Hello + happy Tuesday!
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🌀 Group Call #1: (Tuesday, 4/16/24 @ 6pm PST // 9pm EST): Register here.
🌀 Group Call #2:** (Wednesday, 4/17/24 @ 9am PST // 12pm EST): Register here.
**This call features structured breakout groups of 3-4 people.
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Last week completed a seven part series sharing what I consider foundational practices for developing one’s inner authority.
Here are the essays if you missed any or want to revisit:
Part 1: “Your own personal wilderness survival map,” click here.
Part 2: “Changing the way you THINK,” click here.
Part 3: “Change your thoughts, change your life,” click here.
Part 4: “Befriending the wilderness within,” click here.
Part 5: “Turning the wilderness outward,” click here.
Part 6:, “How to have boundaries with yourself,” click here.
Part 7: “How to have boundaries with other people, click here.
Developing inner authority is fundamental to the process of self-development. The series was a deep dive into practices, themes, and topics that are essential components of every 1:1 coaching engagement, and it was sincerely wonderful to read your comments and receive your emails sharing with me how the information and suggestions impacted you.
So much is occurring at this moment in history—and not by accident, but as the result of existing power structures and systems coming to their inevitable conclusions—and many of you are in a state of unease. Understandably so. I talk and share so much about developing inner authority because when a person is connected to their power, they become the vehicle through which a new world can emerge from what is currently in collapse.
Much of the collective unease stems from continuing to cling to external systems and structures, even with so much evidence that these systems and structures are dying right before our very eyes. Death is all around.
What is missing is a conversation about what is being born. Developing your inner authority gives you the strength and resiliency to tend to what’s dying while also leaving space to imagine and begin living into, right now, today, in this precise, exquisite moment, something new, something beautiful and radical, something that works for all beings.
Here’s your head’s up: I’m declaring May for MAYHEM.
And no, I’m not joking.
The Cliff’s Notes version of this (do people remember Cliff’s Notes?) that I will share in an upcoming essay is this:
The last six weeks have been excruciatingly weird and difficult, and last week’s eclipse finally delivered me some relief. I got through that tough period by turning to some tried-and-true practices: catching myself when I started drifting into my old programming and redirecting my thoughts, and then breathing through the physical discomfort of anxiety (in case this sounds easy breezy, it wasn’t, it was tremendously hard).
Redirecting and reframing my thoughts and breathing through discomfort were practices that certainly helped. But what really got me through was choosing to lean on my understanding of reality, which is something I’ve completely shifted since getting sober from alcohol in 2017. Specifically, it was reminding myself that I can’t only preach about “trusting my life” and all the other stuff I ramble on about if I only do so when life is going the way I want it to or think it should.
So I asked myself, “what if you can trust this, too?” And then I got curious. And it took a bunch of weeks, which is so much longer than I want anything to take (especially because I was in a borderline panic the whole time), and then—TSSSSTT!—some air released out of the pressure cooker inside my brain and now here I am, basking in the exhale for a moment, letting the lessons filter through on their own timing.
May is for Mayhem is me sharing what I’ve learned about navigating chaos, and how to channel its lessons for building personal and collective resiliency through tumultuous times with as many of you as are interested.
In this spirit, I have two offerings in May, available to you, my beloved Substack subscribers:
1. May is for Mayhem Coaching Project
From May 1st-31st, I am gifting 20 coaching calls in 31 days.
Developing your inner authority is one thing. Learning to rely on it during seasons of uncertainty and unpredictability is another. Not only is this one of the key cornerstones of my coaching, it’s also a topic I am endlessly fascinated by. Through this coaching project, I want to have conversations with people around this topic and offer support wherever I can. So if you’re curious about any of this, this project is for you.
NOTE: Even if this project’s theme isn’t 100% resonant, if you dig my approach and are interested in a coaching session, go ahead and sign up for a call.
In the spirit of 🪞transparency🪞
Projects like this are how I give people who are curious about what the hell coaching even is an experience of it, and also one of the waysI connect with my ideal clients to fill the limited coaching spots I have available in my practice each season.
On the other side of this session, if coaching together seems like an ideal next step for both of us, and you express interest in learning more, wonderful, we can talk about that. HOWEVER! This is not a sales call in disguise and I will not “pitch” you on coaching without your explicit consent/indication of interest.
If an ongoing coaching engagement is not the right next thing, we’ll wind down our conversation with suggestions and resources to support you where you are. Yes, coaching is an investment but limited resources should never be a hindrance in you receiving the support when you need it.
This project is *not* for you if:
You have participated in a coaching project in the past 12 months
You have completed a coaching agreement within the past 6 months
You are a current 1:1 coaching client
2. Free workshop: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine
WHEN: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
TIME: 5:30pm - 7pm PST
WHAT: Learn about Chaos Theory and its practical application for building personal and collective resiliency through tumultuous times.
You will consider how disorder, unpredictability, and lack of control are natural parts of change and growth, and discover a model through which you can reconstruct the default narratives you have about yourself and the world.
You'll leave the workshop with a concrete framework you can apply toward imagining, creating, and living a new future beyond the limitations in possibility insisted upon by the culture-writ-large.
COST: FREE
The workshop is 75 minutes plus a Q+A/conversation that will go fifteen minutes or as long as there are questions/comments.
I know this sounds like a tall order; it is. Come see if I can pull it off.
That’s it for this week. Hope to see you somewhere soon! And to close us out, a reminder of how fucking bonkers that any of are even here to begin with:
“If I go to sleep after lunch in the room where I work, sometimes I wake up with a feeling childish amazement—why am I myself? What astonishes me, just as it astonishes a child when he becomes aware of his own identity, is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep in this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about?…The penetration of that particular ovum by that particular spermatozoon, with its implications of the meeting of my parents and before that of their birth and the birth of all their forebears, had not one chance in hundreds of millions of coming about. And it is chance, a chance quite unpredictable in the present state of science, that caused me to be born…From that point on, it seems to me that a thousand different futures might have stemmed from every single movement of my past…”
—Simone de Beauvoir
SELF MADE is a call to deeply connect with the self—self-knowledge, self-trust, self-development—and then to make, small step by step, a life that you savor. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Certified Integral Coach, and Holistic Recovery Guide, based in San Francisco, CA.
Click here to learn about working with me 1:1 and/or here to sign up for a complimentary Alignment Session. Let’s talk!
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