Is your life a good partner?
"May is for Mayhem" Coaching Project starts *TOMORROW* and there are a handful of free sessions remaining.
Hello + happy Tuesday!
Register for this week’s group calls here:
🌀 Group Call #1: (Tuesday, 4/30/24 @ 6pm PST // 9pm EST): Register here.
🌀 Group Call #2:** (Wednesday, 5/1/24 @ 9am PST // 12pm EST): Register here.
**This call features structured breakout groups of 3-4 people.
Thank you to everyone who’s already 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.
Today’s inspiration:
“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Life is a miracle but I didn’t always believe this.
I viewed life as an antagonist. During the hardest times, life was a fight: I didn’t understand why I kept behaving in ways that went against my values and best interests but also, I couldn’t seem to stop. Mostly, life was something to be tolerated, a Sisyphean slog on my way to better things that were surely on their way if only I worked harder, pushed farther, got better, improved myself, eradicated the darkness that seemed to cling to me like a nightmare version of a Peter Pan shadow.
All the ways I anesthetized myself to cope with life were not the problem. They were a symptom of the problem. And it wasn’t until I learned to deal with the symptoms—it wasn’t until I stopped doing the things that were causing the most harm—that I could address the problem, which is to say, that I could finally change the way I engaged with life. And what interests me now, what I suspect will forever fascinate me, is not the stopping (which I don’t mean to minimize, for the stopping was the first of many miracles), but everything that’s come since.
In my own path of self-development, what was required of me was fundamentally shifting my core beliefs and world view. Specifically, it required learning to trust my life as a good partner, and devoting myself to this new belief in the face of a culture that, should I continue to let it have it’s way with me, would have me swimming in perpetual lack at best, or at worst, utter malaise and resignation.
I couldn’t have done this overnight. The first thing I needed to do was to stabilize: To create habit and routine; to learn to keep my word; to take care of all parts of myself (instead of reacting to whatever was most chaotic in any given moment). And I did stabilize. The inner pendulum did come to rest in in a steadier center. But my self-worth was still in the shitter. I was still scraping away at the wound of neglect. And so began the deeper work, that internal excavation, without which I might have accumulated every last external measure of success while still continuing to experience life as something to manipulate, manage, and control, rather than receive.
I’ve had to learn to adapt inside of a culture that would keep me numbed out and consuming. Adaptation requires flexibility, curiosity, and interacting with reality as it presents itself, rather than how I think it is supposed to be or how I wish it was or how it used to be or how it is for other people. It is a dynamic process of moving with life rather than trying to force life to fit into some shape I’ve been conditioned to believe I’m supposed to want. It is how I move with myself rather than against myself.
It is how I relinquish the foolish pursuit of perfection and step into the gorgeous messiness of my full humanity.
These days, I know who I am and what I’m doing. I am fortified from the inside because I know how to protect and care for myself, unapologetically and uncompromisingly. This is not only a selfish undertaking, because it doesn’t stop with me. Indeed, the care that I show to myself pours over, and it is in this outpouring, it is in this newfound ability to through the world from a place of fullness rather than lack or depletion, that I can stay engaged.
And this is one of the great questions of our times, isn’t it? How do we hold it all, and not get bowled over by it?
Everything in chaotic and the stakes are so high. I’m exhausted by how hard it is for so many of us to just EXIST.
It’s also true that this morning I woke up to the sound of rain.
Rain. I stared out the window, watching the rain fall with the same enchantment that I might watch a blockbuster on a big screen. Rain, for real, finally. I imagined the dry hills and valleys swelling, shoots of grass emerging, my beloved cypress and eucalyptus exhaling. All the urban flora and fauna cozying up in their holes and huddles; smell of piss in alleyways being washed away; reservoirs all over California nearing full capacity for the first time in my lifetime. My god, what a relief to be washed clean, to be made well again.
Rain falls. Eclipses send moon into shadow. World spins.
We keep on.
As a coach, my job is to keep both feet planted in reality—to fend off the enthusiastic and omnipresent temptation of magical thinking—and to work with what is. As an artist, my work is to hold always a forward vision, and to devote myself to this vision as my north star.
Inside of this simultaneity is the tension we hold: Staying engaged in reality—in truth, feet in the mud, not succumbing to the forces which would beat us down permanently, tending to the day-to-day-slog of incremental change over time—while at the same time learning to live in a way that disrupts all the same bonkers patterns and systems that would keep us forever stuck on a hamster wheel of death.
We are in a time of chaos. Instead of fighting chaos, we need a new relationship with it, and this is part of the work of changing our belief system.
I am teaching a FREE workshop on May 15th: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine, and you’re invited to register.
Now is not the time for rigidity. We must be flexible, and adaptable. We must look to nature, and artists, and young people, and all the endless possibilities that arise inside of ecosystems of community. We must shore ourselves up from the inside, not to hide away in our cute little apartments, but so that we can stay active in the world, so we can carry each other across the river when the time comes (the time has come).
The photo at the beginning of this essay is of Henri Matisse, a prolific artist who continued to make prolific work even after illness and deteriorating health rendered him with very limited mobility. I keep thinking about the way artists adapt, and innovate. I’ve been thinking about Matisse, and the way he adapted his art making his entire life. As he aged, and his health declined, he adapted: He fashioned different tools; he took over hotels and made them studios; he started cutting paper from his wheelchair; he fashioned a drawing stick to draw from bed. I know for myself that the second I find myself in less than ideal circumstances, my tendency is to abandon myself and my practices. The question I ask of myself now is how might I move with my life so I can adapt to reality and continue to do my work forever.
The miracle—which isn’t a miracle at all, but a law of nature—is that chaos always leads to order. Chaos and order are not in opposition; they are in partnership.
So here’s what I suggest:
Let’s be still, just for a minute. For just for a moment every now and again, let’s slow down. Let’s stay in bed. Let’s read, let’s catch up on the eleventy billion shows everyone else is watching.
Let us be so very gentle. Let us nurture each others’ hearts as we would a fallen baby bird: make a makeshift nest for it, nourish it with round-the-clock attention, sing to it, urge its feathers to grow thick and full, rich in color, all our favorite colors. Feed it treats from its surrounding environment, all its favorite seeds and nuts and grubs and bugs. Sugar water, too.
Let’s track all the new space inside us. Let’s relate to it not as an emptiness, but as pure potential, full of possibility. Let’s traipse about our neighborhoods, feel the rain on our faces, no destination. Let’s make friends with not knowing. Let’s consider that joy and delight might walk alongside us, despite ourselves—state of the world be damned. Let’s look up at the stars, and that ridiculous full moon, low slung on the horizon; let’s scritchy-scratch the tops of dogs’ stupid little heads, every chance we get; let’s listen for the high pitch of hummingbird, the hoot of owl, the sharp call of hawk; let’s make chit-chat at the deli, in the checkout line, with the nurse drawing our blood; let’s buy ourselves flowers, let’s light candles, incense, ideas, dreams. Let’s notice what is already on its way, that butterfly in our stomach, AKA, hope, right there, a flutter in the guts, not erasing the pain, but buzzing alongside.
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
I am teaching a framework for incorporating the lessons of Chaos Theory at my FREE workshop on May 15th: Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine, and you’re invited to register.
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.
That’s it for this week. Sign up, and I look forward to seeing you around 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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Beautifully processed and shared. Thank you Dani!