Part III: My 21 greatest teachers, favorite things and biggest lessons from 2021
Happy Sunday, Soothers. Following up on my past two installments, here are the next and final 7 on the list of my 21 greatest teachers, favorite things, and biggest lessons from 2021. And... that's it for now! The Soother is officially on winter break!
I posted on my Instagram about resources and ways to work with me while I'm off this month here and also make sure you're signed up for my events, workshop and coaching newsletter here because I'll be announcing several one-off workshops this year (inner child, shadow work, and inner critic) to start with and I want you to stay in the know.
Let's close out this list of 21 teachers, favorite things and biggest lessons!
15. Egg vs. sperm wisdom: Just sit with me on this one. A lot of my readers are women who are burnt out and have been conditioned to hustle towards worth and productivity; aka, in the kind of language I'm about to use, they're too much in their masculine energy, meaning their lives are based on action, doing, moving. What I coached myself on this year and many of my clients was instead practicing leaning into egg wisdom, as opposed to sperm wisdom. Here's the dichotomy: Sperms are literally about racing to the end goal as fast as they can and competing against others and believing in a scarcity mentality where only one can win and you have to work as hard as you can and be as fast as you can to be that winner. Our society is over-reliant on this kind of wisdom. Sure, there's a time and a place for action and competition and quick movements, but if it's the only thing you're doing, it will burn you out really fast. So let's think about the egg in this scenario. She drops in once a month and nestles into the perfect spot for her. She takes good care of herself. She knows she's in the perfect place to draw in whatever she needs, no matter exactly where that space is. She has extremely strong boundaries and says no to almost everything that comes her way. She only lets in the exact right opportunity. She rests, she waits, and things come her way because she nourishes herself, trusts her timing and intuition, and miraculously, things still happen for her. They just happen in the opposite way most of us have been conditioned to understand how we can "get" things to work for us. I use this because I believe using and adapting egg wisdom in your own life is 100% an incredibly valuable way to "make" things happen without having to "do" things. Rest and nourishment and self-care and boundaries create opportunities and magnetize stuff our way, too. Remember, if it works for the most fundamental building blocks of life creation, it can work for creating things in your life, too.
16. Investing in coaches: I wouldn't be a very good life coach if I wasn't consistently getting coached myself. This year I worked with the following excellent coaches and I would like to recommend them to you: Dielle Charon, business coach. Nida Backaitis, shadow, life and leadership coach (and she was a faculty member at my coaching org, New Ventures West). Maggie Reyes, life and relationship coach. Mandyy Thomas, financial coach (I used her to get clear on my biz finances but she does general money coaching for anybody too). I can wholeheartedly recommend all of these amazing coaches. I also wanted to recommend several WoC coaches I am in a business mastermind with in case they might be able to serve you. LaTrice Huff, career coach for WoC looking to earn six figures. Cheryl Lau, coach for those looking to start a side hustle biz. Katie Jones, spiritual life coach and breathwork facilitator. Fernanda Barboza, bookeeping. Liz Fernandez, identity and mindset coach for life and business. Samantha Lee, weight loss coach. Erika Cruz, behind Purpose Driven Latina. Tiff Cheng, business coach. Mariela De La Mora, life and business coach for WoC and daughters of immigrants. Don't sleep on these people, they're amazing.
17. The bean protocol. This is the year I started eating a ton of beans. A ton! And it solved for SO MANY ISSUES I WAS HAVING. I discovered this manner of eating that's basically a Whole 30 plus 3+ servings of beans a day, the idea being that the fiber in beans helps regulate hormonal issues. For me, eating beans... stopped my hair loss (WHAT? It turns out my ongoing hair loss of the last several years was most likely due to estrogen and hormonal imbalances). It totally eliminated previously very severe PMS (or PMDD) symptoms I would have monthly. And it's easy and cheap as hell. I knew that something was going on for me when I significantly reduced gluten and my hair shed also improved, but beans is what took it to next level. I don't fully understand the nutrition or science behind it, but from what I understand the kind of fiber in beans helps bind to excess bile and hormones that may be re-circulating in your system and moves it out of your body. I would check out Unique Hammond who is a nutrition coach who has championed this style of eating, and also the blogger at PaleOMG, who wrote about how she used beans to clear her cystic acne. (I also did other important things, like I've previously written about, mostly reducing caffeine, sugar and gluten from my diet, that helped too; I think you might also have to do those thing to see effects, just adding in beans to a diet that has a lot of caffeine, sugar and gluten may not get you that great results, though I imagine it can't hurt.)
18. Tarot. I still remember a couple of years ago somebody wrote directly to me to tell me she unsubscribed from The Sunday Soother because I wrote too much about Tarot. Well get ready ya'll because this year took my Tarot appreciation and relationship to a whole new level. For me, it's been the most important self-trust tool I've used, and it's deepened my spiritual beliefs and relationship with the universe and my ancestors in incredible ways. It truly feels like I am carrying around the wisdom of my ancestors and the universe in my purse and I can talk to them anytime I want to. I credit this deepening to just having a really sustainable and regular practice. I use Tarot at the new moon; before client calls; when I'm feeling sticky on an issue to see what's underneath; in guiding me to wise business decisions; and more. Actually I had a moment this year where my Tarot deck told me I was getting codependent on it and it needed a break and I needed to back off, which was accurate. It's just so much fun to have something to turn to when you feel like you're alone that reminds you, even when you're physically alone, you're surrounded by love and wisdom no matter what.
19. How you get there is how you're going to be when you get there: I tell this story all the time but it's the wisdom I needed in my moment and I want you to have it to. When I was starting out my business I was really trying hard and fast to cross that elusive 6-figure marker to prove myself (to myself, and others) and that I could hack it as a life coach. My little tail was working itself off on the way to this. I was burning out, exhausted. I told myself, "WHEN I get to six figures, THEN I can relax." But a lightning bolt struck in the form of my business coach who told me, "Catherine, even if you made $500,000 this way, you're still going to be exhausted and have the same beliefs about money at that point. How you get there is how you're going to be when you get there." So I got clear: what did the version of me who made six figures do every day? Rested, walked, did yoga, ate well. She had a really good relationship with money and had moved out of scarcity mindset. She believed money would always come her way through her work. She did the kind of work her heart asked her to do, not the kind of work she thought would make her the most money. She made time for vacations and days off. All of these were available to do in the moment, but they felt scary. Was I really going to make six figures by taking more time off and like, doing freaking yoga? The answer is yes. When I became the woman who already made six figures in her business and started acting like that right away, that was what led me on the path to making my desired revenue. Because I rested I had more creative ideas. Because I worked on trust I felt more abundant. I became the person who had the desired goal... and the goal came naturally to me. What are you waiting for to to have to think will transform you? Instead, become that person NOW before the having. How you get there is how you're going to be when you get there.
20. The Dance of Anger: This 20-something-year-old book by Harriet Lerner was probably the best self-help book I read this year (and I read a LOT of self-help books). I struggle with repressed anger, passive-aggressiveness, need for control, rumination about others, crossing my own boundaries and letting others cross them, and a lot of resentment... it's a wild ride up in my brain. This book gave me concrete tools for breaking out of those patterns and showing me how truly they were self-inflicted, which is actually great news, because if they're self-inflicted and self-created... I can also change them. If you struggle with resentment and control, particularly in intimate relationships, read this. It's geared towards the straight cis married woman but would be valuable to anybody who sees themselves in what I've written here.
21. Radical personal agency: 2021 was the year I got clear: I was in charge of my life, every single aspect of it, and instead of that being horrible and terrifying, that became great news. I stopped outsourcing my emotional well-being to other people or my business. I did mindset work every day to start thinking the thoughts I wanted to think. I stopped blaming anybody for anything and started asking myself, "What can I do or impact or change here?" When I got super triggered by somebody, like I wrote about previously, I got radically curious and got to the root of the trigger instead of lashing out at the other person or demanding they stop their behavior. I also understand that most of the time when I was super triggered by somebody, I was projecting out on them some need that I was failing to meet for myself. I stopped expecting validation from anybody else except my own soul. This is hard and dirty work. We are so conditioned from the youngest of ages to believe that other people are responsible for making us feel ways, that external validation is what we should aim for, to be so deeply codependent on anyone and anything around us... and deconditioning from it is painful work. But powerful work. Instead of becoming the wobbly tree in the forest, roots half out of the ground, leaning on the other trees for support, I grounded, deepened my roots, grew straight and tall AND continued to be interdependent with the trees (aka other people and communities) around me. I'm sure there's more work to be done but this year really feels like it was the year I moved from codependent to interdependent in a deeply sustainable way. I wish this for you too. It can be done.