self-compassion

This year I’m doing things a little differently with my new year’s post.

I’m not focusing too much on what happened in 2019 (Trust me –  I’ve done enough ruminating on that 😜)…

I’m focusing on sharing insights on how to work with the flow of the year ahead. 

I’ve written the following post and also recorded some audio (⬆︎⬆︎⬆︎) which is me, riffing on upcoming themes and sharing some intel on how to work with what comes your way.

The blog post and the audio have different info so feel free to hit them both up. 🖤

There’s some intel based on astrological research and common themes circulating the collective in conjunction with my intuitive insights, and some suggestions on how to meander 2020 and all the Whoa it’s going to offer us in a more productive way.

Check out the audio above or give the following post a read.

Or do both. Whatever works for you. 💛

Insights Into The Year Ahead

1 – Help people heal themselves

When I say help people heal themselves I don’t mean getting all up in people’s faces and business, trying to pour help onto them. It’s super-duper important that we wait until we have been asked, or – this one is a bit trickier to meander – wait for an opening where we can offer assistance to someone who may appear to be in need.

We help others heal by making sure we’re paying attention to how we feel.

Sound weird? Read on.

Let’s say you’re feeling on edge. 2020 will provide you days like that.

What’s important this year is to be your own caregiver and witness how you feel when you feel on edge.

To be gentle – gentler than you have ever been with yourself.

Witnessing how you feel is a powerful act. When you S E E your feelings and your struggle to accept them – when you allow what is to exist – you heal. And that impacts the people around you.

This kind of self-nurturing/self-mothering work acts as a counter to fiery impulses to paint the town or other people crimson with your reactionary driven vibes.

THERE ARE NO LIFE HACKS TO THIS AND IT CAN BE TOUGH BUT…

2020 is the year that we take ownership of our feelings and transform the ways we’ve always reacted to them.

It’s not easy. It takes a lot of hours to become great at something. But every ounce of time and effort we put in contributes to the desired outcome.

In this case, the desired outcome is healing what needs to be healed within Y O U.

We all need to heal to some degree, and a lot of healing happens on the subconscious level – outside of our awareness or capacity to see it happening.

Just because we don’t understand that internal shifts are happening while we do this inner work doesn’t mean healing isn’t going on.

There’s so much healing that goes on below the surface. We don’t have the type of control we desire over it.

We may not get to decide when and how things shift within us, but we are still responsible for putting in the work to make it happen.

We aren’t always able to be voyeurs of the healing that’s happening, ie it’s not always clear what’s going on. But still…

We facilitate the healing we can’t quantify or name by acting like mothers to ourselves when we are struggling.

Instead of shame or blame, we can take a gentler approach to our struggles. We can offer ourselves the patience and love required to heal and accept the unknown (’cause we often try to fight with the reality of changes’ existence. More on this in the next section. 💚)

Note: You really want to shy away from trying to go all mother Teresa on the people you assume require your help in 2020, particularly when they haven’t asked for it.

Often this is born of a desire to not do the work we need to do within ourselves. It’s a procrastination method.

In 2020, be wary of desires to take over – to try to dump what you know onto others who haven’t asked for your input.

There will be a lot of people processing heavy shit this year, and it won’t be helpful if other people are poking their opinions and beliefs into the mix. People need space to process.

Do your best to stay in your lane this year.

A page of my life in 2019 = This was a huge theme for me towards the end of the year. I experienced a lot of people assuming I didn’t know stuff – of them trying to help me with things I didn’t need assistance with. Annoying but also helpful because it was a catalyst for me to be wary of my capacity to do the same to others, and dig into comprehending the difference between caregiving and caretaking. You take from others when you try to help people who haven’t said, “Yes, please help me with this.” You give to them when you honour all that they know in the absence of awareness of the knowledge they possess inside of them.

There may be some circumstances when it is productive to offer assistance. Certain openings may come up that create the optimal environment for you to peek your head in and say, “Hey, do you need some help? ‘Cause I know a little about what you’re going through.”

But there is also power (and the need) to understand that you don’t always need to follow the lead of the inner impulse to offer your two cents.

Q to ask yourself throughout 2020 = Is my input needed, requested, or helpful in this situation?

As hard as it is to watch people struggle (or act like assholes) the struggle can often catalyze change.

When something sucks to experience, it creates an opening – an opportunity – to do things differently.

People don’t always see or take that opportunity when it’s in their face and that’s difficult to witness. But it’s still not up to us to swoop in and try to fix someone or something without being asked.

There are moments when we can follow the inner call to be of service to someone who is struggling. And we do need to listen to those.

We just need to make sure it’s not our ego wanting to just jump in and make things the way we feel they need to be because…

Our conditioning has a powerful impact on our capacity to understand the source of our motivations to get involved in other people’s shit.

A great way to flush out whether your eagerness to get involved or provide unrequested input is a conditioned-based desire or a true, heart-led desire to be of service is to do an inner inquiry. Ask yourself:

Why do I feel called to try to fix something or someone? Is it to avoid the work I need to do on myself? Or is it a pure intention, a soul-led desire to assist?

When we witness people without wanting to change them, we help them heal.

Digging into understanding other people’s Why’s – why they do or don’t do certain things – helps us to detangle ourselves from our conditioning, too. This is especially important in the presence of intense feelings of aggressive judgement.

When you want to lash out at people who lash out, it’s time to pause and inquire.

If we can understand on a cellular level that someone isn’t the sum of our judgments of them, but a person who is facing an emotional undoing and clinging to a desire to not want to change, we help them heal.

Sometimes their intense emotions might make it easy for them to lash out in our presence. That’s never fun to experience.

But anytime we don’t respond to aggression with more aggression we help people heal.

WE ALSO HEAL OURSELVES.

When we’re locked and loaded to anger, resentment, contempt* and judgment we don’t have space within for healing to happen. Rather, we stagnate ourselves.

There’s just too much of the heavy stuff everywhere. There’s no room within us to add anything new, let alone space for what we truly desire to enter the mix.

We need to make room within ourselves for the experiences and feelings we desire to enter the scene.  You can’t enter a home that is already at full capacity.

Set the intention this year to create a home within yourself – a landscape that is capable of welcoming new experiences.

Seek out the stuff and things that are taking up a lot of space within you, yet aren’t serving you. Notice their presence and how they affect you. Make sure you see them.

Note: I recommend investigating IFS – Internal Family Systems. It’s a powerful process. There are a lot of books about it. Hit me up for recommendations.

* A note on contempt: This is a theme that needs to get flushed out this year. It’s a powerful relationship destructor. We need relationships with others and ourselves to be productive  – to get where we’re destined to go. To learn more about contempt check out this post in my resource section.

2 – Use your fire strategically

There will be a lot of transitions this year. A lot of change. And with all the change comes resistance.

We can’t avoid the changes that are coming.

All we can do is set the intention to uncover the courage within to trust that these new experiences are for our greater good – both the ones that feel good and the ones that feel bad.

A lot of things need to die.

They may be broken but we keep using them because it’s familiar to us. We may feel comfortable using something that’s broken, and even feel safe amidst the long-term struggle, of trying to make something broken work for us, not against us.

In 2020, what’s broken is going to need to be parted with.

Car analogy = Say your car is on the fritz and it finally breaks down on the highway. Instead of calling a tow truck and sorting out how to get home, you bang your fists on the window for hours, believing the car will come back to life if you beat it enough – that you’ll magically end up driving away at some point by doing the same thing, over and over again, even though it’s not helping you one iota.

You don’t want to do this kind of unproductive stuff in 2020.

Change is coming. Stuff you’re used to will change, evolve, grow. Die. Versions of who you once were are ready to die.

IE you’re going to evolve, whether you want to or not. It can be difficult or less difficult depending on your willingness to realize that you can’t stop this train.

Evolution baby. It’s here. And no fist banging is going to stop it.

If you’ve gone most of your life fighting with change this year is going to be tough. If you’ve extensively and redundantly resisted change then this year is going to be hella challenging.

2020 is the year of doing the inner work required to get you in alignment with the work you’re here to do. ∞ ∞ ∞

If you’ve got a lot of fire within you it’s probably helped you act or not act throughout your life. You can use your fire to dig your heels in and be stubborn AF. You can use your fire to foster an extensively reactionary way of interacting with others.

You can also use your fire as a strategy to help align you with what you truly want to experience in life.

Right now is the time to start interrogating HOW you use your fire, and question if it’s helping.

I use the word interrogate to highlight the need to take this seriously. Not to self-shame or bully yourself about how you’ve been doing things, but to get serious about taking a comb to how you react to your experiences and your feelings.

Question if how you’ve been doing things is helping you achieve what you truly desire, and/or what you could do differently to align yourself with feeling how you want to feel.

Easy to crap on the fiery aspects of our personalities; Productive to use the fire to your advantage.

In 2020, direct your fire toward strategies that serve you. 

How are you going to process strong emotions when they come up? What will you do when you feel out of your skin uncomfortable with certain feelings? STRATEGIZE.

If you don’t have a fiery personality to help you establish and use a strategy, seek out people who have the fire you need.

The energy of who you surround yourself with affects you. So get strategic with who you surround yourself with.

Absorb their energy. Use their energy to help fire you up. Tap into their gifts and abilities. Work with them and learn through them. And use what you learn to help work through what needs to be worked through.

NOTE: If you want more direction or guidance on how to work with what you’ve got in the year ahead check out this page.

3 – A time for celebration

Within the intense periods of 2020, there exists room to celebrate.

The changes we struggle to accept, and the fear that bubbles up when we feel uncomfortable about how we feel: these are all signs of the capacity for amazing things to arise from the wake of change.

Over the years I’ve uncovered a powerful capacity to witness what is beyond my current experience or feelings – what my fear and discomfort are capable of unveiling.

I know the power of inner work – of sitting with how I feel and allowing myself to feel my feelings. It’s a catalyst for amazing experiences to unfold.

This is not easy work.

The fallacy of our society and our humanness, which trips us up A LOT is that somehow this inner work is supposed to be easy. That it needs to be easy.

Some things are easy. And some things are just easier for some people.

This kind of inner work isn’t easy for ANYONE.

It’s the hardest work you can do, to witness the feelings you are taught to deny, push down, or ignore.

But the outcome of the witnessing is magic.⚡️⚡️⚡️

As you inevitably experience some challenges throughout 2020, remember what these challenging times are capable of producing.

You might not be able to see what’s coming, but something is being created within and through the heaviness of strong emotions and disruptions to the ease and flow you crave.

You might not always be able to see the sky, but it’s always there. And within the murky waters is clear water that is fueling you towards your soul-driven desires, whether you see it or not.

What you truly want is at the other end of all the change 2020 is bringing.

It’s braided within it and throughout it, waiting to be unveiled, IF you allow what needs to happen for it to come to the surface to happen.

I’m not saying this year ahead is going to be awful, and I’m not saying it’s going to be easy either.

2020 is going to be different.

It’s going to be filled with never-ending opportunities to evolve which will go a lot smoother IF you allow the currents of change to take you, instead of clinging to a reed (a refusal to accept change) which is destined to break.

∞ Breathe deeply and float with the currents of 2020 ∞

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Give yourself lots of breaks from the inner work you do in 2020.

Balance out the intensity with lightness.

Watch a lot of funny movies. Read some beautiful books. Travel when you can (travelling can mean walking around the block).

Allow for moments to mentally disengage with all that draws from you.

Align yourself with energies that serve you. That means making sure your Instagram and FB feeds are filled with energy that empowers you.

Every action we make in life is a vote for what we want to experience. Unfollow all accounts that contribute to you feeling small, not good enough – not empowered.

Side note: you don’t have to explain yourself or your actions made in the name of your own wellness to anyone. Not replying is a message. (Not sure who needs to read that but I sure do.)

Also: Shut your phone off. A lot

When I see my phone I see its power to siphon from all the work I’m doing to heal myself. Social media is a rabbit hole of getting caught up in what other people are doing when we need to focus on doing what it takes to achieve what we desire. Especially in 2020.

That said, phones are amazing, right?? 🙏🏻🤗😜 I love my iPhone and all my tech stuff. It’s what allows me to do what I do with flow and ease.

BUT THERE ARE DAYS WHEN ALL OF THAT TECH STUFF NEEDS TO BE TURNED OFF. Or at least put on airplane mode, save for your kids or immediate family.

And here comes my word for the year ahead again…

STRATEGIZE!

What’s working? What’s helping you achieve what you desire? What’s not? Flush it out. Consistently – with tenacity.

That’s it for my thoughts on 2020.

Thank you for reading! And if you listened to the audio above  – thank you!  It’s the first of many. 🖤

Feel free to reach out with Qs about anything I shared, or book a reading.

Lots of love,

A