30 days of abundance // day 29: the urgent vs. the important

boy, am I in the middle of this one: 

not letting the urgent be the enemy of the truly important.

 

differentiating between the urgent and the important is absolutely critical to living well and being well (google urgent vs. important and you'll find all sorts of resources on the matter). but it's both extremely difficult to do, as well as extremely difficult to stand by.

 

important: climate change.

urgent: your to do list.

I learned while writing my dissertation you can fill your day with "urgent" things, like making money and grocery shopping, and never actually get your big work done. now, clearly making money and feeding oneself are important things to do. but if they do not directly contribute to your big work, your calling, they can be merely means toward survival and getting by.

important: writing your book.

urgent: paying bills.

 

but identifying what's truly important and what's merely urgent is not easy. urgent stuff seems important enough. which is why so few people ever write their novel from start to finish or start their nonprofit. we can fill up our entire lives with the urgent and never actually get to the important.

once you know what your truly important, central work is, keep that front and center, and work on it, every day.

 

that does not mean ignoring the urgent. by all means, make a living and take care of things. but make sure the important stays in the center of the rotation, and doesn't get drowned out by the daily cries for the urgent. 

30 days of abundance // day 26: building a foundation

if you've been following my writing, you've noticed that I took a long hiatus over the holidays. the best way I can explain is that I needed to turn inward for a while. 2014 was one of the most transformative years of my life, and the last month held the deepest internal transformation I've ever experienced. without getting into the details of my personal life, I can only describe it as metamorphosis.

now I'm carefully emerging, new wings slowly unfurling.

 

I have a lot on my plate for 2015, and I'm approaching it all with new eyes. I feel delicate and tender, and I'm taking on the new year with careful baby steps rather than fire blazing. everything's a little wobbly still, but I can feel my internal strength growing and my new ways of approaching things forming.

january is my month of foundation building, and actually I'll spend the entire year building a foundation for the rest of my life.

there will be a depth and perspective to my book that couldn't have existed without everything that transpired in the last few months of 2014. my yoga and craniosacral business is blossoming bit by bit. and stability will be a new priority for me - feathering a nest for my current and future well being. the risks I choose to take will be different - informed by lived experience.

I'm excited and ready, grateful and humbled. a little nervous and unsteady for sure; I'm definitely venturing into territory I've never been to. but I'm buoyed by faith in myself, an incredible family, and rock solid core of friends.

to new beginnings with steadfast allies. happy 2015.

 

 

30 days of abundance // day 24: rest is part of training

back from virginia. beautifully successful yoga retreat under my belt. time with my mom, which was especially important after the recent loss of my grandmother. heart full after a lovely impromptu birthday celebration. bouyed by incredible friendships with incredible people. I find myself, as I feel most days these days, deeply grateful.

the best way I can describe things is that I'm in a reintegration phase.

 

the last year of travel and movement and immense change have been tremendously growth inspiring, but also frankly exhausting. arriving at the end of this 7-month run, last week I felt the lurch and the comedown and a huge sense of relief in having time to be home rather than on the road. I haven't slept in the same bed for more than a week since may.

at the same time I feel like I'm at the most critical career juncture I've ever faced. I've been working my whole life to be doing what I'm doing right now. 

I'm often reminded at times like these, of a lesson I learned running track in high school and college: rest is part of training.

 

the training actually tears us apart: it's the recovery period of rest where we get stronger. rest is everything. it keeps us from getting injured, it keeps us in balance. 

I found an article on the topic online, which is actually called "overtraining can kill you." it does a great job of explaining the physiological effects of overtraining. if you google "rest is part of training," you'll find lots of articles on the topic. and of course, I believe the lesson applies directly to life and work of all sorts, not just physical training.

rest is not just something we do when we're worn out. and it's far from a sign of weakness. it has nothing to do with failing or being lazy. it's actually critical to success, balance, and wellness over time.

 

most of life is a marathon, not a sprint. sure, we train to be able to fire on all cylinders at critical junctures, but we're not meant to be firing all day every day. in fact, living every day like we've been shot out of a cannon is really really bad for us, and frankly not very smart. because the running pulls us apart, and strength and growth come from healing back together.

30 days of abundance // day 18: book recs for the holidays

putting the final touches on my second retreat of the year. just opened my online store. secured half the funding needed in my small, private crowdfunding campaign for my book.

much is still under construction - design decisions still being made, titles being chosen. and much will be revealed come january.

but I look at the work I've done to find my way, and I know I've been doing good work.

 

it's Dec. 1 and I'm thinking about the holidays...this time last year was frankly a scary moment. I just thought back to the very first step I took in the right direction...and it started with a book called The Firestarter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte. the tag line is: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms. I actually bought it for my littler brother for Christmas, snuck a peek, and then proceeded  do devour the whole thing myself before returning the dust jacket and wrapping it for him. the book lays out a path of honest questions, clear gems of wisdom, and a shitload of inspiration to fire off in the direction of true calling.

The Firestarter Sessions led me to The Desire Map, which walked me through a series of exercises to help me boil down to six desired feelings that I want in my life. mine are:

clear. light. abundant.

grounded. centered. nourished.

 

the idea is that if I check in with these desired feelings every morning, every night, and whenever I'm making a big decision, I'll never be far off course in creating the life I want. actually, I realized somewhere along the way that I felt most in line with the feelings immediately after yoga. and I started checking in with myself in dealing with friends and lovers...if I don't feel more clear, light, abundant, grounded, centered, and nourished when dealing with them, they become a no.

to be honest, I forget often. but when I remember I realign with the work I did to figure out what I wanted in the first place.

this was all in january and december of last year - before the lease buyout and the trip to bali and the yoga training and the decision to stop acquiescing to what everyone else wanted and to start doing me.

if you've got the same itch...as far as tools go, I can't recommend Danielle's work enough. I've been passing along hard copies and raving all year. 

ps my bday is coming up and if anyone wants to get the me the desire map planner, I wouldn't be sad.

30 days of abundance // day 13: work and the unlived life

I am writing a book and building a yoga and craniosacral business. which is kind of insane. either one of those two things are plenty for a person to do. building and launching them at the same time is just plain nuts.

and, of course, almost ironically, I'm having a hard time taking my own advice about living and working. it's hard to keep up with yoga and writing. I'm also trying to get the very basics of my life back in place after being on the road almost all year. 

one of my favorite books of all time is called The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield. this passage always reminds me what I'm about, gets me fired up, and helps me get my shit together to do my work.

 

the unlived life

"most of us have two lives. the life we live and the unlived life within us. between the two stands Resistance.

have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? have you ever bailed out on a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? then you know what Resistance is.

“One night I was layin’ down,
I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama.
I heard Papa say, to let that boy boogie-woogie.
’Cause it’s in him and it’s got to come out.”

— John Lee Hooker, "Boogie Chillen"

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction. to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. it stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. if you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. Genius is a Latin word; the Romans used it to denote a holy spirit, holy and inviolable, which watches over us, guiding us to our calling.

a writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center. it is our soul's seat, the vessel that holds our being in potential, our star's beacon and Polaris.

every sun casts a shadow, and a genius's shadow is Resistance. as powerful as is our soul's call to realization, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, harder to kick than crack cocaine. we're not alone if we've been mowed down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us. and here's the biggest bitch: we don't even know what hit us. I never did. from age twenty-four to thirty-two, Resistance kicked my ass from east coast to west and back again thirteen times and I never knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face.

have you heard this story: woman learns she has cancer, six months to live. within days she quits her job, resumes the dream of writing Tex-Mex songs she gave up to raise a family (or starts studying classical greek, or moves to the inner city and devotes herself to tending babies with  AIDS). woman's friends think she's crazy; she herself has never before been happier. there's  a post-script. woman's cancer goes into remission.

is that what it takes? do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up an confront Resistance? does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its existence? how many of us have become drunks and drug addicts , developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don't do that thing our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us. if tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the dictionary would be out of business. prisons would stand empty. the alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse along with junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom. domestic abuse would become extinct. as would addiction, obesity, migraine headaches, road rage, and dandruff.

look in your own heart.

 

unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. you know it. no one has to tell you. and unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow.

you think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.

you know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. at eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to vienna to live and study. he applied to the academy of fine arts and later to she school of architecture. ever see one of his paintings? neither have I. Resistance beat him. call it an overstatement, but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas."

30 days of abundance // day 8: why

the last thing I wrote was about the discomfort of showing the soft underbelly. I am now feeling that discomfort.

I've been bouncing the microbe mindfuck story, title, tagline, off of lots of brilliant, amazing people for several months.

there are pieces that clearly work and pieces that don't work. to me, the story is about soil health and climate change. those are the two topics that got me into it and fired up about it.

but I'm quite weird. pretty nerdy as well. what I've found is that both "soil" and "climate change" as topics, can shut people down. like, glaze over. but yet I keep running around saying that's what my book is about. and that is what it's about.

but it's not the why.*

why the hell am I writing about such a thing. no less, why in the hell would I devote my work to such a thing. why am I sitting outside in the dark writing about writing about it?

I mean, to me...it's really about saving the world. not in a bs kumbaya make myself feel better about myself kind of way. but like actually doing the thing. I've been training for more then 10 years to actually know something about this and how to do the thing.

but how in the world to get people interested in soil. or to believe and understand that something can be done about climate change.

the first answer is microbes.

people actually, kind of weirdly, resonate with microbes. it's a thing that makes sense - it's not as amorphous as soil or climate change. and, well it is very much about microbes.

and pesticides.

the thread that's forming is that people understand that pesticides are poison. nobody really wants to eat them. it's gross, why would we? nobody wants to be sick and fucked up, and nobody really wants the world to die. I mean, that's total shit, who wants that?

the third piece, which is also kind of weird to me still - maybe just surprising, is the carbon cycle.

because we get that there's a big ass problem with carbon and what the hell is going on with it. it's just that it seems very complicated. and it kind of is, but it's also not.

one thing I've found about this story is that it's both very simple and very profound. it's both straightforward and complicated at the same time. but that's what makes a good story, yes?

pesticides are killing the bottom of the food chain and fucking up the carbon cycle.

it's makes sense. poisoning the bottom of the food chain, which is of course the life chain..poisons everything. it fucks up the whole damn thing. of course it does.

I guess the devil in the details is around HOW it does this. and that's the part that I have nailed. sort of - it's still hard to explain all the details....and even so, the ground covered is so vast that I'm still learning about the ins and outs of basic biology and ecology as a neophyte.

but maybe this is where I get stuck...I keep getting back into the details, and I keep veering away from the

why. why. why why why?

we keep fucking up the whole system. I would like us to stop fucking up the whole system. there are ways to unfuck the whole system and I can tell you how. let's unfuck the whole system!

but the only way to do that is to understand how the system is getting fucked in the first place.

and right now we have that story wrong. 

we think it's about fossil fuels. but we are wrong. burning fossil fuels is one small part of a much larger story.

“Whenever I run into a problem I can’t solve, I always make it bigger. I can never solve it by trying to make it smaller, but if I make it big enough I can begin to see the outlines of a solution.”

— – Dwight D. Eisenhower

we're mistaking a part for the whole - we're looking at the wrong metric. the solution is obvious when we back up and look at the whole thing.

and finally, one thing that resonates profoundly with me, that people have a harder time with, is that this is a story of hope. climate change glazes people over because everyone believes it's an intractable problem. as in...there's no viable solution and it's pretty hopeless. 

but there's hope. for real hope.

this is a story about how to reverse climate change by repopulating microbes in the soil. and it's a story about how to reverse major health issues by repopulating microbes in our guts.

it's about healing the carbon cycle by healing the food cycle.

#30daysofabundance

#savethemicrobes

*(hat/tip marcella fredericks)

*an intellectual property note: if you are interested in this story, great!! tell it wide and far!! but please, if you use my words, quote me. if you use my ideas, cite me. if you're not sure, contact me. love.