Learning To Dance With Life & Curated Content #16 June 2024
A monthly email for paid subscribers with curated reads, videos, podcasts and other content which have interested or inspired me this month.
Hey Friends,
On Wednesday, it will be seven years since I resigned from my role in investment and changed the direction I was taking in life. In one way, it feels like yesterday and, in another way, it feels like a lifetime ago. It was one big choice and the one people ask me about most often. Yet, in reality, to follow through on it needed a million other little choices to stay the course. Life is something we are choosing every day.
One thing I have learned in my life and through witnessing the life of clients I support is that it is really hard to live the life that is destined for you. You have to actively disrupt yourself and be willing to meet the edge of your tolerance for discomfort again and again and again. It is not a one time thing. The alternative of fitting in to the status quo will always be there to tempt you. Each time you will be faced with the choice of who you want to be in the world and what sacrifices you will make for that.
Something I have allowed myself to do more in the last seven years is to be willing to course correct when my inner self or the outer world asks for that. To always be open to changing my mind or to allowing life to re-direct me. Even the best laid plans or goals must be flexible enough to open up to new opportunities and challenges as they arrive. The skill is learning the dance of committing to the life you want while understanding you can never know the path you will ultimately end up walking. You must cultivate the flexibility and malleability to adjust as life guides you towards who you are destined to be.
Real identity development is an iterative process. You are always ‘becoming’. Your ‘True Self’, as contemplative traditions refer to it, emerges when you learn to be in communion with the world and your environment in a co-creative manner. When you pay enough attention to the axis of what is unfolding inside you and how you are meeting the world outside of yourself. Since the beginning of the year, I can feel I am going through another iteration. There is a tightening of the lens around my identity, the direction my life and work is taking and what I have to offer. Returning to study exceptional human experiences and transpersonal psychology this year has given me the container and community to help me integrate more intentionally all the choices I have made over the last few years. With that, I can feel a pivot coming.
I want to spend some time this summer asking myself what that looks like. I used to move at a fierce speed but today I know I am at my most powerful when I move slowly. Doing things too quickly or doing too much reduces your potency and, with that, your impact. The practice I have learned is to consistently inject pauses into my life, ask intentional questions and allow the answers to come.
The world is always offering up guidance if we are willing to pay attention. At first, I was surprised that if I simply opened myself up to the idea I could ask for guidance, it would invariably arrive. Now I take it as a given. When clients ask me what they should do between sessions to try and find some clarity, I often reply ‘take a walk in nature and ask for inspiration’. I intend to follow that advice myself this summer. I hope you make time to do that too.
Fiona x
After the paywall some journalling prompts to reflect on Q2, where you are situated in 2024 and, more broadly, what cycle is ending or starting for you in life.