I’m too hungry to write. Just back from a hike at the tail end of a day that felt, not busy, but full, and which included the final session of the Owning Pink Self-Discovery series with Caroline Bobart (to which I will devote an entire post when I am fresher). The energy that has been released across the last twelve weeks – and especially in today's class – has left me blissfully empty, and wide open to being filled with that which serves (which in this moment looks like a nice summer salad with yellow tomatoes and orange peppers and goat cheese and a dressing that somehow incorporates Dijon mustard. Kind of wish I had capers. I’ll make due).

Not everything begins as an empty vessel

In contrast, I just finished having a conversation (or was it a diatribe?) about how I don’t think I can establish a coaching practice by building it and hoping they will come. I can’t build a container and expect it to stock itself. Rather, this feels like something that needs to mirror whatever happens in me over the coming weeks and months. I still feel strongly compelled to eliminate as much distraction as possible. To jump on the bus of radical self-care. To reflect and celebrate and just BE for awhile. I’m not stopping work so that I can start the work of planning and strategizing. Whatever is next has to build from within – from some truth inside me that is already poised to burst through the surface like a sunflower sprout. It’s not going to take too much digging.

The mystery of nothing

Speaking of just BEing, last night I was in a group of academics and someone was talking about how science is proving the benefits of meditation. She mentioned specifically how it starts to take us away from the mentality of always “doing.” Someone genuinely asked the question, “What’s the alternative?” I was dumbfounded by the confused silence that followed, before piping up, “um ... being?” - no, I said it with more authority because it's one of very few things I KNOW - and having it hit the group like a tabloid headline: hard to believe, but nonetheless intriguing.

There are so few people who understand why I don’t want to be busy.  How I’m not just going to replace doing with more doing. Including me. And yet it’s a calling that won’t shut up. “Be quiet!” it yells. “Sit still!” Not in an elementary-school-substitute-teacher way, but in a way that encompasses my highest knowing. To remind myself and check in daily around that will be a practice all its own.

It’s funny, the things some of us take for obvious. Never assume that what is truth for you is truth for another. Never assume that the resources you possess are known to another. I surprised a client the other week with the quote, “leap and the net will appear.” I was floored that she’d never heard it before. I was delighted by how it opened her mind.  

I'm happy in this moment it's been brought again to mine.

Now I’m REALLY hungry. Off to fill myself with all good things. I invite you to do that too. However it looks.

Into the void,
Joy