News from Jules | 08.27.2018 | A Little More Effort Than Expected

one lesson about integrity every week

This spring, life has taken a lot of effort.

Actual exertion of physical healing, plus emotional and mental stress.

Plus, perhaps even more effort to try and stay centered amidst it all.

After such a chaotic May, June and July full of one mishap after another—I’d had enough.

Sure, most incidents were beyond my control and simply accidents, but if I was attracting any of that negativity and hardship to me it was time to change my magnetic field.

Drama-free was the intention I carried into August, my birthday month.

I would start this next year off on the right foot, not the wrong one.

And, drama-free it has been.

Simply because I wished it so?

I doubt it.

I have been choosing the path of least resistance. Choosing easy. Choosing effortless. 

Listening to my body and letting my intuition guide me to the simple yeses and the clear no’s.

When I have sensed resistance or extra effort, I pay closer attention to see how I can ease up.

So many opportunities have arisen in just a few weeks. So many yeses. It’s actually been feeling a bit too abundant.

Is there such a thing?

Yes, too abundant means too much of a good thing.

This starts to feel like overwhelm and saturation.

Who decides what’s just right and what’s too much?

We do.

To each their own, as the yogis say.

Yin is a style of yoga that’s typically slower and more restorative. Just right usually happens through ease.

I’ve found it a wonderful class to take on Sunday nights, kicking off the week after an equally restorative Sabbath.

“Well, this is taking a little more effort than expected,” my yin yoga teacher remarked with surprise last night during class.

Instead of simply melting into the suggested pose, I could feel my muscles engage a bit just as she did.

Sometimes just right requires some effort.

But, we can still approach it with ease.

As effortless as August has been, September is looking effortful.

Looking like it will take a little more effort than expected. Especially to stay centered amidst it all.

This is typical. There’s usually a shift from the summer rhythm into the fall schedule.

And yet, I’m still a bit surprised.

Technically, summer extends all the way until Sept. 22, but the flurry of the new school year seems to stir up energy for all of us.

Given the opportunities of the last few weeks, now I’ll be traveling for work and my family is taking a trip. I have new gigs as well as new projects kicking off in September. And, I’m moving!

Sound familiar?

Well, probably a different list. But a list, nonetheless.

So, what do we do when life is taking a little more effort than expected?

Do we lean in and effort harder?

Do we take a nod from yin yoga and effort easefully, with the least amount possible?

I suppose, it depends.

What feels right to you?

May your just right be just right for you this week.

Love,
Jules


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News from Jules | 08.13.2018 | Where There’s a Will…

one lesson about integrity every week

A week ago, I ran in the 216-mile Cascade Lake Relay race on a team of 12 runners.

I think this was my 15th race and 8th relay race. I knew what I was getting into. So, I thought.

I knew this race was harder than most I’d done before:

  • higher elevation,
  • longer legs,
  • hotter temperatures
  • and compromised air quality due to wildfire season.

I was excited for the challenge and to cross it off my bucket list.

Once I signed up, I set up a training schedule and determined my goal: to complete the race.

And then I got injured.

Except I didn’t have months of lead time like I did for the Seattle half-marathon that I recently wrote about in my blog.

I only had eight weeks until race day to heal and be ready.

Was I being stubborn? Was I too determined? Was I stuck on a goal?

One of my friends has joked about me: “Where there’s a Will-iams, there’s a way!”

I refined my training schedule with my Physical Therapy team and focused harder on my goal: to complete the race.

But, completing the race did not mean at any cost. Success looked like running easefully, causing no harm or new injury, and recovering quickly.

When I ran the Seattle Marathon in 2008, I was nervous as hell to do it and hell bent on finishing it. I did. It was hard and it hurt a lot.

Read the story about this race in my latest blog post: When 2,364th Place is Winning.

I have learned so much since then.

This time, I increased my pace time to 12-minutes-per-mile so that I could run intervals: 4 minutes running, 1 minute walking.

A week before the race, my physical therapist gave the thumbs up on my knee.

But, it wasn’t until the day before that I knew I could successfully complete the race: temps were down, winds shifted the smoke and I knew my body could safely do it.

During my second of three legs around 4 a.m. that Saturday I was running 5.6 miles through a forested, back country road in La Pine, Oregon.

It was a brisk 35 degrees out as I inhaled the fresh pines and spotted constellations in the vast night sky as one after another runners passed by.

“Good job, keep it up,” they said.

“Thanks! Did you see that shooting star?,” I excitedly asked one who was racing by.

No response.

Well, I did.

I was following my friend’s advice from that first half-marathon: “Have fun and enjoy the moment.”

This was my favorite leg that I’ve ever run.

Besides taking in the scenery for those 67 minutes, I kept my body and mind solely focused on the task at hand: I breathed deeply and simply kicked one foot after another.

My focus was having energy to spare all the way through to my finish line.

A few stray thoughts did cross my otherwise clear-as-the-night-sky mind:

  • Since 2008, I have learned how to be more satisfied making decisions and moving on than making the perfect decision. And I am happier.
  • I am finally learning how to pace my energy and find balance, instead of doing “all or nothing.” This is being a completer.
  • ​​I have come a long way—in every way. This feels like winning.

Where there’s a will, indeed.

May you find ease this week in honoring your heart’s needs and commitments.

Love,
Jules


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When 2,364th Place is Winning

When 2,364th Place is winning first half marathon

It isn’t a question of winning or losing—in life or in running.

The question is: Are you a  competer or a completer?

After I signed up for my first half marathon in 2008, the next thing I did was go to the library and get some running books.

If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.

The beginner’s marathon training books had some pearls of wisdom in goal-setting that clearly apply to more than just running.

They instructed that once you’ve got a training schedule in place for running and other activities, like yoga and cycling as cross-training, then determine your goal: Are you going to be a  competer or a completer?

A competer is someone who trains for a certain pace or overall time and then seeks to beat. Perhaps seeking a personal record. This is what we think of as “winning.”

A completer is someone who seeks to reach the finish line through running, walking, hell or high water. 

Then, the most important step: setting your race goal and being satisfied with it. This is harder than it sounds.

Nine months before the race, I received an email from my friend Robyn from Boston about running the Seattle half-marathon once she had moved to town, along with her friend, E.B.

They had already run several marathons, triathalons and Ironmans.

I had not.

It turns out that training was a series of firsts:

  • every time I ran a mile farther,
  • training in the pouring rain,
  • many injuries and
  • committing to one of my most demanding goals yet.
Knowing What’s Good Enough

There are two kinds of decision-makers according to an article I read in Real Simple magazine in 2008: satisfiers and maximizers.

Satisfiers just want to make a decision and move on.

Maximizers just want to make the absolute best decision possible. This feels like winning.

Unsurprisingly, the article concluded that generally “satisfiers” are happier people through their ease of decision making.

Whereas the “maximizers” may have the occasional euphoric decision-making successes, they are generally stressed out all the time due to an acute case of perfection.

So, what does making a choice versus making the best-choice-ever-invented have to do with running?

The marathon training books say that once you decide to be a competer or a completer you have to stick to what that means.

Train with that focus in mind. And don’t change your tune once you’ve crossed the finish line.

It was my first half-marathon. There was no baseline. It would have been easy to compete with myself, set a speed target, train for it and try to crush it.

I wondered: Why was I doing this in the first place?

To see if I could do it. 

I don’t have a runner’s body. I had never run that far before. The obvious decision was to simply finish the race—to be a completer.

And yet, I kept considering options until I decided that the best decision possible was to be a completer.

What I’ve learned since then is that it’s actually really difficult to be a “completer” when you have a “maximizer” mindset.

It takes truly being satisfied with making the decision, any decision, and moving on with it, in order to complete things—come what may.

Otherwise, you’re still competing with yourself. And unless you’ve made that perfect decision and achieved the perfect outcome, you’re not actually satisfied.

Not that competing is bad. It can be very motivating. It’s just not necessary for winning.

My official race results for my first half-marathon were 2 hours and 23 minutes, putting me near the middle of my division, 472 of 840 (that would be the slow “completer” division) and overall, I came in 2,364th place.

I was thrilled to just make it to the finish line—this was winning—though noted some disappointment that I was 10 minutes slower than expected.

I was not fully satisfied even though speed had not been the goal.

The goal was to finish what I had started nine months before.

It’s the Journey, Not the Destination

I could have practically had a baby in the length of time I trained for the Seattle half-marathon I ran in November, 2008.

While I have no idea what labor is like, I imagine some of the pain I experienced during the run is somewhat akin to beginning contractions.

In fact, the whole eight-month process was pretty painful.

The day before the race I met a friend for tea at Victrola, a hip Seattle coffee shop in the Capital Hill neighborhood where my brother lived at the time.

While waiting for my friend to arrive I couldn’t help eavesdropping on the surrounding tables.

One woman said to another as she packed up her stuff, “Have a fun time with the race tomorrow!”

The other woman responded, “Yeah, right! It won’t be fun!”

So, if it sucks so much, why run a half-marathon?

It’s all about the journey.

You get to see what you’re made of.

Training for eight months was a bit unnecessary and very conservative.

The proactivity was worth it.

I was injured twice over the eight months, once throwing out my back and then again during the 220-mile Hood-to-Coast relay race, which stalled training for weeks. I was sick several weeks before the race.

And then I busted my tailbone during a soccer game the week before the race, which threatened having to call the whole thing off.

Luckily, after a few days of heavy ibuprofen intake and butt icing I was able to go for a short run without much pain, but a lot of soreness.

Perhaps it was just a preview for race day.

After a delicious carbo-loading dinner of chicken and pasta, bread and beer with my friends the night before the race, I set out my running gear and breakfast like it was the first day of school.

As tired as I was from the three-hour drive up to Seattle that day, when I hit the futon, I could not get to sleep for the life of me, just as the beginner’s running book had predicted.

It was like Christmas Eve, but more nerves than excitement.

In fact, I don’t think I had ever been that nervous in my life.

It felt like some kind of internal mixture of a flock of butterflies, a gerbil on a work-out wheel and a case of carbonated soda.

Here Goes Something

We slept in until 5:30 a.m. and then hustled to dress, eat and get a ride downtown just in time for the early start time.

It was a damp Pacific Northwest morning around 40 degrees.

But that didn’t bother the mobs of thousands of completers and competers flocking the start line.

Apparently that year had unprecedented, record-setting registration.

My stomach was in knots. There was no way we were going to make it to the bathrooms, we couldn’t even get to the start line.

A minute or two before the starting gun shot, Robyn, E.B., and I hurdled the barricade and squeezed into the crowd headed for the start line.

The gun fired and it was happening.

My competer friends set off and within a couple blocks I was left on my own.

For the first half a mile I was disgruntled that I had followed the rules and not sneaked my iPod into the race like everyone else had.

So, instead of rocking out to my running jams like Kanye West [Reminder: this was 2008], I kept myself entertained by people watching and sight seeing.

You know, just like riding the bus.

Except you’re running.

For 13.1 miles.

Over the Hills, Through the Woods

The first five- to six-miles were scenic running through downtown, over the 1-90 bridge and under the tunnel, I actually caught myself thinking, “Well, this isn’t so bad. It’s just like a long run.”

Because I had worked so hard to get to that start line I was careful to follow my friend’s advice during the race: “Have fun and enjoy the moment.”

What an amazing lesson in being present.

Throughout the race I looked around thinking, how often do I get to run down the middle of a downtown Seattle street or through an arboretum full of fall foliage or inside a freeway tunnel?

And then came the first major hill of many to come.

Less present to the surroundings, I became totally attentive to my body.

It’s probably a good thing I only learned a few weeks after the race that the Seattle Marathon is one of the harder courses, not typical for beginners.

At mile nine I tried my first GU liquid energy bar.

I needed something as miles nine to eleven through the woodsy park were deceivingly serene and totally brutal.

There were several high-school runners slightly behind me narrating all the upcoming hills. Oh joy.

I wanted to run faster to get away from them, but I couldn’t. It was taking all of my energy just to keep running.

All I could think was, “this is BS.”

At least I could look forward to my cheerleaders coming up near my brother’s house at mile eleven.

I smiled and waved at them as I passed, all the while my body felt like a used car that was blowing bolts and falling apart one piece at a time.

The last two miles were not pretty.

With pain shooting through my knees and chronic IT injuries, I ran for a few minutes, walked for a few, and then sprinted the last few hundred yard until the finish line.

If nothing else, I would finish strong.

Two hours and twenty-three minutes and I was a completer.

This was winning.

Totally Worth It

Eight months of build up, time and commitment only for the goal to be attained before brunch.

Was it worth it?

During the race, I kept thinking: “I could have sat on the couch in sweatpants watching a movie in the same amount of time that I had run 13 miles.”

But watching a movie is being a spectator to adventure.

Over that eight months, two hours and twenty-three minutes I had been living adventure.

I had tested what I was made of, had challenged what I thought was “best” and had learned that I had a lot farther to go than 13.1 miles to be truly satisfied and winning at life.

News from Jules | 08.06.2018 | Are You Ready for Adventure?

one lesson about integrity every week

How is this going to work?

Is it going to work?

What have I gotten myself into?

The adventure has begun as soon as these questions start coming to mind.

Less cold feet or nerves, this is curiosity kicking in. Wondering what lies ahead on the known but uncertain path.

If it were more certain it’d be boring and less known it’d be scary.

This is adventure.

I happen to like adventure. Okay, love, adventure.

Not exploring the Amazon by myself kinds of adventure, but the running-a-216-mile-relay-race- on-a-team-of-10-strangers-and- 1-friend-kind like I did last weekend.

Or running a half-marathon.

After I signed up for my first half marathon in 2008, the next thing I did was go to the library and get some running books.

If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.

The beginner’s marathon training books had some pearls of wisdom about running, and about life. Once you’ve set a training schedule, then determine your goal:

Are you going to be a  competer or a completer?

competer is someone who trains for a certain pace or overall time and then seeks to beat. Perhaps seeking a personal record. This is what we think of as “winning.”

completer is someone who seeks to reach the finish line through running, walking, hell or high water.

The most important step: setting your race goal and being satisfied with it.

This is harder than it sounds.

There are two kinds of decision-makers according to an article I read in Real Simple magazine in 2008:

  • Satisfiers just want to make a decision and move on.
  • Maximizers just want to make the absolute best decision possible. This feels like winning.

Unsurprisingly, the article concluded that generally “satisfiers” are happier people through their ease of decision making.

Whereas the “maximizers” may have the occasional euphoric decision-making successes, they are generally stressed out all the time due to an acute case of perfection.

For my first half-marathon adventure back in 2008, I settled on being a completer—to train and make it across the finish line.

Read the story about this adventure in my latest blog post: When 2,364th Place is Winning.

What I’ve learned since then is that it’s actually really difficult to be a “completer” when you have a “maximizer” mindset.

It takes truly being satisfied with making the decision, any decision, and moving on with it, in order to truly complete things, come what may.

Otherwise, you’re still competing with yourself. And unless you’ve made that perfect decision and achieved the perfect outcome, you’re not actually satisfied.

Not that competing is bad. It can be very motivating. It’s just not necessary for winning. 

And definitely not necessary for adventure.

What have you gotten yourself into lately? Are you ready for adventure?

Everything about that half-marathon had taken me outside my comfort zone and into my courage zone.

This is what I love about adventure: it’s fun and we learn a lot.

When we’re in our courage zone, life is an adventure.

May this week bring you to the edge of your courage zone.

Love,
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! 

The Practice of Becoming Whole Again

the practice of becoming whole again cracked bowl

I found a bowl in the cupboard the other day as I was transitioning my home altar from spring to summer for the Summer Solstice.

The bowl was still in 3 pieces from when I dropped it months ago.

I love this bowl. It’s one of my favorite seafoamy colors. It’s the perfect size for holding keys or change or offerings (as it is in my new altar). And it was my Mom’s.

I’m not sure why I haven’t tried to put it back together before.

Perhaps I thought it was too broken, so was saving it for a craft project?

I stocked up on super glue recently and I’ve been gleefully glueing everything back together—my trail running shoes, my faith stonewhy not this bowl?

I glued two pieces together. Then the third wouldn’t fit!

Argh.

Turns out, it would have fit perfectly if I had glued all three pieces together at the same time.

Tricky but doable.

I jammed it in there the best I could. It’ll still work as an offerings bowl etc. but there’s a big jagged edge. Like a crooked scar.

Too Broken to Be Whole

When I was 20 years old and my Mom died unexpectedly, it was my heart that broke into pieces. Similarly, I set it on a shelf because I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I sort of put my heart back together, but it took me years to put the last piece in—to fully grieve, to forgive and to be whole again.

No right or wrong, just is.

And no coulda-woulda-shouldas, though I often sensed the now lesson learned that “glueing” all the pieces back together at once—as hard as that is—would create more immediate wholeness.

Tricky but doable, indeed.

After I glued the bowl back together, I shared this lesson learned on Facebook and some folks reminded me that: “In Japan they add ‘gold’ to the cracks, to highlight that the cracks are part of its history.”

Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.

Becoming whole again with beautiful golden cracks.

Healing the deepest hurts

This is what it felt like happened to my heart last week when my family spread my mother’s ashes in a place that was special to us and to her—a nearby mountain she had climbed 15 times by the time she was 28 years old and started having the three of us kids.

Losing her was a sudden and deep wound. And the recovery was long and deep.

So many years later, my eyes and heart sobbed as deeply as the day her spirit left us.

As the ashes lingered on my finger tips then caught the wind in a tiny poof, I could feel the solid mountain beneath my feet.

Deep breaths. Still moments. A blessing shared out loud sealing a universal ritual in a sacred place.

“May perpetual light shine upon
the ashes of all who rest here.

May the lives they lived
unfold further in spirit.

May all their past travails
find ease in the kindness of clay.

May the remembering earth
mind every memory they brought.

May the rains from the heavens
Fall gently upon them.

May the wildflowers and grasses
Whisper their wishes into light.

May we reverence the sense of presence
in the stillness of this silent mountain.”1

The crack was painted with gold.

I was able to easily flow from this moment into the next—sharing snacks and champagne on a picnic table with the grandkids—recovered to a seemingly normal state.

This is what we patiently seek.

Really Seeing Ourselves

What all is healing in you?

Is it getting the space and attention it needs at the stage that it’s at?

We are all healing.

We all have cracks that can be painted gold.

They don’t make us stronger, but they can give us strength.

The world needs you to repair what is divided.

Healing is a process of becoming whole again.

We think of it as slow or fast, but it’s actually timeless.

Sometimes healing takes years before we reach integrity again—for us to be unimpaired, undivided.

Start The Process

Since becoming injured in a bike accident in several weeks ago I’ve been acutely aware of the stages of healing wounds:

  1. Shock Stage: Triage
  2. Immobility Stage: Protection
  3. Growth Stage: Rebuilding
  4. Mobility Stage: Recovery

That’s my own words, not the terms medical professionals use, based on how I’ve experienced them whether it’s been my body or spirit that’s been healing.

With this recent wound, I’ve watched in awe my body doing what it naturally knows how to do. My job: to stay out of the way. 

“The healing process is remarkable and complex, and it is also susceptible to interruption due to local and systemic factors…When the right healing environment is established, the body works in wondrous ways to heal and [revitalize itself].” Online Source

Now that the scabs are gone, skin grown back, bruises faded and I’m walking and running again it appears that I’m all better.

But, I’m not.

There is still pain with certain movements, fatigue from too much use and instability in my balance.

More patience, more healing.

That’s why the recovery stage is such a surprisingly difficult stage in healing. The process of returning to a normal state.

But what is a normal state?

When everything is so healed that there are no cracks, no weakness? As if it never happened?

I don’t think so.

Perhaps the normal state is when our renewed strength is challenged, yet remains stable.

This does not mean we are unbreakable. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But we are whole again.

Whole with beautiful golden cracks.

The empowering and discouraging truth

Whole doesn’t mean finished. How could it be?

There is no finished state of life.

Not for nature, not for humans.

While my knee is on the mend, I am just now moving into protection mode as the shock wears off about the financial reality and compounded debt I’ve discovered as I’ve been doing my 2017 bookkeeping and preparing taxes for the extension deadline.

We are constantly in flux between healing one thing or another.

This can be discouraging or empowering. You choose. 

It’s key to not get stuck in any stage, especially shock, like the broken pieces of bowl I left sitting on the shelf for months.

Give each stage it’s time to be, then move on.

Stuck is different than immobility. Immobility has purpose.

For instance, my knee swelled up immediately to protect itself and stabilize. Then I stopped moving for a few days to give the knee time to adjust and start rebuilding once it settled down. The swelling needed to recede in order to actually heal, so that I could move again.

Stuck is uncomfortable because you feel “broken.”

You’re not. You’re just not making progress toward wholeness.

Once you start, the healing accumulates. And so does the resilience.

You come back easier, sooner, faster.

You don’t get stuck in a stage.

You glide through the healing process with energy to spare, focusing on recovery. Recovering wholly and soulfully.

So that even amidst the continuous and constant healing process of living, you feel glued together—not broken.


1 Blessing adapted from original by John O’Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us, a beautiful compilation of blessings to consecrate life’s transitions and heartfelt moments

News from Jules | 07.09.2018 | Finding the One

one lesson about integrity every week

It takes a village to raise a child, they say.

Well, I say: it takes a race track to sustain an adult.

There’s nothing like a big change or injury recovery to remind us.

We are the only one in the driver’s seat of our own life—our race car. But, to stay on the track and in the race, we need support.

I know, I know. Not that life is about winning or losing, that’s not the point of the metaphor.

The point is the support:

  • The pit crew that quickly changes the tires, tightens bolts, cleans mirrors
  • The sponsors who contribute and show their support
  • The fans who show up and cheer along

Over the last month of limited mobility as my knee has been healing from the bike accident, there has been so much of this support.

So much more of this support, I should say.

We always need a pit crew, sponsors, fans. Not just when big things happen, but in our day-to-day when little things are broken or healing.

These people are often in flux, relative to the circumstances of our life—a reason, a season, a lifetime—and and to our needs at that time—emotional, physical, spiritual, all of the above and/or more.

As such, sometimes they’re on a project right now or sometimes they’re a best friend in a cycle of closeness.

My longest standing, closest friendship is going on 22 years. Most of which we’ve lived in different countries. There have been months without communication. Right now, we text every few days.

It’s not actually about the years or depth, but there is always a meaningful connection with these people.

That’s why they’re your pit crew, your sponsors, your fans, not just some person in the stands, some acquaintance in your life.

Bottomline, all of this support doesn’t fall on “the one.” There is no “the one.” 

That’s the advice I was given during graduate school about finding a professional mentor and about finding a husband, actually. Same goes for a best friend. So stop looking.

“You can’t meet all your needs through one person,” she said.

Not only because one person can’t shoulder this burden, but because they can’t be good at everything, nor available all the time.

It’s been very clear to me these last few weeks that I could not have depended on one person to do everything I needed. And if I had, that one “relationship bank account” as Stephen Covey described, would have been way overdrawn.

Especially if that one person was myself. 

Instead, I look to my pit crew. And my sponsors. And my fans. 

But, especially my pit crew. Because they have the capacity, the skills, the attention to offer right now. To be in the thick of it with me. Not just cheering me along, but rotating the tires and getting me back out there on the track.

Who’s in your pit crew right now? Who’s crew are you in?

As an aggregate, I believe this is how we can “find” the one, how we stay whole, how we stay true to the only “one”: our soul, our self. This is a whole life.

May your wheels be greased and your road smooth this week.

Love,
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! 

News from Jules | 07.02.2018 | Are We Living What Matters Most?

one lesson about integrity every week

There will be no parades, no Statue of Liberty crowns, no plastic flags, no strawberry, whip cream and blueberry decorated pound cakes for me this Wednesday.

My resistance?

No, actually just lack of plans and still limited on mobility.

Besides, that is not what this day—this declaration of independence—is actually about.

With everything going on, one could easily justify going “on strike” this Fourth of July.

And by “everything going on,” I mean this sense of one-thing-after-another-can’t-catch-a-break inertia.

This is what I’m hearing from folks in my life.

And, so much of what I’ve been feeling personally for the last few weeks.

But, wait. The other day, I stopped and wondered:Is it really one thing after another?

  • Or am I just looking for the things to add to this list now?
  • This list of how my life, my reality and the world is unraveling?
  • Maybe things are unraveling and/or maybe we’re choosing to focus on the parts that are falling apart.

Brene Brown reframed the midlife crisis as a “midlife unraveling” in her recent blog post:

The truth is that the midlife unraveling is a series of painful nudges strung together by low-grade anxiety and depression, quiet desperation, and an insidious loss of control.

Ugh. That sounds awful.

And honest.

And useful.

Why? Sounds like an opportunity to me.

To assess what is. And of that: what matters most?

And then the hard question: Are we actually living what matters most?

Because this is our legacy.

And this is what the next generation (heck, everyone, but especially kids) is taking in.

Not what we say, what we do.

Show, don’t tell, we’re told as writers.

So, what is this showy, plasticy, red-white-and-blue day about? Especially if this place we claim as our home is having a “midlife unraveling”?

It’s about living what matters most.

Not just “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” No, that’s the “tell.”

Independence, self-sufficiency, innovation, self-expression, transformation, adventure, and faith.

These are the values this country was founded from.

This is what we’re celebrating.

And all of the people who lived these self-evident values into colonies, into a country, into a society.

I believe that what matters most we often take for granted.

It’s good to have a nudge to pause and name what we know.

This Wednesday is a great time as you’re mesmerized by fireworks overhead or those cool, zinger bees that buzz around the ground, to reflect on these deepest values so that we may live them more intentionally.

Live them into the possibilities that always lie within.

May your week sparkle with meaning.

Love,
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! 

News from Jules | 06.25.2018 | What Are You Protecting?

one lesson about integrity every week

We know more than we think we know.

Many wise people talk about this. And I believe it too.

Then, how come we so often think we know things that we are actually clueless about? Things we can’t know. Yet.

Perhaps we are too “lost in the energy of the problem”?

As Michael Singer wrote in The Untethered Soul:

No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of the problem. And…generally problems are not what they appear to be.

Well, that’s the truth, isn’t it?

Problems need to calm down. They need to breath.

They need space so that one can get to the heart of what’s actually going on. What actually needs to be overcome.

When my bike hydroplaned on the wet rail tracks and my knee slammed into the concrete three Sundays ago, I knew immediately that my knee was a problem.

Week One:

  • Within the hour it swelled up and I couldn’t bend it to climb even one stair. Uh oh.
  • On advice from a friend with First Aid experience and my trusty Healthwise Handbook, I waited for the swelling to settle down.

Week Two:

  • Then, I went in to get x-rays that confirmed no break, fracture or sprain.
  • But, still I could barely walk. My knee was too swollen for the docs to really know what was going on.

Week Three:

  • I saw the physical therapist (PT) a few days ago and now we know: it’s a strained MCL (ligament that runs along the inside of the knee) and knee cap contusion (which is a fancy name for bruising, but I like it because it sounds as bad as it hurts).
  • My PT nodded when I asked: “On a scale of 1 to 5 for knee injuries, this is a 1, huh?”
Not that bad, all things considered.

Still a problem right now.

But, one that she could not have diagnosed this specifically when she had so little information to work with 12 days ago.

“No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of the problem.”

When I first read this in April, I wondered: what problems do I need to settle into deeper?

Which might be a question that’s echoing in the back of your mind right now.

I see now that it’s not a matter of me going deeper into a problem—that’s just getting more lost in the energy of the problem.

It’s the energy that needs to settle. The energy is protecting something.

Something pretty important, probably. What are you protecting?

Once the energy dissipates, then we can see what it’s protecting and why it flared up.

We have to move past being consumed in the energy of the problem in order to get back to a place of wholeness, to a calm, creative place of seeing things the way they actually are.

So that we can see the many—specific and useful—ways they could be different.

And that is how we stay whole even, and especially, as we heal.

After all, the whole cannot be whole without all of you.

May this week bring you extra space and discovery,
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! 

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! 

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!