Turns out, bears don't really need to hibernate in winter, they just want an excuse to avoid the neighbors for a few months. This is the last of the recorded Christmas episodes and possibly one of my favorite stories in the whole book.
How To Talk To Your Soul
A friend texted me for advice today. He asked what my intuition was saying, which is often an exercise in frustration for everyone.
My intuition: "Tell him to ask his soul."
Me: "Ask your soul."
Him: "My soul and I don’t have a great track record with communication."
Me: "Fistbump, bro."
My intuition: "I have a list."
I’ve spent a reasonable portion of the last five years exploring this very question and I still don’t always feel altogether confident that I’m interpreting my soul correctly. Souls can be tricky.
But we’ve all got one and it’s the part of us that holds our ultimate life plan, as well as all the wisdom and answers we could ever need. Our soul is basically the google search bar for our life’s journey. Your soul is ready and eager to give you the answer, you just have to learn how to type the question. It doesn’t promise you’ll like the answer, but it’s got it.
How to Talk to Your Soul
Ask for clarity.
Setting an intention to receive an answer is ninety-nine percent of the process. If you intend to receive the answer you seek, you will get it. Your soul really wants to talk to you, but free will says you have to give it permission. It can’t just break down your door and hand you instructions. You have to open the door and invite it in. (So your soul is like a vampire, I guess?) How fast you get your answer depends on your soul’s timing - which we don’t get to control, sadly.
You can help the answer find you by doing the next few steps.
Release attachment to the outcome.
Visualize handing any attachment you feel to the answer or the outcome over to your soul, your guides, or whatever higher power or universal creationary force resonates with you. Or send it out into the ether to explode in a shower of sparks. This may sound a little simplistic but it's an astonishingly powerful practice.
Get out of your head and into your body.
When your brain is talking to you, you can’t really hear what your soul is saying. Your head yells like Trump reincarnated as an angry Little League Coach, your soul speaks in a nicely-moderated and aesthetically-pleasing indoor voice. So take a walk, go on a hike in whatever nature is in your vicinity, do whatever exercise makes you happy. Pay attention to your thoughts and what they’re screaming at you. Not to lend credence to their nonsense, but just to notice. It’s totally fine that they’re yelling and trying to drown out your soul, they’re prone to that, but don’t take what your thoughts are saying as truth. Just observe and let the thoughts pass.
See what comes.
Your answer may take a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month. But you’ll get your answer in the right time. If the answer is taking longer than you like, just keep doing the above steps and trust that it will show up in the perfect time. Sometimes there’s more life to be lived or information to be gathered before it’s time to know.
So just keep handing over any attachment or judgment that shows up, keep moving your body, keep clearing your mind, and stay open to what your soul says. The answer will come.
Resistance Fighters
Building a business will yank up everyone of your demons and wave them, skeletons rattling, in front of your nose.
I’ve spent the last five plus years looking inward. Clearing out the gunk, connecting with my soul, going into the shadows so that I can trust the light.
But in order to build my work - both my writing and my work with writers - in the way I want and need to, I don't have the luxury of dancing with my demons any more.
Oh, they’ll show up, and stronger than ever. But I can’t give them as much of my time. In order to help people transform in the way I know is possible, in order to write the words I know will help, I have to ground myself in simple forward steps. I have to take care of myself. I have to pay rigorous attention to my thoughts and where my focus lands.
Last week was intense. I got sucked into all the swirling negativity of my head. You aren’t making enough money, you’ll never make enough money, too many things have to happen before you can make the money you need, you have to increase your audience by a zillion before you can do the work you want to do. Et cetera to infinity.
It happens. Especially when you’re pushing so far out of your comfort zone that you can't even remember the zip code where your comfort once resided. But I just don’t have time to let the brain gremlins brought forth by the demons get the better of me.
So they won’t. Resistance will be weeded out and the demon skeletons will be sent to rattle elsewhere. Because I have work to do.
Giraffes Are Very Useful At Christmas
In celebration of the holidays, I'm going to post an audio recording of one of the Christmas stories from my book March of the Animals every Thursday.
I love these stories so much. I hope you enjoy them too.
Left to Roll
Dance class usually makes me feel better about life - I get to spin and move, endorphins kick in, sweat flows, my brain disengages, and my daily life disappears for an hour.
But today, I couldn't get the backward roll. Tip onto your right elbow, swing your left foot above your head, tuck your chin, roll to the back of the room. I just couldn't get there. As I stood behind my section of the class, scrambling to catch up while everyone else rolled perfectly with the music, I got hit with it:
If I don't do it right, I'm alone.
It felt like the room expanded and contracted around me as my heart flipped in my rib cage. One of the main limiting beliefs that's driven my life clicked into place like the last puzzle piece.
Perfectionism is a tender spot for me. There's always this need to "do it right" and I think I finally understand why. If I don't do it right, then I get left out. If I don't do it right, then everyone rolls without me and I don't know how to catch up.
Pretty deep for a Wednesday morning.
Catching where we limit ourselves is crucial. Because I'm tired and it's been a long week, a long month, a long year, I don't know quite what I'm going to do with this. But awareness is plenty for now. Along with the knowledge that there is no right, there is no wrong, and I'm not going to be left behind if I'm not perfect.