I Choose …
Falling in line. Photo by Sandra Butel
I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk.
beautywalk is my life’s path and my intentional way of seeing the world. As I take one step after another I pause to look for beauty both inside and outside of myself. I see my connection to the world around me and to every other human being; all of us being both extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily ordinary at the same time.
Seasons Come
It is a foggy quiet morning and I can see traces of raindrops that cling to the bottom edges of the 8 paned doors that lead to the glorious spectacle of fall colours outside. The edges of the trees are outlined in the yellowing tinge of their impending deaths. A letting go and a grieving is mirrored in the world around me and I am comforted by the structures and strictures of this latest place I call home. I am seated in a cozy nook filled with pillows of various sizes and shapes in a muted orangey pink colour. The digital ticking and tocking of a kitchen clock plays out its rhythm above the double sized fridge. A new fire that I have started with a piece of zip and an original Cook’s Match and a few pieces of extra large kindling crackles in the other room; promising me warmth on this cool fall English day.
My desire to wander outside is minimal and I am enjoying my pause as a bit of hibernation. Today is a scheduled writing day for me and the topic that comes to mind is how nature shows us the way. I am thinking about how we all have seasons and how these seasons insert themselves into our daily lives.
The questions that come to my inquisitive coach brain in this moment are:
What can we learn from nature?
How can we make room for the impact the yellowing and falling leaves, the cooler days and the lessening of the light, has on us?
A Great Fall … Photo by Sandra Butel
A Great Fall
I am reminded of so many autumns in the prairies and the first time I would have to turn on the furnace and the resistance I would feel when I would do it. The next step would be to pull out all of my sweaters and toques and mitts as I shivered mentally and physically to think of winter peaking out from its post just around the corner.
Today I find myself in the 2nd half of my life or I could call it the 3rd quarter, or the fall of my life. The job that I have given myself at this point in my life is to be with what is, to take some clear breaths and pull in the clean, cool, fall air as I give myself a little more empathy and compassion at the letting go.
These times of transition will visit us throughout our lives. A familiar one that I am seeing amongst others of my generation are when our adult children leave their childhood homes for University or a full-time job. In order to venture forth they have to let go of the safety of home and the familiar roles they have grown into there and face the unknown of being on their own. This is the case right now with my son Nico, who at 20 is venturing out into a brand new world of all sorts of pleasures and pains and challenges and opportunities for growth. And I, as a Mom whose only child is leaving the nest, am going through my own transition of developing a new type of relationship with him and with my role as Mother to a fully formed and capable adult. I can tell you that there has been lots of grieving and letting go involved in this process for both of us as we let the leaves of the past season flash in their beauty of colours before falling to the earth and becoming part of a life that is no more.
My partner Francis and I both have our own major transitions going on: of our role of parents to an adult son and also of our transition into new lives after leaving our long time careers and finding purpose and meaning in a new relationship between us and in our own deeper relationships with ourselves.
I am reminded of a few quotes from the latest book that is guiding me on this season of my beautywalk: Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone:
“Change and loss travel together. We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.” (Gottlieb, pg 16)
and
“The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.” (Gottlieb, pg. 561)
Two Choices
As I see it we have two clear choices in all this loss around and within us.
Choice #1 - Fearful Resistance
We can armour up and settle in for a long and fearful resistance. We can sit in denial as we complain about the losses - of sunlight, of stability, of a clear sense of our role in relation to others. Whatever our status quo our society is so full of addictions to enable us to follow the lizard brain (amygdala) into fear and shame and judgment and resistance and hanging on and doubling down on control.
Numbing is a favourite of many and as I have mentioned here before is the one I fall into when I let the negative voices own my body and overtaken my spirit.
Again from Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
“The internet can be both a salve and an addiction, a way to block out pain (the salve) while simultaneously creating it (the addiction) When the cyber-drug wears off, you feel worse, not better.” (Pg. 288)
This is precisely why I have endeavoured to put some serious focused energy into consciously choosing how to use my phone and the very enticing distractions it offers me. Not only does this fall squarely into my long-held belief in taking responsibility for myself and my actions and emotions but also it allows me to offer up this exercise in personal empowerment to others.
Lighting the Way photo by Sandra Butel
Choice #2 - Loving Pause
The other choice we have is to pause - and this will take all of our mental strength to make this choice and even more to carry through with it. It is part of the path we choose when we consciously decide to take responsibility for our lives and our happiness. This can take the form of many different practices; whatever practice gets us back into our bodies, with our feet solid upon the floor, taking on all sorts of intricate sensations as we move our focus to those bones and sinews and blood vessels that make up our feet.
Some inquiry that you might want to try at this point in the process:
What does it feel like to press your feet full into the floor or to wiggle all 10 of your toes?
What feelings come up when you pause to thank your feet for all the miles of support they have given to you already in your lifetime?
What vision do you see when you close your eyes and imagine where your feet will take you (and the rest of your bodily form) in the future?
What sights will you see at the end of a walk; your feet supported in smart wool socks and the latest technology of walking shoes, or perhaps in cozy slippers as you wander the hallways of the place you call home?
Who will you meet on the way and what connections will your heart make as you reach across the social distances to welcome each other in?
What challenges will you overcome as you plant yourself solidly in mountain pose and focus on the 3 points of support that each of your feet supplies to you?
What empathy will grow as you move your feet out of your shoes and take a tentative step into the shoes of another?
There will be Missteps
You and I will have many missteps on this journey to ourselves as we work to take responsibility for our lives. We will most certainly end up back in the place of fearful resistance as our brains come up with all sorts of convincing arguments as to why we or the people around us are to blame. That we or they are just plain bad people, that we are right and “they” are wrong. We recommit to remaining miserable until we, they, he, she, society fix the problem that we have so skillfully identified.
Golden Hour by Sandra Butel
A Path
The more I learn about myself with day to day lived experience of this dance that goes on in my own mind and the more I see my conclusions supported by modern day neuroscience and spiritual ways of knowing, the more clear I am on what our work as humans entails. It goes something like this:
Noticing
The first step is to notice our thoughts and how those thoughts impact how we feel, how we act and where we end up in our lives. This can be achieved in many ways; one of my favourites being meditation. This is about pausing throughout our day just to notice what is really going on in the here and now. How are we feeling in our body right now? Is there tightness somewhere or pain or are we breathing shallowly? That kind of thing is a good way to start.
Shifting
The next step is to shift to focusing on the moment and on the sensations in our body; using our senses to identify what is actually going on right now. What can we hear, smell, taste, sense and what emotions are present that we haven’t noticed until now? A PQ rep is a short form of meditation developed by Shirzad Chamine; a micro-meditation that can allow us to find this refuge in our sensorial experiences.
Repeat
We go back and forth between noticing and shifting and getting lost and then noticing again and shifting and so on and so on.
Positive Intelligence (PQ)
In my studies in coaching I have come across a system that I find very useful called Positive Intelligence. This mental fitness program was developed by Shirzad Chamine, a Stanford Lecturer, best selling author and head of the Positive Intelligence company. One of my latest ventures has been to take myself through the certification process to becoming a PQ coach. I have found this process invigorating and so full of hope as it offers a way to take us all on a pathway from insight to clear focused action.
The 5 Sage Powers
Empathy
a) for self - it all starts here with finding a way to hold ourselves lightly and with the exquisite care that we would give to our childhood selves if we could go back in time and hold them in our arms. This is about feeling love for ourselves in all of our humanness and leaving room for us to be a little less than perfect and a whole lot worthy of love.
b) for others - putting ourselves in the shoes of others and imagining what has brought them to this place in their lives. This involves us holding out compassion for others in their imperfection and making the assumption that we are all indeed doing the best that we can.
Curiosity
This is all about facing the moments in our life with curiosity rather than fear. Putting ourselves in the form of an excited 5 year old that is open to and in awe of everything around us. We learn more with curiosity than with a sense of already having all the answers.
Creativity
As humans we have so much potential for creativity and finding clever solutions to whatever comes up in our lives. This creativity leads us to ask more questions about how else we might approach a situation and if we share this process with others around us we might just come up with ideas that go beyond the confines of what we already know into a world of wonder and possibility.
Higher Purpose
This one points to the kind of clarity we can get if we pull ourselves out of the daily grind and take a birds eye view of the situation we find ourselves in. In PQ we talk about conversing with our wiser elder self. We can close our eyes and imagine ourselves at the end of our lives with our flowing white hair and the peaceful wise energy that we have gained in our lifetimes. At this point we can pause and ask ourselves what matters about the current situation and perhaps, more importantly, what doesn’t matter about the current situation?
Action
Ah yes, action. This is the place we want to get to if we are to take responsibility for our own lives and the paths we will embark upon in the future. In order to be the most productive and beneficial this action must be based on our wisdom and come from a place of peace and ease and not a place of fear (which is what has been pushing us ahead for so long). This is the work I am embarking upon for myself and for my clients. To move us to the action, one tiny step at a time, that will take us from where we are right now to where we want to be.
Open Up by Sandra Butel
As an aside, I have recently started a monthly radio feature with Radio Canada Saskatchewan on the afternoon show “Pour Faire un Monde” in which I outline the ins and outs of coaching and of the PQ model. This feature is called “Prends Soin” (Take Care) and the latest episode, which came out earlier this week, focused on the 5 sage powers.
A Note from Coach Sandra
A word here with my coach hat on. This blog is not meant to push you into doing something you are not ready to do. As I know very well from my personal work and my work with clients, the work and readiness has to come from a place deep inside of you and you have to be ready to take on the work of looking deeply inside of yourself. No one else can decide for you if you and when you are ready for this work.
If you feel ready to venture on your own beautywalk, establishing a relationship with a coach is a great way to get started. All of the coaches I know offer the first session for free - to give you an idea what coaching is and what it can do for you and to let you and the coach see if you are a good fit together. If you want to get yourself in my calendar for a free beautywalk session I would be delighted to give you more information and see if the coaching process is right for you at this time.
Resources for Further Study and Personal Growth
More information on the work of Lori Gottlieb and her book “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone”.
More on the Positive Intelligence program. If you are interested in taking the 6 week course, please let me know as I can get you a discounted price.
My new program From Worry to Worthy offers up an opportunity to remove the barriers to the life you have always wanted. Check out the full program details and book your first free session with me to get started.
If you are interested in signing up for TrustedHouseSitters you can get a 25% discount (as well as pass on 2 free months of membership to me in the process).
I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk. What’s yours?
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