Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. – Prentis Hemphi
Last week I decided to block my ex on Facebook.
She didn’t do anything wrong, she didn’t start dating someone else (or if she did I don’t know about it), and I’m not mad at her. I blocked her because I love her, and I love myself as well.
I’m going to my best to explain why I did it, what I learned about myself, and hopefully, you’ll learn something about how to love yourself and others in the process.
There’s something compelling about reflecting on your work and what you’re creating with your life. You probably know the answers you always give at cocktail parties or events by heart, but if you dig deeper into the nature of your work, you may find things about it you don’t understand. In being with those questions, you may discover something totally new about your work and life that creates more wisdom and love.
You may think your life was handled until the past week. You may now be discovering that there are places in your life that are out of integrity, that can’t manage some pressure or change. Nothing to beat yourself up about, but an incredible opportunity to learn.
To be human is to be sick. Despite our best efforts, our most incredible drugs, our most brilliant minds, sickness is human.
And so with this crisis, we come face to face with this truth. Not because this is exceptional. Getting sick is incredibly ordinary. But because we’re seeing it all at once.
We are all staring into the face of what it is to be human for once together. We are all seeing together how frail life is. We are all seeing together how hard it is to keep us going.
And it’s SCARY AS F*CK!!!!
Choice is funny.
It’s driven by all of these hidden desires and instincts. There are more dark alleys inside each choice we make than we care to admit.
Especially when it comes to choices at the moment, words we said, reactions we have, people we reach out to, and those feelings we hold back.
SOME CHOICES ARE BIGGER. They create deliberation, a struggle between this and that, stay and go, buy-in, or sell out. They can become a crucible for which it feels like there is no escape.
Eventually, we make a choice.
And we see.
“You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.” ― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
Here’s what you want when you hire a coach:
And yet, most coaches feel completely lost when it comes to finding a good coach to work with. They poke and prod, they guess around, they hire a celebrity (and are usually disappointed) they hire someone affordable (and you’re highly underwhelmed)
How do you avoid this? How do you hire a good coach you ‘afford’ that helps you get to where you want to go?
It’s one of the most important and most challenging things you can do as a coach.
Let’s look at a few essential ideas.
Many people see the holidays as a space for joy, which is a beautiful sentiment and intention. But the holidays are also a space for grief. For some people, the holidays remind them of turmoil and abuse. Having time and space with family wasn’t a blessing but a threat.
For others, the holidays remind them of what’s been lost: family members, loved ones, time. Whether it’s the loneliness of the first Christmas in a new town or the grief of the first or fifth holiday after the death of a beloved friend or relative.
Sometimes when we look back, we judge the year we’ve had, we feel the failures of the past twelve months, we compare our bounty to the bounty of others and find ourselves, our wealth, and our lives lacking.
All of this is normal, and yet, it’s easy to feel a sense of shame, a desire to hide or fix our grief in a season where it seems only joy is allowed. It can push into isolation or hiding your feelings.
And so my invitation is to allow space for yourself to grieve this year over the holidays. Let yourself cry about the Christmas mornings you didn’t have, cry over the year that went wrong, cry over the loved one who isn’t with you around the hearth. Let your tears flow out so that the joy and gratitude might as well.
The holidays are a merry time of year and letting yourself weep so that your heart may open and feel the spirit of love and hope might be the very thing that allows you to feel close to those you love and those you’ve lost.
This Christmas, I’m going to take some time to journal, to grieve, and to love the tender parts of myself. Then I’ll wipe my tears, eat a candy cane, and watch Die Hard (which is totally a Christmas movie BTW) and allow the new space I’ve opened up to be filled with love and gratitude for the incredible life I lead.
I hope each of you makes space for whatever you feel and that you find love in the strangest of places.
Love,
Toku
PS If you feel terribly alone or overcome by grief in the holidays, get help! Call a friend or if nothing call the helpline. Even if you aren’t suicidal, having someone to share your feelings with can help. Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-8255
Discovery is scary because we don’t know how it’s going to go. We are literally walking off the map. In order to avoid the fear of this we try to map things. So we know where we’re going but also so we know how it’s going to go. This is one of the biggest ways to kill off life, possibility, joy, and excitement.
To be in discovery is to be willing to look and really see what’s there. Some people have described it like opening your refrigerator to find the grand canyon. Now THAT would be a discovery. But that’s not the only way to discover, it’s just one way.
What’s important is how you’re being. If you are being discovery the world unfolds like magic and horror and magic. If you’re being I KNOW HOW THIS IS GOING TO GO then it collapses into a chasm of your beliefs.
That’s why there’s so much possibility in discovery and so little possibility in knowing how it’s going to go.
As fall turns to winter (yes even here in Florida) I’ve been thinking a lot about limiting and endings. As a dreamer, I often find it hard to give up hope. As a person who is persistent, letting go has always been a challenge for me.
But as I deepen in myself, and work with more businesses as they grow, I’ve begun to see the normal cycles of life and death that naturally occur in business and life.
Which is why I’ve been reading an excellent book called Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud. In his book, he talks about our resistance to ending things and how important it is to keep asking what we want to prune and what we want to keep.
And I wanted to share 3 questions from the book I found esp. helpful.
If you’d like to send me your answers I’d love to hear them and if not I hope they serve you well.
Love,
Toku
PS Winter is coming 😉