Tag: balance

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News from Jules | 06.18.2018 | What If the Storm Never Passes?

one lesson about integrity every week

You can wait for the storm to pass or you can learn how to bike in the rain.

Okay, the real quote is about dancing in the rain. But, the point sticks.

Life is about living.

And living it to the fullest, I believe.

Not the busiest. Full as in rich and satisfying.

Which life reminds us can equally take the form of being, as well as the doing.

I decided to go car-free in June as part of my ongoing Buy Nothing experiment and this year’s curiosity about my relationship with energy, our natural resources and my own. What are the trade-offs? Consequences? Benefits?

Feeling good about completing 48 miles (biking + running and walking) in the first week, I was all in. Rain all weekend? No problem!

Well, you know how cars can hyrdoplane on oily roads made slick by heavy rains after a dry spell? You guessed it. Bikes can too!

“Oh no” is right.

First week: 48 miles
Second week: 0 miles

Perhaps my life storm has not fully passed after the chaotic, one-thing-after-another month of May?

I was so hoping the shampoo breakthrough meant it had passed.

Laid up with a battered knee, I find myself in a surprisingly familiar state of mind. A living reminder right now, as well as an inspiring poster on my wall:

When one thing flows to another. When choices are obvious. When needs are met. And then some. When time is irrelevant. And the only place to be is here. ​

The time has been a gift. While recovery is new to me, retreats are not.

I cherish these times of being.

My sense has been that I mostly need to rest up and to focus any work on what’s critical, so that my body can focus on healing as quickly and effectively as possible. I am learning so much about my energy.

This is living life to the fullest right now.

By doing very little, but being very present in this opportunity.

Watching amazing documentaries about the Internet like Lo & Behold, reading excellent writing like Sherman Alexie’s memoir You Don’t have to Say You Love Me and interesting blog posts about bringing spirituality into your work, connecting online with new entrepreneur friends. All from my 40-year-old armchair, with my knee elevated and on ice.

As my needs become simpler, my life feels more effortless. My perspective grows broader and my heart opens wider. I am feeling grounded in what is truly essential as I haven’t felt in awhile.

Greg McKweon wrote in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less:

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions.”

I think I finally see the whole vision of how Everyday Integrity will guide people to stay centered in this increasingly distracting world.

As the saying goes, life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. Perhaps this bike accident and injury is an eye of the storm?

Either way, I’m learning how to dance (on crutches) in the rain.

May you move safely and simply through the week that you are given,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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News from Jules | 05.21.2018 | My Guilty Pleasure

one lesson about integrity every week

Last week when Monday felt so “off,” I was stressed about details like cashflow, yes, but more so whether I was off course overall.

I woke up Tuesday and I got out the post-its. And markers. And whiteboard.

I came up with what seemed like an awesome two-week sprint of business projects (like this except for 2 weeks).

That’s my guilty pleasure: planning.

Wait a second, that’s your guilty pleasure?

Maybe planning isn’t “unusual or weird,” but I’m growing more and more convinced that it’s a bit unnatural.

At least in the way, I do it. And the way a lot of people do it.

Here’s what I’ve been noticing:

Entering this second week, I felt good about having an action plan. But then, when my body wanted to work on bookkeeping and clearing out my inbox instead of creating the practice guides I started last week, which are actually all about presence, connection and balance. Oh, the irony.

There was so much tension.

Throw out the action plan??

As much as I’ve adapted to this new creative lifestyle, I’m having a hard time releasing modes of measurement, control, schedule, planning. It’s so uncomfortable. And, I’m not just thinking about big project planning, but the day-to-day stuff—the infinite ways we micromanage our lives.

This felt like a lot given I was already coming off of another “vulnerability hangover” as Alison Faulkner described in a recent podcast. Sure, they’re avoidable, but as Alison asked:

“Do you love your comfort more than your goal?”

No, I don’t. I love the goal of living from a place of wholeness into a space of sufficiency and empowering more people to live this way—wholly and soulfully.

This guilty pleasure of planning is overshadowing my natural intuition to notice and adapt to what’s going on right now. But without a plan, how do I know where I’m going and how to get there?

I can use my attention to guide my intentions.

After a gut check, I was pretty sure it was intuition and not procrastination. So, I’m going with it. Bookkeeping doesn’t generate cashflow, but maybe it will realign the energy. I’m trying to see the forest for the trees, though still unsure these are the trees that need tending right now.

Perhaps this is what Tami Lynn Kent is talking about in Wild Creative:

How living from our creative core, our wholeness, our essence, requires balancing the feminine (being, visionary) and masculine (doing, action) energy cycles so that we can really go with the flow, naturally intuiting the next right thing and then doing it.

Or as Phil Powers says about finding rest in every step, not only as I’ve been doing every week during Sabbath:

“Concentrating on how I move through the world is important. It’s why I reach mountain summits and life goals with energy to spare.”

May you follow your gut and enjoy energy to spare this week,
Jules

P.S. Did you know that libraries can order books that they don’t have? So cool! I put in requests recently and am happy to report that my local library, Multnomah County, now has Rhythms of Rest and the recently published Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World (hardcopy and Ebook) available. If you’re curious about more resources to learn about Sabbath, I made a handy list here. And, FYI, I’ll be opening registration for the Sabbath Circle running this summer soon. Yay!

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 
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What We’re Taking For Granted

What we’re taking for granted is how much we’re already doing everyday.

Whether you have a written (or typed) to-do list or a mental one.

Whether it’s organized by big rock or it’s a long stream of consciousness.

I’ll bet you are already doing critical things every day that really matter.

Exponential Benefits of Doing Things Every Day

The other day I listened to this podcast where Anthony Ongaro of BreakTheTwitch.com described the benefits of doing the same thing every day.

These were new-ish things Ongaro wanted to build into his routine in the new year, like reading more books so his goal was 20 pages a day. He was amazed at how this led to reading 2 novels in the first month of his experiment.

When he said he was doing 6 things every day that sounded like a lot to me.

I wondered, Are there 6 things that I’m doing every day?

Well, maybe not every day since when I observe Sabbath on Saturdays all bets are off — no work, no plans, offline.

But, the other six days a week?

Six Things x Six Days a Week

I was surprised at how quickly the little constants added up as I started to make a list.

And my list kept going past six things!

The first six were not new things like Ongaro, but what I’ve already been doing.

These 6 things have become habit.

Not in a routine per se, but as part of my daily rhythm, especially in the last few months since I switched up my work flow to prioritize writing.

Amazingly each small thing does act as a trigger to greater benefits that really matter.

This is probably why they’ve become habits that I take for granted.

Because the reward greatly outweighs the effort and the benefits contribute to my larger life priorities.

Right now, that’s devotion to obeying my body and building up my new lifestyle business (including this blog).

Here are the six things I’m doing every day:

Drink Lemon Water

A large glass of room temperature lemon water with 1/2 a lemon squeezed usually prepared the evening before and drank sooner than later in the morning seems to set my metabolism to better process food for the rest of the day and regulate my hunger. It has something to do with lemon processing as alkaline and balancing my body’s pH according to Joshi whose holistic detox I’ve done every new years since 2012. So I guess I’ve been drinking lemon water every day for the last 7 years! Whoa.

do Physical Therapy (PT) Exercises

I have 6 exercises at the moment to rehabilitate my right shoulder injured in yoga assigned by my physical therapist. This is the 5th time I have done PT since my 20s and I think the first time that I’m taking it seriously. Every day really adds up. I feel stronger and can do more at yoga each week, not only with my shoulder but my core strength as well. What’s been key is integrating the exercises into my movement throughout the cottage. Each one is assigned to a place I pass by that triggers a mental reminder.

say Grounding Prayers

There are 4 “prayers” that ground me at my personal altar, that holds my intentions for this spring season of renewal (see image above), and sets the tone for the day. Four sounds like a lot but it’s pretty simple and only takes about 5-10 minutes. I read the same poem from E.E. Cummings, then I read the same prayer from Julia Cameron, then I say my own prayer of thanks and blessings to the altar, then I review what really matters for the day.

Make a Meal

An egg for breakfast, tacos for lunch or a salad for dinner are some of the usuals. Many days I make all of my meals since I work from home. Even just cooking one meal aligns me with eating healthy and within my dietary needs. It also helps keep me on budget. And when the weather is nice, I often eat my meals outside, so I get a beautiful, slow, grateful eating experience.

Drink Hot Tea

Usually green (often Sencha), sometimes chamomile or black, I drink many cups of tea a day. I tried a cup of coffee once and it gave me a stomach ache. So, I’ve stuck with tea (Public Service Announcement: which I’ve learned can also make one nausea if too acidic on an empty stomach). It is absolutely ritualistic. The tea, the steam, the warm beverage, the big mug calms and hydrates me.

Go Outside

My home has a back deck with a luscious English garden-style yard, a 31-acre “front yard” via the arboretum park across the street and my neighborhood has a 96% walkability rating. I relish in this access to being outside and in touch with nature. Going outside I breathe in fresh air, I connect with the world outside my head and home and I find so much perspective, especially in how nature dwarfs our human-made world.

Habituated, But Very Intentional

All so simple and yet so profound.

I haven’t always done these things every day. It’s cumulative from lessons learned, practices adopted and necessities prioritized (for instance, doing PT right now).

Nowadays, I take it for granted that I’m doing them every day. And how much I benefit.

These 6 things take mere minutes each, yet are clearly so important—essential—to my life. As I reflect on and write about each I can see how they contribute to me staying centered in my wholeness.

And from this place of wholeness I can offer more energy toward the other essentials I’m actively building my life around right now: writing, teaching, selling, exercising and having fun!

Give Yourself Some Credit

So, what are 6 things that you’re already doing every day?

I bet you could jot them down right now in less than 6 minutes.

And I’ll bet it’s pretty surprising to see how necessary and affirming these small acts of devotion are for yourself.

Look how much of what really matters we’re already doing every day.

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Redefining Rest

Redefining rest Jules in camping hammock

Rest seems to be another “4-letter word” nowadays, as distasteful as the others.

Not in all cultures. But definitely English-speaking ones.

Why?

Because it is an affront to what we prize most: growth.

Growth through action, through productivity, through efficiency. Just like nature actually.

Except, nature knows that growth is part of cycles, our annual four seasons as one example, the decades-long regeneration of a forest after a wildfire as another.

The cycles include periods of incubation, of growth, of harvest, and of rest.

Well, duh, right?

Most of us know this, and yet that’s not how we live our lives, none the less our days.

How Will I Rest Today?

Over the last few years I’ve been exploring my relationship with money, with stuff and this year, with energy. The most important and renewable resource in my life.

I’ve made many changes to better explore my energy and its natural rhythms.

One of them is: Getting grounded at my altar, saying prayers and setting intentions for the day.

Every morning, I ask myself this list of questions based on what’s most important in my life right now…

  • What am I writing today?
  • What am I selling today?
  • When am I exercising today?
  • How will I be outside today?
  • How will I rest today?
  • What is most important…today?

Are you wondering how I fit a nap in everyday?

I don’t.

I have reclaimed a definition of rest that balances my days. And, I bet it would serve you as well.

More Than Napping

Okay, occasionally I do take a nap on weekdays. And frequently during Sabbath.

I’m actually a big fan of sweet little cat naps. I think most of us are.

For awhile there in 2016, I even tried designing my work schedule around a “siesta.”

But, instead of waking up mid-afternoon feeling refreshed, I was usually groggy and grumpy like a toddler.

Why? Because the nap was treatment for being overworked and exhausted (just like a 2-year-old in a growth spurt).

I was out of sync with my rhythms of activity and inactivity—of rest—often dysfunctionally so, as our world is nowadays.

I was out of sync with my rhythms of activity and inactivity—of rest—often dysfunctionally so, as our world is nowadays.

Thus, we have a negative, limited understanding of rest as sleep, as napping, as lazy. Just so, we have a positive, limited understanding of work as activity, as productive, as busy.

They are not opposed: one bad, the other good. They are a team.

It’s time we thought of them this way. We must redefine rest so that we can reclaim our natural rhythm and truly live life to the fullest.

This is even easier than it sounds: simply remembering what rest means.

Rest is to “cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength.” Just as work is good, so is rest. It is the yin to the yang of exertion, of effort.

When either work or rest becomes too much, it is unenjoyable, often oppressive. And a sign that something is off. This is not the good life.

Rest is the New Hustle

People are noticing. Just look at the instagram feed of posts using #restisthenewhustle.

And people are preaching — not only faith leaders, but doctors, entrepreneurs, yogis — we must redefine rest.

As I was doing research recently, I was excited to discover that in the last seven months since I created the Sabbath Course as a way to explore and practice bringing more rest into our weeks and days, these three new books have come out that I totally agree with [quoted below per Amazon.com descriptions].

  • In Rest, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, writes that “deliberate rest,” as he calls it is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life.
  • In Sacred Rest, Dr. Dalton-Smith “shares seven types of rest she has found lacking in the lives of those she encounters in her clinical practice and research—physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social, creative—and why a deficiency in any one of these types of rest can have unfavorable effects on your health, happiness, relationships, creativity, and productivity.”
  • In Daring to Rest, Karen Brody writes, “now is the time to break the cycle of fatigue and return to your truest self—the [person] you are when you’re not constantly exhausted.”

If you’re curious about these and other books about rest and Sabbath, check out the Sabbath Resources doc I created with recommended books, poems and more.

Rest Reclaimed

That all makes perfect sense, right?

Oh yes, that is what rest means. But, understanding and remembering a truth is one thing. Actually acting on it is different.

Here’s my definition of rest that helps me balance my days. To borrow Aretha’s tune, “R-E-S-T-I-N-G, find out what it means to me…”

Rest is about Relaxation. It is Effortless. It is Stillness. It is Turning off.

Did you notice? REST.

Yup, it’s even an acronym! Pretty handy, eh?

While I have yet to read those books, I have a hunch that Pang, Dalton-Smith and Brody would agree with me in the following ways of reframing our dysfunctional, limiting beliefs about rest.

So, what does it look like “in real life”?

Here’s some examples:

Rest is Downtime

  • Take a break: I stop to take a break frequently when I’m backpacking. The harder the terrain or conditions, the more frequently and for longer. This break offers a chance to eat a snack, get a drink, and reorient.
  • Pause for a breath: In music, the rest symbol offers a chance to take a breath. Often a deep breath. There are whole, half, quarter, eighth rests and so on.
  • Take quiet time: Remember when we had quiet time back in preschool and kindergarten? Removing the stimulation and interaction, it is a time to sit or dawdle or daydream or play quietly.

Rest is Rejuvenating

  • Take Savasna: At the end of most of the yoga classes I take, we are invited into savasna, or corpse pose. During this simple restorative pose of laying on my back and melting onto the floor, I find my mind opens up too.
  • Take a shower: In a workshop about oxytocin, the love hormone, I learned why showers are so inspiring. They have many of the elements that produce oxytocin and feelings of relaxation and trust: warm, enclosed, dim lighting, and safe.
  • Sit on it: When I’m writing, there’s a point that ideas slow down or stop. When I do something totally different for awhile, fresh, new thoughts often pop up.

Rest is Harmonious

  • Reset your heart rate: When I take a slow walk, I’m at my resting heart rate. Unlike a sprint, it’s a pace that I can maintain for a long time.
  • Get in flow: We all have our thing that gets us in the zone, in flow. When I’m designing PowerPoint presentations I totally lose track of time and it feels effortless. It’s doing, but a restful kind of effort.
  • Switch gears: Really learning how to ride a bike was mind-blowing. It’s all about the sweet spot of efficiency. The bike works with me as I switch gears depending on the road.
Practicing Rest

Those are just a few examples of how we can answer that question of: how will I rest today? and reintroduce Relaxation, Effortlessness, Stillness and Turning off into our days.

As I better understand myself as someone with an especially sensitive, attuned and energetic body, I see that it is essential to rest as hard as we effort — and in all areas of work: paid, service, caregiving, domestic, emotional, spiritual.

We must reclaim rest in our lives, not only in our routines.

Given how out of sync so many of us are in our energy output, this invites regular practice.

Fortunately, there are so many ways, and flavors of these ways: through Restorative or Yin Yoga, through meditation like Zen or Khundalini, and through Sabbath, a weekly practice of rest and renewal.

The key is finding the sweet spot of sufficiency in our energy. Balancing the yin of rest with the yang of exertion, of effort.

Here we retain our wholeness and this integrity allows us to adapt easily to whatever life presents.

Photo Credit: Jordan Cole

Join others from around the country in the next Sabbath Course as we explore and practice together, inspired by an interfaith, personal approach to this universal tradition. This 7-week course includes fun weekly activities, weekly community gatherings online and your own practice. You’ll experience what students describe as a “positive and significant impact on my personal growth and spiritual exploration.”

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The Unseen Wheel

unseen wheel

While the days march by in a line across our calendar, they are actually cycling through the seasons.

The unseen wheel is always turning while we grind away on the day to day.

This is so easy to forget.

And such a relief to remember.

Reality Bites

I got home last night after visiting a friend for a long weekend.

I had already done my usual Sunday chores and then some, including stopping at my post office box, before I left so the reentry was quite smooth with few steps.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, then unpacked, heated up some dinner and opened up the pile of mail.

At the bottom of the stack was a reality check.

I wish that meant it was a check with earnings for recent time spent living in the present, going with the flow, seeing things as they truly are, instead of how I want them to be.

Nope. It was the opposite.

It was one of my business credit card statements.

The long list of purchases had been necessary investments over the last year of getting my new business off the ground. Or seemed necessary in order to manifest the business.

Perhaps that was just the way I wanted things to be because I believe so much in it?

This was not actually the reality check.

It was the total amount of the credit card statement.

Reality Check

Given the pangs in my gut each time I used the card recently, I knew it was getting up there.

Expenses out without much income in is discouraging. And when you’re starting something new discouragement doesn’t help. At all.

And so, I had been focused on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time without getting bogged down in the details.

What I hadn’t been paying attention to was how up there.

And it had crossed my imaginary tipping point of what seemed safe and doable. Now, it was at the level that seemed risky and scary.

That made my whole gut clench like a fist and yet also hollow out. Like a black hole imploding into itself.

I could instantly feel the hole, perhaps a hole that had been slowly growing over the last year, but that denial had been filling?

I did not feel whole.

Like gusts of cold breeze through an open window, many emotions passed through me as I sank down into my 45-year-old armchair.

  • Hurt by this consequence of past decisions that seemed right at the time,
  • Mourning for past successes not just breaking even, but saving ahead,
  • Anger at well-intentioned but broken systems,
  • Overwhelmed by the task of repairing the imbalance,
  • Scared by the possibility of not closing the hole.

And yet, I knew there was nothing I could do in that moment.

I could eat my dinner and watch a DVD from the library. And make some tea.

When the electric kettle whistled, I went over to the window sill where it’s plugged in. Something outside caught my eye. Something white.

With freezing temperatures across the state, I had driven home that day in rain, sleet and snow. But, arriving home the streets were bare.

Several hours later, in the dark as I was watching a movie and sitting with my feelings and this reality check, snow had quietly begun falling outside.

I looked closer, surprised.

Yes, the yard was in fact dusted with the powdered sugar snow.

Just as the credit card statement had snapped me into the moment, the snow snapped me into the bigger picture.

Reality Check

Of the seasons, the unseen wheel constantly turning. Always in motion.

Of which, gives us our days, weeks, months.

Of a system constantly harmonizing to realign with what’s showing up.

Of which, I am a small part.

And in which I am whole.

And when I consider the whole — of my life, of the natural world, of a mysterious force — I can once again find trust.

That things will work out, somehow.

And perspective. That things work themselves out over time and space, sometimes lots.

And peace.

And so, I find my way back to the natural rhythm as I continue to focus on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time.

Without getting bogged down as I grind away on the day-to-day.

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