Widen the aperture of your potential
Discover ✨seven✨ practical applications of chaos theory
Hello + happy Tuesday!
Register for this week’s group calls here:
🌀 Group Call #1: (Tuesday, 5/28/24 @ 6pm PST // 9pm EST): Register here.
🌀 Group Call #2:** (Wednesday, 5/29/24 @ 9am PST // 12pm EST): Register here.
**This call features structured breakout groups of 3-4 people.
June Self Made community workshops:
“INVEST IN DIVESTMENT” Interview + Discussion
Join me in conversation with friend and Self Made community member Rayleen Courtney, founder of The Somatic Coven, on June 26th at 5:30pm PST. I’m going to interview Rayleen about their journey from political consultant to heeding a deeper call to significantly minimize their lifestyle, to the point that they now live in an RV. We’ll explore what to consider and experiment with if you’re curious about divesting from capitalism—and not just physically divesting, but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually divesting.
Registration is live! Fee: FREE
SUMMER SOLSTICE WRITING WORKSHOP
I’ve officially adjusted the cadence of writing workshops and I’m so excited for a very special ☀️Summer Solstice☀️ edition.
This generative writing workshop is based off the Amherst Writer's Method. There will be two two opportunities to write. Then, you'll be invited to share your work aloud if you like (no one is obligated, you can pass at anytime). Readers receive feedback on what listeners like and remember from what they heard; there is no critical feedback (critique is great and can be very helpful—it's just not part of this style of workshop).
This workshop is appropriate for all levels and I hope you'll join me. If you have questions, let me know—I'm happy to answer.
13 participants max - will probably sell out.
Registration is live! Fee: $33
Today’s inspiration:
“Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure… and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”
— Maya Angelou
How many of you can relate: You’re going through a period of transition—say, a career change, or a big move, or you’re becoming a parent; maybe you’re dealing with the aftermath of a breakup, or you got fired from your job in the middle of a recession, or you’ve just lost someone or some creature you love; perhaps you’re simply doing your best to exist amidst a greater backdrop of global and political insecurity, the noise and thrum from which increasingly colors every realm of your life. The in-between space of transition is in and of itself complicated enough, but there’s your brain, ever eager to demand the most impossible thing: certainty.
You can’t help yourself: you go into project manager mode. Your vision narrows. Instead of being curious and open to the vast array of possibilities available at any given moment, you lose perspective.
In these moments, the last thing on your mind is how you might partner with the forces of change. You act quite the opposite; in order to be OK, you need to manage change and keep it under control every anxiety-ridden step of the way.
When chaos darkens your doorway and is sucking all the air out of the room, the idea of willfully softening and opening yourself up to it feels like going against basic human instinct. Anytime you experience chaos, your programming urges you to pull the fire alarm—to reassert control and prevent any additional breakdowns. One of the most intense things a person can say to another is “you’re out of control.” But by relaxing control in the exact moment it seems most necessary, and seeing what might be possible beyond what you expect, or are most afraid will happen if you soften, you learn to trust the unfolding of your life. You can receive your life as it is, instead of wasting time trying to predict the future.
As you get more practiced at trusting the ebb and flow of chaos and order, you can pay more attention to developing strength of direction and purpose. This vision keeps you on track, no matter what swirls about you. You learn to move and bend with the forces of change, instead of getting stuck in the illusion that if only you maintained total control, bad things would never happen.
Rather than being hooked in a cycle of unrealistic expectations of perfect outcomes and subsequent disappointment when you are in transition, stress, or upset, you are far better served by imagining and creating multiple paths forward. You can free yourself from the restraints of past events, experiences, and behaviors, and embrace hope and possibility. You can widen the aperture of your potential.
Befriending chaos is a way of interacting with life as a collaborative partner.
This partner “insists that you put yourself in motion, that you learn to live with instability, chaos, change, and surprise…to move in harmony with life rather than to resist it.”1 It reminds you that chaos and order are not opposites; indeed, they are intrinsic to each other.
Here are some practical applications you can play around with (in case it’s not obvious: these are not “one-and-done” type activities but rather skills and practices and we cultivate over an entire lifetime):
Know your core values
Values are beliefs about what is important to you. These beliefs shape your values, which in turn form your identities.
Living from your values is an expression of alignment between your “real” self—the self out here in the world, getting things done, boots on the ground—and the higher, most idealized version of yourself. As you move closer and closer to that ideal, you begin to experience an increased sense of well-being and inner peace, no matter how chaotic things get.
Values shape identity. Values change which means identity changes! Think about your values when you were 15, 21, compared to now.
Chaos told me she suggests you consider including creativity and/or spontaneity as core values
I’m going to teach a workshop on this at some point this summer so stay tuned if you want to jam on values with other likeminded individuals.
Strengthen your sense of self
Create your own personal mythology. This is a pretty way of saying - you get to tell the story of your life, no one else does. What meaning do you create from what you’ve been through, what you’ve done and haven’t done, from your experiences?
Minimize your need to seek validation from external sources and develop your ability to create meaning from within. So many of the systems people have historically derived meaning from—political affiliation; religion; the nuclear family; academia; work, to name a few—are breaking down (if they aren’t dead already). Stop clinging to dead things! Create meaning from your own experiences and find rad people with whom to imagine and build something new.
Develop your inner authority. I wrote seven posts about Inner Authority in March and April this year (revisit them all here). It’s time you learned to listen to yourself. Crowdsourcing is great! Sometimes you need the mirror of community or a trusted advisor to see yourself or a situation clearly. Increase your confidence in your ability to know what is right for you, and remember that ultimately you are the authority of your life.
Establish multiple life roles or ways of being within the world
Hold your identities loosely. Catch yourself when you hear yourself saying things like, “I’ve always been this way,” or “This is who I am,” or “this is the way I do things.” Get curious and ask yourself whether that’s true. See if you can relax, and soften your attachment to who you believe yourself to be. What else is possible? Are the beliefs helpful, or supportive? If they aren’t ask yourself what a more helpful view could be.
Develop a sense of interconnectedness with the world
As best you can with whatever access you have, spend as much time in nature as possible, with zero/minimal tech, ideally.
Devote yourself to cultivating beautiful, fun, loving, healthy relationships. This goes for all relationships, not just romantic ones.
Learn to maintain your autonomy in romantic relationships by healing codependency and developing interdependency
Transforming your weird/unhealthy/confusing intimate relationship stuff—you know, all the ways a partner or close friend mirrors the unhelpful programming and patterns you’re still dragging around—is one of the ways you can contribute to elevating the consciousness of the whole planet. It’s worth your attention and care.
IT SUCKS TO DO THIS ALONE. “This” of course, being life. Despite all this talk that might seem to the contrary—about identity, inner authority, autonomy, and interdependence—the practical applications of chaos theory encourages you to see yourself not as a cog in a machine, but as part of a web of relationships, a dynamic, every evolving and adapting and iterating ecosystem.
Develop interest in your life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
Commit to individualized practices that support your own unique needs, and receive support as needed
Some of you may be familiar with the concept of the Butterfly Effect, which is an aspect of chaos theory. It’s named that way is because in theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest could cause a typhoon in Taipei. In the little life of a human, change is the result of minuscule, incremental shifts that accumulate over time. But it’s hard to see it that way if you only look at individual days—it’s impossible to see the typhoon if we only focus on the butterfly. Discover “your unique needs” and commit to the mundane daily tending, remembering to take a step back and look at the whole perspective every once in a while.
And YEAH: Get support! However that looks and is available to you. Maybe it’s a therapist/coach/energy healer/astrologist/tarot-ist combo platter. Maybe it’s a mutual aid group. Maybe it’s in friendship. Maybe it starts with a connection to a pet or the natural world. Maybe it’s free or low-cost opportunities (<cough> ahem, Self Made offers two free calls/week and one free community workshop/month, and I sprinkle in other low-cost/free ways to get support throughout the year). Maybe it’s a meditation group or other support group. Maybe you call upon your ancestors.
Practice metacognitive skills (i.e. develop awareness around thought processes)
You know how humans can both be thinking a thought, and also be aware that they’re thinking a thought? That’s metacognition. You want to grow your ability to catch yourself in the habituated thought patterns and DISRUPT THEM AT ALL COSTS.
Another way I like to think about this: learn to reduce the primacy of your intellect as the dominant filter through which you know the world, make decisions, understand and make sense of things, etc.
A way to balance out the dominance of the intellect is by cultivating what in Integral coaching we refer to as the three centers of intelligence - head, heart, and body. Intellect is important! But there are other ways of knowing that are equally valuable and might actually give you a calmer, more easeful experience of your days. I’m sure you (like me) have had the experience of recognizing that the brain might be powerful but she can also be HELLA UNHELPFUL—dangerous, even, at times. Connecting to your heart and your body is a good way to let the brain not have to work so hard all the time.
Develop new skills
Simple, and vague, BUT: developing new skills gives you access to beginner’s mind, which is a way to play with neuroplasticity and a powerful counteraction to rigidity and control. Let yourself suck at something. Notice all you learn when you fail. Pursue random interests simply because you want to, even if it seems “unproductive.” Expose yourself (not like that) to new people and places and ideas.
These practices help you push back on ingrained beliefs of what you “know” to be true, and challenge fixed and rigid beliefs while offering a framework for multiple realities. These practices allow you to discover different and multiple ways of being.
But don’t take it from me. Experiment! See if by incorporating a suggestion or two, you expand the aperture of your unique experience. And report back if you dare.
As this month’s coaching project—May is for Mayhem—winds down, I am present to what an extraordinary community this is. It’s been a sincere joy to connect with so many of you, and to have almost two dozen extraordinary conversations. I still have a few sessions to go, and I look forward to sharing some of the insights and themes that arose over the course of the month.
If any of you are still curious, or wish you’d grabbed a spot earlier, remember you are always invited to grab an hour of my time.
Sending you all lots of love and care.
xo,
Dani
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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From “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley
Loved this piece!