It's time to make friends with chaos aka free coaching link is 🌀LIVE 🌀
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Hello + happy Tuesday!
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**This call features structured breakout groups of 3-4 people.
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This week’s inspiration:
“I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I’m forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.”
— James Baldwin
Thank you to
over at for this week’s quote.Thank you to everyone who’s booked a spot in the May is for Mayhem Coaching Project where, from May 1-31, I am gifting 20 coaching calls over 31 days.
This project is for you if:
You are feeling overwhelmed by the unpredictable, chaotic reality we are experiencing
You understand *intellectually* that you need to care for yourself in order to care for others/the planet, but you aren’t sure how to *actually* do that
Your go-to coping strategies aren’t working the way they used to
You want to develop self-trust in your ability to stay engaged and participating in all the change without despairing or burning out
You want to increase your confidence in your resiliency to handle what the future brings
NOTE: Even if this project’s theme isn’t 100% resonant, if you’re curious about my approach and are interested in a coaching session, go ahead and sign up for a call.
Keep scrolling to read how this season’s coaching project came about.
Some background:
What became an eventual interest in chaos theory started as the result of a pattern I noticed my first year of coaching. At the time, I was working full-time as a recovery coach, working for a now dead organization, that, prior to its implosion, had delivered me to my own recovery. I worked with hundreds of clients that first year, some for as briefly as four weeks, others for many months, and others still who are still with me to this day. For most—if not all—of them, I was often the first, and sometimes the only person they’d ever opened up to about the way they were struggling. Meeting someone in their moment deepest struggle is sacred. It’s a gift I took—and continue to take—seriously, because it’s the moment around which so much change can begin to spiral. To say I was—am—invested is a gigantic understatement.
The means by which a person enters recovery (or whatever word you prefer—I’m attached to plenty of things, but labels aren’t one of them) are as unique as they are. But the methods by which they stabilize and begin to recover are pretty predictable. As my coaching experience deepened, certain patterns emerged. There were certain boxes that when checked would more often than not lead to some fresh successes: creating a toolkit. Learning to “force the pause,” and “play the tape forward.” Finding community, either in real life or virtually—even one trustworthy person could be more than enough. Experimenting with different strategies to address stress and discomfort. Creating a little space to listen to one’s inner self, and then getting curious about the voices and stories rattling around inside. Drinking lots of water, getting in some consistent movement, improving sleep quality. Viewing slips and stumbles as opportunities for reflection and learning, rather than another reason to self-flagellate. Enacting boundaries where helpful. The list went on and on, but you can see how these things would start to move a person in a more helpful direction.
But there was one pattern that stood out for its strangeness and unpredictability.
When people got to what was ultimately the tail-end of their drinking—which is to say, those last weeks or months, or sometimes years, before they were finally done—their behavior would often get a little bizarre. They might have racked up dozens of days of abstinence, only to be waylaid by something small they’d been navigating up to then with grace and aplomb. Or the voice inside their head that urged them to drink suddenly reached a fever pitch after several days or weeks of quiet. Or, on the everyday drive home from work, they might find themselves in the parking lot of the familiar liquor store, having no recollection of how they even wound up there.
Bizarre. Sideways.
Chaotic.
I noticed this phenomenon because I had experienced it myself. What I described above was my story. Discovering that it wasn’t unique to me, and that not only was it not unique to me, but that it actually seemed to be a feature of change, not a bug, fascinated me to no end. It still does, hence my continued forays down multiple rabbit holes, hence this essay, hence the May is for Mayhem coaching project.
So I set out to answer some questions: why did this happen? And not just why, but what? What was this about, really?
If only I’d kept track of some of those early Google search terms, but they were probably something like “chaos and recovery” or, “chaos and addiction” or some such. None of the results moved the needle on my understanding; mostly, it was just confirmation of what I already knew, which was that….addiction and recovery can be chaotic.
Um, DUH, Google.
I wanted to understand why.
Since the word “chaos” was in “chaos theory,” I forayed in that direction. I’m forever happy I did, because what I learned gave me a framework for not only deepening my understanding of how addiction and recovery function, but also, for how I view the world and my experience of being human, not to mention, how I coach.
Incidentally! I will be teaching this framework at my FREE workshop on May 15th: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine, and you’re invited to register.
Addiction is an inherently chaotic system. What I’ve learned is that so is life. Life is fundamentally unpredictable, unstable, and chaotic. And instead of moving with life as life is, what do we do? We fight to control, manage, predict. My struggle with substance was the result of a failed effort to control how my life felt. It was a symptom, a response to feeling utterly out of control.
It just so happens that my method for addressing this lack of control still has stigma attached to it. But there are plenty of other more culturally smiled upon ways of trying to manage chaos. You know the ones: I’m talking overwork, perfectionism, busy-ness. “Being productive.” Ay, I feel nauseous just typing all that out.
What I know to be true (and the inspiration for this project):
The moment I began to be in relationship with chaos, instead of constantly trying to manage and control it, was the same moment I began to be in relationship to my *actual* life, rather than the *idea* of my life. It was at this moment that I began to *receive* my life, instead of constantly *driving* it toward some conclusion I didn’t even know that I wanted.
This doesn’t mean that my life doesn’t still get weird and hard. Of course it does. But I can say that life feels like far less of a fight. I can say that I have, well, more of a say in how my life is going, instead of feeling like I’m just being dragged along by someone else’s agenda. And, best of all, I can say that when things do get hard, I can trust myself to be with, and take action around, whatever is arising (instead of fleeing/numbing/anesthetizing in all the ways I used to).
May is for Mayhem is an invitation into a new conversation about how embracing CHAOS might actually offer you the freedom you’re convinced is on the other side of all that neverending micromanaging. It’s an invitation to consider a way of being that isn’t contingent on perpetuating systems that are in collapse—a way of being that supports all life.
If this calls to you, I want to gift you one hour of 1:1 coaching
The Details
I am offering each call for free to support to anyone curious about how to channel the lessons of chaos toward building personal and collective resiliency.
1. Book your session. Each project call is 1 hour. Conversations will take place between May 1st and May 31st.
2. Complete the short questionnaire. After I confirm your call, you will receive a short questionnaire. Please note that calls without a completed questionnaire within 48 hours will be canceled.
3. Show up to your call! I look forward to our time together.
In the spirit of 🪞transparency🪞
Projects like this are how I give people who are curious about coaching an experience of working with me, and also one of the ways I 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
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!
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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