I took a picture of this doorway a little over a year ago in Santorini. That feels like a different lifetime, traveling outside the United States pre-COVID, but I love this image and wanted to share it with you because I dig how it feels like possibility.
Like all you have to do is walk through the doors being presented to you. Walk towards YES.
Right now, for me, YES feels like showing up for the hard stuff. The shadow work. This isn’t a post about tarot, but it’s worth mentioning that my card for 2020 was the Devil. I wasn’t happy about it. The Devil represents over-indulgence and addiction. Sometimes it can be a hint that you need to loosen up a little and have fun, but I didn’t think that’s what it meant for me.
It took me a long time—nearly half the year—to realize what my wee beastie, my devil, was: my scarcity complex. Once I noticed that, I couldn’t stop seeing how, in one way or another, scarcity was running the show.
Shadow Work
While there are always areas I can grow in, a big part of the work I'm being asked to do this year (by my heart, my tarot cards which stalk me with very consistent messages, and all my inner work) is to ditch anything that reeks of scarcity. A tall order in these times, with so much uncertainty.
Anyone else having a hard time trusting that if you leap, there's a net that will catch you? Scared that there are only so many nets and there might not be one when YOU look down?
As I peer more closely at this wiley little gremlin, I'm beginning to see that ditching our scarcity mentality is about trusting ourselves.
Trusting in our worthiness. Trusting that our words matter. Trusting that we matter. Trusting that we have something to offer this world, and that there are people in the world who need what we have to give.
Permission to show up for yourself. In the writer's seat, in the moment when we indulge in comparison (hello, Instagram FOMO), when we have a book idea and then see a book just like it. When Self-Doubt, the Inner Critic, and their good friend Fear come out to play.
When we read our work and believe it to be terrible.
Saying YES to Your Creativity
I came across these wise words by Mary Oliver recently, and I feel like they really speak to me - to all the ways I might be saying NO to my creativity because I'm scared it won't be enough to catch me when I fall.
When we give our creative work power and time, we're signaling to ourselves and those around us that we believe there are enough seats at the table. Enough shelf space in the bookstore. Enough great ideas for all our beautiful minds.
Power and time is a great big freaking YES to creative leaps. Our work and our devotion to it - and the writing life - make up the net that will catch us when we fall.
There are enough nets. And we will weave more if anyone finds themself short one. We can hold each other.
Now, when I have a decision to make - about my creativity, my writing, my life in these uncertain times - I'm beginning to ask myself this question in order to banish scarcity and other mindset gremlins:
How can I trust my inner wisdom in this situation?
How can I trust...
• The knot in my stomach
• The bad vibe
• The niggling feeling
• The warm YES, shackles off, I'm doing this feeling
• The NO
• The not knowing and the being OKAY with the not knowing
• The gut feeling
• The tight chest
• The not-feeling-it
• The FEELING
• The jazzy, zippy, yummy electric currents
• The body
• My own direct, lived experience
• The proof in my personal pudding
Are You Shackles On or Shackles Off?
Author Martha Beck talks about the concept of tuning in with your body and recognizing if it feels “shackles off” (yes, hot, free) or “shackles on” (no, cold, imprisoning) in many of her books. While there are many strategies, it can be very simple:
Get a baseline (see below)
Use a statement for the thing you’re deciding about doing or not doing. Example: I am going to grad school.
Tune in to how your body feels. Is it the shackles on or off feeling? Is your body saying NO (shackles on) or YES (shackles off)?
Trust your body. It bypasses your inner critic like nobody’s business.
How To Get A Shackles On / Off Baseline
Martha Beck Inner Teacher / Essential Self Exercise
I often refer to this as “calibrating our inner compass to point to our North Star.” Connecting to the body and bypassing the mental terrain where the inner critic, the shoulds, and your mother live
“ Psychological suffering always comes from internal splits between what your encultured mind believes and what feels deeply true to you.”
This following exercise in Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity – I’ve simplified here for our purposes:
Step 1: Say the following to yourself….
I am meant to [insert something you don’t like doing] “I am meant to call my health insurance company.”
Step 2: Notice how the body feels when you say this.
Step 3: Say the below to yourself.
I am meant to live in peace.
Step 4: Notice how your body feels when you say this to yourself.
Working with these phrases, you can begin to really feel and listen to your inner teacher. The first sentence is always whatever activity you want to explore for an integrity gut check, and the second sentence is always the same.
This first time through, you’re establishing ground zero for how your inner teacher / essential self / integrity feels when it’s in and out of alignment. You can keep coming back to this ground zero when you need to refresh your memory.
This work establishes your baseline for shackles on / off. I am meant to live in peace (or a more resonant sentence of your choosing), will give you specific physical sensations of YES. While your opposite, that will be a NO. The YES or NO sensations will likely vary in degree in intensity depending on how how stakes the situation is for you.
Once you have this baseline established, either of these approaches (shackles on/off or the “I am mean to”) should help you greatly when trying to trust your gut, no matter how large or small the choice at hand is.
Listening to our guts, moving toward YES, doing the hard inner work....
This is the trust fall we have with ourselves. Our writing. The universe itself.
Leap.
Fly.
Land.
