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Choose Your Life Mondays – The After Retreat Edition

Jennifer — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:36:22 +0000

There is an emptiness that comes to me when I am finished leading a retreat.

A scrubbed out-ness. Hollowed out. Pumpkin after scraping before carving.

It’s an odd feeling, not bad at all, but if I don’t ground myself, and have a lot of awareness, I start pounding chocolate.

I wish I could sum up the magic of the Virtual Retreat

But I’m not good at summing things. Humming yes, summing not so much.

I throw myself into the moment of teaching and then I wonder, ‘What can I say about what I just did?”

Last year, when Havi Brooks was my guest at the Writer’s Retreat (she is again this year and there are few spots open and early bird price was supposed to go away yesterday so hurry and that might be a run on sentence).

So anyway, not good at summing up.

I could quote from some of the hundreds of blog posts on the Virtual Retreat blog but what would that tell you?

That people had a wonderful experience.

That people faced into their fears.

That people touched their essential goodness.

Is that enough of a summary?

In my hollowed out-ness, I started to despair at writing a blog post and then Jenzie posted this at the Comfort Cafe (yeah for the Cafe and Jenzie!) and I thought, “Virtual Retreat Essential Distilled Beautifully Summed up Wisdom! Just what I need to choose my life this week.”

So here is Jenzie’s wonderful summary:

How can I put the pieces of my life together into an abundant yet peaceful whole?

What do I yearn for, what do I truly desire, right now?

I am not all things … yet I am enough.

I tend to my peaceful perspective, as I would tend a garden or a child.

I pay attention to life’s transitions, small as well as large.

Gently bringing myself back: sweetheart, we’re doing just one thing at a time now.

Find and use a compass that leads me back to my true self.

The first time something extraordinary happens, we call it a miracle. Yet if it continues, we begin to regard it as ordinary! Reclaim the miraculous in the bowl of cheerios…

I am not broken, and I do not need to be fixed.

I am open to the voice of the sacred, in everyday life as well as in transcendence.

When do I feel most myself?

What would I love my life to be like?

I instinctively know what I need to thrive.

I am.

Who is it who notices my body, my thoughts, and yet is not contained by them?

Live more. Forgive yourself. Begin again.

Just shift direction by one degree… and in six months, I’ll be somewhere entirely different than I would have been otherwise.

Listen for the inner voice of self love.

Be the little girl who can do anything.

Grow wild and wooly before you prune.

Focus on what’s really essential and true.

Stop thinking about time, instead think about energy and flow.

Be fully committed to and fully present with whatever you’re doing, right now.

Get underneath the joy … and the fear … from there comes inspired, grounded action.

Act as if what I truly want is already here.

That which I avoid is an energy drain … and the longer I avoid, the stronger the drain.

What is the simplest action?

Learn to distinguish the practical-sounding voice of fear from my true loving voice.

I am more than my history, more than my degrees, more than my checkbook, more than my stories.

I am not all things … yet I am enough.

What one bit will you use to light your way this week?

Thanks to Deb, Meredith, and the amazing teachers and hundreds of people who retreated this weekend. More kudos coming must go shower and get on a plane.

Slipping into the Retreat Field

Jennifer — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:27:54 +0000

Ahh… the most fascinating experience in unfolding over here in my little studio with it’s bright blue floor and profusion of art supplies and books:

I can feel the hundreds of people gathering their hearts

I can feel the shimmer of intention.

I can feel the settling.

I can even feel the clutter clearing, flower arranging and possibly the candle lighting.

Ahhh…

I’m not a very airy fairy person

I study yoga and subtle energy and all that body and soul stuff but honestly, I’ve always got one eyebrow cocked.

So it is absolutely fascinating to me to palpably feel this huge growing thrumming something.

It’s behind me and around me and carrying me forward like a gentle wave.

As I read participants intentions like”

take this ‘treat ‘ seriously”

to experience a few moments of “me-ness,”

to take that deep soul releasing breath and just BE with this! Accept the comfort and love of the words”

I want to recharge and find new ways to love and serve”

and

looking forward to reaching out to myself some”

The wave just gets bigger.

I am in awe of the power of the retreat container, the intention,we are creating together to stretch literally around the globe, to support us in our desire for strength, for peace, for renewal.

As I center myself in gratitude and take the rest of the morning and early afternoon to prepare myself to be a good steward of all this love, I ask all of you out there who are not joining us, to send a molecule of care and love toward all the participants this weekend, and to send twice as many molecules to yourself.

Tonight’s mini-retreats are me, Patti Digh, Hiro Boga and Fabeku. Be still my beating heart!

P.S. If you are new to my blog, I’m talking about the 2nd annual Big Virtual Retreat: Refresh, Reawaken, and Rediscover Who Your Are in Ways that Truly Work that starts Friday Feb. 12th You can still join us. Just be sure and read the How To Retreat e-book before tonight!

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.

Jen and Dr. Jennifer Talk Soloprenuers, Hungry Ghosts, Distorted Auras & More: Part 1

Jennifer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:01:43 +0000

The lovely Dr. Jennifer Howard, gifted psychotherapist, spiritual teacher and all around sharp ass (like a smart ass only smarter), and I befriended each other after admiring each other’s Tweets for a year or so.

Dr. Jennifer and I recorded a half convo/ half rant about why we get stuck, why we burn out, and what it might have to do with our energy patterns. Here’s the transcribed, annotated version, part 1.

We whined chatted for a minute (or fifteen) about work challenges and our bowels, then launched into the first question:

Jen Louden: Dr. Jennifer, you have the Ph.D., o wise one, tell me, how do you help people— especially soloprenuers – when they’re feeling utterly stuck and burned out?

Dr. Jennifer Howard: (Laughs, then takes a deep breath and wonders what she has gotten herself into) Jen, you know there are so many layers to feeling stuck and burned out. One layer is that I would have my clients look at their business in general and how it is organized. Then, I would ask how they’ve run their energy in the past in their lives.

Jen makes little murmuring noises, which would be very annoying were you actually listening to the recording. So be glad you aren’t.

Jen: What do you mean by run your energy? Immediately my little ears perk up.

Dr. Jennifer: We all run our energy in different ways that either serve us or burn us out. We distort our auras according to our psychological defenses. Your characterology (isn’t that a cool word?) will habitually block your energy flow. The way you close down different parts of your body – the way you aren’t in your legs (How did you know that about me Dr. Jennifer, Jen thinks and shivers)– different chakras get out of balance.

You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are very high-energy, driven people and that comes from personal strengths as well as different childhood woundings.

Jen wonders what her childhood wounds are because she is the most driven Comfort Queen she’s ever met. Did someone beat her with very plush pillows? Jen searches her memory.

These might cause them to feel not good enough so there can be an experience of perpetual chasing something, that terrible hungry ghost feeling of not enough. “I’m not enough, it’s not enough, gotta get more, gotta get more…”

It’s hard to find balance unless you have dealt with what’s keeping you from embodying it to begin with.

Dr. Jennifer thinks about how never ending that hungry ghost feeling can be. Jen does the same on her end.

Dr. Jennifer: Now…then there’s other people who do the opposite and they don’t generally become entrepreneurs. They’re people who hold back on life. They might look at the lives of entrepreneurs and say, ‘I’m not taking all that on. Let me just get a job.’ Who’d blame them?

General cackling. Moment of silence while both J’s consider their secret work fantasies: Jen’s is working in a fancy cheese store where she can be a cheese snob; Dr. Jennifer’s is teaching dance classes.

Jen: That’s a very interesting thought, that people who do decide to be entrepreneurs might have a different set of challenges to deal with around burnout. We might need to learn more ways to ground ourselves.

Dr. Jennifer: And to learn to be reasonable – I know for myself, sometimes I can take on more than is humanly possible.

Jen snorts her agreement. It sounds like a piglet snuffling. Dr. Jennifer graciously laughs. Both are wondering if they will ever get this “humanly possible” limit in their life times.

Jen: So how would you coach me to stop doing more than is humanly possible?

Jen is always talking to experts and trying to get free advice. Shameless self-help hussy.

Dr. Jennifer: I would ask you to talk about when it all began. Go back to when you remember this starting. Did mom and dad say or imply you weren’t good enough? Maybe you had to compete with other siblings or other people in your community? I would want you to look at what the driving force was back then, that now has the negative consequences that you can’t listen to yourself.

For me, I think it is based on having been on asthma medication as a kid, which was like uppers. This really distorted my own ability to tap into my own limits.

Jen: For me it’s a combination of wanting to be like my Dad, having a ton of creative energy and nobody to help me harness it as a kid, but also getting shamed a bit for being so big, so much. I still have a lot of creative shame.

Dr. Jennifer makes empathetic sounds and Jen feels less ashamed.

Dr. Jennifer: I think it was my own learned biological pushing for breath, feeling the meds in my body and waiting to live in a more normal way. I’d have this engine driving me even when I was exhausted.

For many of us on a real practical level, it’s also about infrastructure. The internal infrastructure and the external infrastructure of support and systems.

Jen: Somebody said to me once, ‘You have to sometimes slow down to speed up later.’ It really makes sense and what I love about what you just said is that if you’re having a hard time figuring out how to ground and slow down you might need to untangle an old pattern and you might need mechanical help, like a good VA or a bookkeeper.

So let’s say if you’re constantly planning too much and you decide that you need a better calendar system and a better VA– you get those things in place and things don’t shift, then you know there’s an underlying pattern that you’re dealing with.

Here is where Part 1 ends. And you want more.

Part 2 continues tomorrow on Dr. Jennifer Howard’s blog. On behalf of both Jennifer’s (one of whom is me), I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into our brains and you’ll join Dr. Jennifer for more peeking tomorrow.

Choose Your Life Mondays – The Charlie Gilkey Edition

marissa — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:01:23 +0000

I’ve been contemplating depletion a lot lately.

Partially because I’m offering five retreats in the next four months and partially because I’ve been on the brink of burning out myself.

And because I’ve talked to so many clients and friends lately who have wondrous lives but can’t enjoy them because they are crispy fried.

Charred.

I’m a learner, learning is what I do, so I reached out to Dr. Charlie Gilkey for a smart guy’s perspective on self-care and comfort. When I start to chew my own tail, I know I need an outside perspective.

We recorded a great conversation – it’s worth your time. Charlie’s witty insights include:

You understand replenishing with your mind but you don’t understand it deeply if you’re not doing it a lot. You know you need self-care intellectually but until you do it and see the results, you don’t get it.

You grow through discomfort but if you’re too uncomfortable, you can’t grow. (Thanks Charlie for summing up my 19 years of work so succinctly. This is why I dig you so much.)

You can’t package comfort like McDonald’s fries. What resources and fills you up has to be tailored to you and your actual challenges.

Retreating gives you the same thing good coaching does – an outside observer and process so you get past your blind spots.

When you do a retreat, there is a trust you place in the people who creating it that you don’t always place in yourself. You haven’t harnessed your own resources yet so you don’t trust yourself. A retreat is a way to stop questioning everything you are thinking and doing, you can be just in the process and thus renew yourself.

Listen in for lots more groovy insights.

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Virtual_Retreat_Call with Charlie and Jen

P.S.

Love yourself INTO action and OUT OF depletion with me and 12 other world famous teachers… without even getting out of your pj’s!
The Virtual Retreat package includes:

• A copy of “How To Retreat,” an eBook that helps you let go of the fear and shows you how to create the time.
• Gentle ‘Get Ready’ emails – to help you prepare for your self-caring-est weekend ever.
• Exclusive access to a members-only blog, where you will get untold amounts of support and encouragement, PLUS…
• 13 heart-expanding mini-retreats with world-renowned authors and healers over three days.
• Easy-to-download recordings and transcripts of each mini-retreat – so you can come and go as you please. And use the material for years to come.

If you sign up before February 5th, you get a $50 discount!

Save Texas retreat save 30$ before February 6th, Wisconsin retreat is almost full.