in a multitude of very creative ways. I call these distractions shadow comforts or time monsters, but whatever you label them, the end result is the same:

Another year passes and the genius inside you shrinks and you settle for being less alive, less engaged

Seth goes on to say he does nothing to distract himself from the work – absolutely no busy work between bouts with the work.

“I can’t avoid the work because I’m not distracting myself with anything but the work. This is the hallmark of the productive artist.”

“It takes crazy discipline to do nothing between projects. That means you have to face a blank wall and you can’t look busy. It means you are alone with your thoughts, and it means that a new project, perhaps a great project, will appear pretty soon, because your restless energy can’t permit you to only sit and do nothing.”

Crazy discipline that you too can create.

Meditation helps.

Speaking to yourself kindly helps.

Labeling your fears helps.

Talking to your fears helps.

Setting conditions of safisfication help.

Having a like minded community to witness you helps.

Taking periodic retreats to refuel helps.

And if you are saying to yourself,

“Yeah right, Seth’s rich and famous, he doesn’t have to ferry kids or make meals or get known by commenting on people’s blogs, he doesn’t have to meet with clients or invoice or network and I haven’t even started on my taxes.”

Seth would say that’s the lizard brain talking.

Granted, Seth has resources many of us don’t. But you know? Buy that story and you’re colluding with your lizard brain.

How long are we going to hide behind busy work and other people’s needs and not “ship” (as in get out the door) our own creative genius?”

What if today you took the time and energy you spend defending why you can’t do your creative work, add to that the time you spend doing stuff for others that they can do for themselves, and see what you have on hand. I’ll bet it’s enough to get your mo-jo started.

A final word from Seth:

“Letting silence into your day gives the daemon [muse] a chance to be heard from.”

Yes, indeed!

How about joining me for some staring-at-the-blank-wall time today – and every day? I’ll report in the comment section how it’s going for me – I hope you will, too. I’m going to challenge the Comfort Cafe to do this with me. Let’s see what we come up with.

The BIG RETREAT Contest – How Much do You Need A Retreat?

Jennifer — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:49:18 +0000

You know retreats rule.

(At least, I hope you do. If not, trust me on this one.)

They put the sparkle back in the diamonds on the souls of your shoes (sorry, been listening to a lot of Paul Simon lately).

They give you a path back to the spring that burbles at the heart of your soul (wow, lots of purple prose today).

They free you from Squirrel Mind and grinding marching to-do blahs.

They wake you up “Oh yes, this is who I am and this is what matters to me! How could I forget?”

Retreats heal.

Only hitch is, it sometimes often feels just about impossible to make the time.

And when you do, it can (at least this is true for me and I wrote the damn book!) be scary to go within, to calm the Squirrel chatter in your mind and choose what will renew you.

So that’s why I created the 2nd annual Big Virtual Retreat with a bunch of very wise teachers.

And

This contest so you can win a chance to retreat.

Because some of us, we need to be smote by chance before we actually take the time to get what we need.

Here’s your chance to be smote by ole Lady Retreating Luck (a little known Jungian archetype).

To enter simply leave a comment (or if you want extra brownie points – leave a link to a video you made) telling me why a retreat would be just the thing for you right now.

Or tell me why you can’t retreat.

Or how retreats have been healing for you.

I’m open to anything!

I’ll read your comments, and watch your videos and announce the winners on February 1, 2009

But Wait, there are Prizes (but of course):

First Prize:

An I-pod Nano filled with all the recordings from last year’s virtual retreat and this year’s retreat. This is a one-of-a-kind prize (that will mean I have to order a nano, find all the sessions, download them, write you a note, and put it the mail – so this is a BIG DAMN PRIZE DAMMIT).

You will be able to mix and match the 14 recordings from the 2009 retreat and the 12 recordings from this year’s retreat to create mini-retreats any time that you choose.

How cool is that?

Second Prize:

A seat at this year’s virtual retreat – including transcripts and audio recordings and e-book and live support during the weekend and all the good global vibes of hundreds of people getting the retreat vibe going at the same time.

Also known as the No-More-Excuses-to-Get-What-I-Need-Prize.

Entries will be judged on creativity and need and I’ll want to chose every last one of you and I’ll lose sleep but you know what?

If it convinces a few more of you to take a retreat — this one or anyone – it will be worth .

So, tell me your story and let’s all get smote.

The deadline for entries is January 22, 2009