My 21 greatest teachers, favorite things and biggest lessons from 2021
Happy Sunday, Soothers. As we wind down this year I wanted to do some reflecting from everything I experienced because, it was, as they say, a doozy. The second year of coronavirus not withstanding, I had, like all of us humans, some pretty high highs and some pretty low lows, sometimes in the very same experience. I also learned some tools that have significantly impacted my life, both in genuinely useful ways, like helpful in the day-to-day of running my life, and more meaningfully in perspective shifting ways, too.
I wanted to share these with you over the next few weeks before I take a pause on the Sunday Soother newsletter and podcast to focus on running and teaching my Introduction to Intentional Living class. I'll share 7 lessons today; 7 on December 26th; 7 on January 2nd; then I'll take at least the rest of January if not some of February off too from the newsletter and podcast. I'll also be off of Instagram for all of January and have done my annual unfollowing. I never know with these breaks how long or short they might be; I trust my mind and body and heart to let me know when they're ready to write and create again.
If you're looking for Soother content to tide you over, my Instagram, Soother archives and podcast archives will do ya. Plus, if you join my IIL course, of course I'll be live in there, sharing and teaching. Also, if you like this kind of content you can revisit my 40 lessons from age 40 post, too.
I hope some of these lessons and ideas help some of you as they'v helped me and I'm sending all my love.
My 21 greatest teachers, favorite things and biggest lessons from 2021
Death. Death has been a teacher for us all in the past two years and for many of us well before that. However, I had managed to avoid death for a very long time. I ran from friends who were experiencing it in their families; I was, I regret to say, the kind of person who avoided going to the funeral if I possibly could. My first-ever funeral was my grandfather's when I was in my mid-30s. I'm not proud of it, but I have compassion for my past self who was trying to protect herself from significant pain and emotional overwhelm and frankly, sheer fear and terror, which is what I now realize I was doing, especially after my teens when my mother had her own brush with death during an advanced breast cancer diagnosis. But if you're like me, you must know now, you cannot protect yourself from this pain of loss, from these experiences. And this year was the year I decided to face that fact. When my beloved grandmother had a stroke in April I spent two weeks helping with her hospice, then was with her as she passed. (I talked much more in-depth about this experience on this podcast episode here.) Just under two weeks ago, my boyfriend's father passed away unexpectedly, and I'm spending a month with him and his family in Indiana as they sort through the aftermath. The lessons? Too many to count. The experience with my grandmother was one of the most emotionally painful and also the most transcendent and profound and the honor of my life. I learned presence; the painful gift of raw emotions coursing through your body and you being forced to experience them; the realization at an even deeper level of how nobody talks about death in this country, leaving too many of us unprepared and exposed emotionally and logistically. The lesson of acceptance of what is, one of the hardest for humans to learn. I am also learning how to support beloved ones (my mom, my boyfriend) as they experience painful loss of one of the most important figured in their lives.
Buddhist teacher Judy Lief wrote, "I have noticed that the more distant we are from death, the more fear arises." So it is not the distance and avoidance that will improve our relationship with death; it is getting closer and more intimate with it, where we can.
I teach a lot of what can be referred to as relational repair. Many of my clients had difficult emotional ruptures in their young lives, or felt emotionally neglected or misunderstood, which lead them to fear and avoid intimacy and vulnerability with others. And just like with humans, we can experience these same ruptures with concepts — money is one I see many of my clients have a fearful relationship with, for example. And certainly death. So what I leave you with today is, if Death were a person, how would you describe your relationship with them? Does that sort of relationship serve you? If not, how would you like the relationship to be? You don't have to necessarily be best friends with Death, or completely comfortable and buddy-buddy with it, either. But how could you quietly sit a bit closer with it, listen to what it might be trying to tell you about your own wild and precious life and how to spend it?
Food. This lesson has been a long one coming. I've had what I would say is at least a slightly disordered relationship with food since my teens, primarily use it as a method of control and protection. Also of virtuousness; I would tell myself which foods were "good" or "bad," and when I would do stuff like try to cut out sugar or whatever it wasn't because I was trying to nourish myself, I was trying to be "good" and superior. This year somehow everything around that changed. I *have* done things like largely cut out gluten, sugar, alcohol, caffeine (not completely) but I did it from a completely different energy, a non-restrictive or self-punishing one: Instead, I truly began to notice how these foods often made my body feel awful. How I often used these foods (especially caffeine and sugar and alcohol) to attempt to regulate a deeply disregulated nervous system. How I used them for artificial energy so I could work harder, faster, rest less, numb anxiety. How when I overindulged in those foods, I would beat myself up and shame myself and wonder why I was so lazy or couldn't hack it.
In her book The Highly Sensitive Person, Dr. Elaine Aron discusses her concept of "the infant body." Since HSPs are so easily overaroused and overstimulated, and also, because we often early on learn the coping tools of disassociation via numbing, we often are super disconnected from our bodies and since we're so disconnnected can often actually be in somewhat of an abusive relationship with our bodies when we're pushing them much harder than they can truly handle, given their innate sensitivities. Aron recommends coming back into care of and touch with your body by thinking of it as an infant, and this concept truly helped me this year with how I nourished and cared for my body. I paid attention to how I felt after gluten or alcohol for example, both in the moment and in the hours and days afterwards and I could no longer deny that they did not serve me. I also began to truly understand in a real way I hadn't before that I actually deserved to feel deeply good in my body. My body deserved for me to treat it as a cherished infant. Can you imagine pumping an infant full of caffeine and sugar, or having it stare into a phone before attempting to fall asleep at night, or, when it cries, making it drink alcohol? It shifted my perspective completely. This is such a complicated topic to talk about because it's not the food choices themselves that are a problem, in my opinion; it's the energy from which they are taken. Many of us fall prey to a diet and wellness industrial complex that tells us certain foods are good or bad, or that we're good or bad people if we eat certain ways. What I am suggesting here is careful contemplation and attention to what truly nourishes you, and trying to bring more of what nourishes you into your life, while noticing what doesn't make you feel good short or long-term, and slowly reducing that over time. It took me years and being 42 to really come to this place, and I suspect I will continue at some level to struggle with it, so take your time and be gentle. It's not about being "good," with food or eating any one particular diet, it's about reducing stimulation and coming into gentle noticing of what works with your body and what works against it. For me, that was gluten, alcohol, caffeine and sugar. For you, those may be completely fine but red meat or dairy may be an issue. You deserve to be in contemplation about what makes YOUR infant body feels good and cared for.
Caffeine: This is related, but this was also the year I finally kicked coffee to the curb. Not entirely, but I basically never drink it now. I have written about this before; I've basically been trying to quit coffee honestly for like 3-4 years. It finally clicked this year, along with the concept of the infant body and learning much more deeply about the nervous system, that I was using coffee as an artificial stimulant to push past my rest boundaries. It also REALLY kicked in how bad it was for me when I tried a week without drinking it this year and the detox was so awful — I felt like I had the flu and was on the verge of vomiting for a few days. I knew anything that felt that bad exiting my system could not be a great choice for me, personally. I still drink caffeine, in that I'll have a cup or two of decaf in the mornings, and every once in a while an espresso or matcha, but my relationship with coffee itself feels permanently altered in a good way. If you are on this same journey, give yourself grace, this took me many years and I'm sure it will continue to unfold. The best tip I can give is to do it genuinely like over a time period of something like 6-12 months. The first 3 months, try switching to half caff but keep drinking the same amount of coffee. The next three months, keep half caff but lesson the amount. The next three months, try one cup of half caff and then only decaf. And then the next three months go only decaf and see how that is (or do this over 12 weeks instead of 12 months). Cold turkey is available to you but if you do that and you've been a big coffee drinker I would honestly recommend preparing to take a week off of work and other duties, for me that's how long that knocked me on my ass.
I also cant’ believe how underdiscussed the role caffeine (and I think sugar too) plays in anxiety and emotional well-being overall (and diet overall too). I quit caffeine and I would say my overall anxiety reduced by easily 50%, maybe more. If you struggle with anxiety, try quitting coffee for a few weeks and see if it has an impact on you. Even if it’s just 1-2 cups a day; that’s all I was drinking for the last few years and I didn’t think that was enough to make a difference or too much of an impact but it clearly was.Not using my phone one hour before bed or within waking up: I think without intending it this past few items have a theme in common: genuine self-care. It's not sexy to talk about nourishing foods, cutting coffee or phone time as self-care — perhaps it can seem too basic. But along with reducing certain foods and coffee, I can't deny that cutting back my phone time significantly improved my mental, emotional and physical health. The best way I found to do it was try 30 days when I did not look at my phone an hour before bed or within an hour of waking up. That's it, the rest of the day I was free to go ham scrolling on Instagram. But those two hours made a massive difference and I continue that practice (mostly) to this day. If an hour seems too much, try 30 days where you don't look at your phone before bed or after rising for 30 minutes, or even 15 minutes. Please start incrementally, it is how change actually happens and then lasts. Anyways, I "know" we all "know" we should be on our phones less, but this tactic is the only way I was able to really start reducing screen time meaningfully, so I hope it helps you too.
Monday Hour One: I've recommended this time blocking and productivity strategy and approach before in the Soother but restating it here. There's several components to it but basically what I do is on Sunday night I sit down and look at my calendar for the week ahead. On my Notes app on my computer I write out everything that is definitely happening (client calls, mostly). Then I note where I want to do exercise or take walks or make meals or whatever else, or like, even shower. Then I schedule in other stuff, like time to write the Soother, etc. A sample day looks like this:
MONDAY
7-8 breakfast
8-9 walk
9-11 write Sunday Soother
11-12 shower
12-1 Jamie (client)
1-2 Afua (client)
2-325, take a walk or meditate, prep for next client, write client notes
325-430: Maya (client)
430 - 530 go to grocery store
530-7 cook & eat dinner
7-9 watch shows, do whatever
I used to fear this kind of time blocking and structure would be restrictive but it's instead helped me deepen my self-trust to do things when they need getting done; it prevents me wasting hours in between client calls just dicking around on the internet or whatever; and it helps me schedule in stuff like, you know, showering and preparing meals which I was not doing at all beforehand.
Controlling inputs vs. outputs: A lot of what I write about has to do with releasing control over areas of your life where you never had it, but then stepping up and taking extreme personal agency and control over the areas you can influence (aka, pretty much just your thoughts and actions). I've done a lot of work in trying to increase the diversity in my readership and client based and the needle hasn't budged much to my frustration; I still serve primarily white straight women. So I figured, while I still do what work I can on that front, I can take action in other areas. I've invested in many coaches over the past two years, and they've been 75% women of color (I'll share some in a later email so you can check out their services). I've diversified and plan to further my guest interviews on the Soother so they were 50% BIPOC this past year. I tithe 10% of my salary and it goes directly to organizations that support BIPOC. I volunteer as a peer coaching mentor in a community dedicated to women of color coaches (and I'll be brought on as staff next year and be working for my powerhouse biz coach Dielle.) I joined a business mastermind that's majority women of color. Is it perfect? Far from it, but it's what's within my control to take action on right now and that's important to me to keep doubling down on that.
Here's another example from a coach in the aforementioned community about controlling inputs vs outputs: I've been spiraling over "income planning" recently. Trying to figure out my exact monthly numbers based on my goals and how to hit them. I did a prompt by @Catherine Andrews (Peer Mentor)’s IG content and asked myself - to what am I giving away my power to? & I was like MONEY. NUMBERS. SPREADSHEETS. It got agitated today when 2 failed payments came through (I practice a lot of neutral thoughts when this happens like, "sometimes people just need to update their card" but lol it was like okay, rlly NOTHING is planned in business. So, I wrote down that moving forward I would not "plan" my income, but rather plan my outcome! The outcome I will see every month is that a) my bills will be paid and b) I will have my own back and c) these clients will get coached coached. That's the plan. That's Standard. Promised. Unshakeable. I was really proud! It finally got me out of my spreadsheet🎉
Where in your life are you focusing on outcomes or outputs where you should be focusing on inputs? It makes a world of difference and reminds you you are not a passive participant in any situation.
Mindset work. I remember distinctly a post on Kottke.org a couple of years ago where he had discovered the power of mindset work but had been loathe to embrace it because he had considered it "woo woo bullshit" but when he embraced he found... it helped tremendously. That's been my journey, too. I used to roll my eyes and think mindset work was a kind of toxic positivity, but now, well, I'm a life coach, and.... it's not. It's some of the most important work you can do for your own well-being and also for in going after any dreams or success you wish to cultivate in your life, from dating to career and beyond. What is mindset? Alia Crum from Stanford defines mindsets as the “lenses through which information is perceived, organized and interpreted.” Mindsets serve as an overarching framework for our everyday experiences — and they can profoundly influence how we react in a variety of situations.
What I've found in my life and that of my clients is many of us are by and large participating in a very fixed mindset with a heavy dose of negativity bias and some elements of victim thinking or rather, passive participant thinking. A fixed mindset will tell us everything is pointless, it's too hard to change, it's too late to change, everything is doomed, the world is awful, everything is out of our control — it's basically the equivalent of a heavy "what's the point?" shrug. However a flexible mindset, trained to see more opportunities and possibilities for growth, will participate in life much differently. And it's not just about your own personal life and success. Which kind of mindset do you think is better equipped to help us with climate change? Racial justice and changing white supremacy? Believing that one day we could perhaps truly solve for economic inequality? To me, mindset work and teaching yourself to have a more flexible and positive mindset is going to be crucial in the salvation of humans.
If you're interested in doing mindset work and learning more about it, it will be a focus of my Intro to Intentional Living class. I'll give you the mindset tools and trainings to shift your mindset so you can go after your goals with gentle nourishment and success.
That's it for this week! Hope you enjoyed these 7 lessons; see ya next week with the next 7.