Achieving and receiving more, unconventionally
Happy Sunday, Soothers. I often include in the tagline of the Soother that this newsletter covers "practical spirituality," and I'm proud of that. To me, that includes stuff like teaching you how and why to read Tarot; ways to more deeply connect with nature or your inner child; step by step guidances to different practices like affirmations, meditation or hypnosis; a 30 days of intuition practice; and different books or resources that have helped me connect more deeply with my spirituality and might for you, too.
Today I wanted to continue in that theme and talk about a subject that can be difficult to explain tangibly and practically but is incredibly helpful to your life and the things you want to achieve when you grok it.
I call it the concept of your "energetic container."
Focusing on your energetic container is one of my biggest strategies for getting more done in my life and achieving more without actually... doing more. Which can be done.
I'm going to frame this in light of how I got linked in Oliver Burkeman's newsletter, the Imperfectionist, a couple of weeks ago, which sent me nearly 1,500 new subscribers (hello!). For a newsletter that'd been plateaued around 4,000 subscribers for oh, about the past 3-4 years, this is a big deal and I'm quite grateful.
You can attribute this to random luck, the hard work I've put into this newsletter over the years, the ability that I generally show up week after week and write authentically and usefully, and yes, those matter. But I had been doing that for four years and staying more or less at exactly about 4,100 subscribers.
So what changed this time?
To me, it was that my energetic container expanded, and I'm going to show you how, why, why this matters for your ability to receive more in your life without doing more, and show you how you can start.
If you're skeptical or cynical about spirituality and matters of energetics, I encourage you to stick around and read what I have to say on this topic. Oliver does a beautiful job teaching us and philosophizing about sustainable, compassionate and human time management and productivity; I can teach you energetic formulas that add to and support this knowledge in your life. I believe I have a talent for grounding relatively abstract "fluffier" seeming concepts on spirituality that help more logical, practical-minded folks understand them in a way that they haven't ever had explained to them before and gets them to click for them.
And the reality is, I believe that you can learn about matters like energy without actually being spiritual (aka believing there is a higher benevolent force in the world). Understanding energetics of humans and emotions is basically pretty similar to physics (err, I think, says the woman who nearly failed high school physics and hasn't taken a science class since she was 18). But the basic concept is that matter is governable by laws in this universe, and so are we as humans. We are subject to energetic laws just like other matter and not only in our physical bodies, but in our emotional and energetic bodies, too.
So if you're ready to learn how to achieve and receive more using my concept of the energetic container, read on. This is also kind of a long one, so you can also click here to open it up as a tab in your browser and read from there. Think of this as a mini training.
>> Read the full blog post here <<
Okay, so I want to place this in the context of me receiving this big bump from Oliver's newsletter and I'll get to that. But first, definitions!
With the concept of an energetic container, what I mean is this: Your energetic container is your ability to hold space for attention, your own emotions, focus of others, receiving of both praise and criticism, receiving of desires (emotional desires and physical, material desires) and more.
To me, your energetic container is the sum of your subconscious self-worth, plus how grounded and regulated your nervous system and your energetic body are.
Look at somebody like Beyonce, one of the most famous women in the world. She has a HUGE energetic container. Millions of people are thinking about, talking about, observing her, consuming her creations every moment of every day and have been for decades. She is able to perform globally, receive and hold a massive amount of material and financial compensation, receive adoration as well as hatred and judgment, and continue to hold steady to her creative vision and keep going. She quite clearly loves herself and deems herself worthy of this success and treats herself as such.
Her energetic container is large, grounded, steady, present, open but boundaried. It can hold, open to receive, and also release to flow back out a LOT.
Then there's, uh, me.
I'm a highly sensitive woman with some big T and little T trauma in her life. I feel things deeply. I take on the energy of others so easily (I often explain to other HSPs that we are walking balls of double-sided scotch tape, rolling under a couch with dust bunnies; that's what walking through a place like an airport or any other crowd is for us). I have a relatively dysregulated nervous system that I've only learned to better regulate the past few years as well as an anxiety disorder. I have a lot fear about things, and control and rigidity have been my primary tools for trying to keep safe. I struggle with visibility and fear of judgment; I am a people-pleaser and codependent in recovery. Most of my life I've struggled with low self-worth and shame (I'm proud to say I've healed a lot of this) and I heavily adapted societal and and familial conditioning that encouraged me to stay small, be fearful, not draw attention to me and generally not rock the boat.
My energetic container is, by many, MANY measures, much smaller than Beyonce's.
And yet, it is growing.
This is where the bump from Oliver's newsletter came in. I was reflecting on why his link, why then. I looked back on what had changed in my life the past 2-3 weeks before the link. And I was able to observe a few things:
I had committed to a regular meditation, breathing and EFT tapping practice daily for the the past couple of weeks before the link. Meditation, conscious breathing and EFT tapping (see an EFT tapping video I created for you here) are some of the best tools I know for steadying, grounding and expanding your nervous system to be able to hold more. EFT in particular is something I'm doing much more regularly and frequently and I think it had a big impact here.
I have recently been actively working on softening; meaning, holding less tightly to outcomes and desires and fears. I'm promoting my business course for people-pleasing women with anxiety and HSPs, Secretly Ambitious, right now, and after one journaling session a couple of weeks ago, I really just knew, I wasn't attached to the outcome of the enrollment numbers in a way I've been in the past. Whatever happened, happened. I felt an energetic softening happen in that moment I had that realization. When you soften a bit, your energetic and emotional body and container can open up to receive a bit more. It's like, instead of having a security guard bouncer turning away everybody at your front door, you're able to just throw open the doors and have more of a party.
I've also committed to a hypnosis and affirmation practice in a new, more regular way the past couple of weeks. Hypnosis and affirmations are the biggest way I work to shift my subconscious self-worth. I wrote about how I do affirmations here, and for hypnosis I use a variety of apps, including Michael Sealey on YouTube and Andrew Johnson's app. The reality is, if your subconscious believes something is unsafe or that you're not worthy of it, it will be hard to draw into your life. That's why many of us desire something like love or romantic partnership, but struggle deeply in having it; it's a combination, in my opinion (and own personal experience) of believing romantic love to be dangerous at some level and/or that believing (consciously or subconsciously) we're undeserving of it. (Your thing you struggle with could be more financial success or a different area. We have different thresholds for different things in your lives; career success and visibility could come to you easily but romantic love not so much.)
Finally, the post that Oliver linked? It was a post I wrote off in a dash, just being myself and tuning into what felt pleasurable to me to write. I mean, duh, right, but also, for me the past few years, there's been a tension inherent for me in the Soother and the way I write it. As I've transitioned into the role of coach and teacher, I think the Soother has changed, too; a much larger percentage of my content has been more serious, more teacher-y and how-to on self help concepts. That was where I needed to be as a creator as I built up my belief in my ability to teach this stuff confidently, but it has meant I have left some of my personality and voice and personal life experiences out of the Soother more often than not. I hope to return more.
So, in short, I think I significantly had strengthened my nervous system and self-worth in a couple of weeks, and that leap lead to this opportunity without me "doing" anything (aka, taking action, like, emailing Oliver or any other newsletter author asking for links). I was able to hold space for 1500 more people, and the attention (along with the responsibility and inevitable criticism or judgment that comes along with more attention and visibility) that Oliver directed my way.
Make sense?
Too often we believe the only way to achieve and get things we want is to "do", aka take visible action outwardly in the world (email people, post, hustle, work a lot, produce more and more and more) but with today's essay and exploration I'm inviting you into the concept of strengthening your energetic container as a way of being able to draw in, achieve, and receive more of what you desire.
Think of a tree who is so deeply rooted in the ground, its root system going deep and wide into the surrounding landscape. That tree grows so much taller, broadens its branches, becomes host to entire ecosystems and families of other animals. When you steady your nervous system and grow your self esteem, thereby expanding your energetic container and deeply rooting yourself in somatic safety and self worth, you draw in the same growth and attract more into your branches, so to speak.
This also leads me to want to explore the concept of what I call "energetic privilege." The reality is that most vulnerable communities and populations will struggle to have steadied and expanded energetic containers because of generational trauma, economic exploitation, racial trauma, and highly dysregulated nervous systems from living in fight or flight for so long due to the harm perpetuated by systems like white supremacy, the patriarchy and capitalism. And of course, if you're struggling to stay safe and keep your head above water in these systems, it's not easy to dedicate time to the tools that will help you regulate your nervous system and increase your self worth.
This also helps me explain why people who are, uh, bad or even really corrupt and evil can hold a lot of money, fame, attention, while people who are good, caring, giving can struggle seriously in receiving and achieving what should by all rights be theirs. The energetic container is a neutral one. Energy is drawn to spaces that can hold it. So a person like Donald Trump, due to his narcissism and conditioning, also has a pretty big energetic container, while perhaps you know of a loving, giving, angel on earth who is really struggling right now in many ways. I agree, it's not fair, but again, these are neutral energetic laws that are governing us and don't take into account right or wrong or good or evil.
That said, fortunately, so many ways you can educate yourself on increasing your energetic container are free and widely available thanks to the internet. For me it feels deeply important to share free resources on how you can steady and grow your energetic container so that all folks can learn to utilize this concept to begin to achieve and receive more abundance and more of what they desire and deserve in their lives.
So. Might you be ready to expand your energetic container? Here are some resources, and at the bottom, a suggested energetic container expansion routine I invite you to try for two weeks and see what happens.
Brad Yates has 100s of free EFT tapping videos on YouTube on a variety of different subjects. Pick a 5-10 minute video of his and try it for two weeks and see how you feel.
Toning your vagus nerve is a huge part of steadying a dysregulated nervous system. The easiest and quickest way I do this is to do 4-7-8 breathing every day, twice a day. I also love alternate nostril breathing for about 3-5 minutes a day.
Earthing or grounding to me is a very important part of my routine, or simply getting in nature once a day for 5-10 minutes, whether it's your park or your backyard or Yellowstone National Park. Work with what you have.
Hypnosis can be a great tool for self-worth and is easy as popping on a hypnosis track as you fall asleep. As I mentioned, I like Michael Sealey on YouTube and Andrew Johnson's app.
I do this vagus nerve exercise before bed.
And of course, very elemental self care practices do a lot for your energetic container. Removing or reducing alcohol and caffeine in particular, staying hydrated, movement, good sleep, staying off screens, ya know, all the stuff we know we should do.
Here's what I propose you try out 1-2x a day for the next two weeks.
Every morning do one short EFT tapping video, 4 rounds of 4-7-8 breathing, and 3 minutes of alternate nostril breathing. If you can, repeat in the afternoon or evening. This will take about 10 minutes.
Get outside once a day into nature, whatever that looks like for you. If you can get your bare skin on earth, even better.
At night before bed, do this vagus nerve routine.
Then: Pay attention.
See how you feel.
See what if any opportunities start to come into your energetic container. If you're consistent with the routine above, I believe they will be lovely and desired. And perhaps nothing shifts, and then it might be time for you to branch out and see what works for your unique energetic system; there might be other modalities or practices that are more useful to you (meditation, Qi Gong, exercise, yoga, etc).
But remember this: You are worthy of good things. And focusing on steadying and expanding your energetic container is one way you can begin to have more of them. Because you deserve what you desire. Promise.