About to jump on with PowHERhouse Media Group for their 7×7 powHERcircle challenge to speak in to the importance of deep listening.
The human psyche can only hold so much.
The body can only perform so far.
But the spirit of us is limitless. It is fuel is limitless when we keep ourselves ‘plugged in’ so to speak.
It’s January. We have set goals. We have closed doors. We have cast a vision. Our focus and ‘work’ (and I use that word lightly) has begun.
We are going to get tired. You can count on it. We live in a human body.
We are going to be heart broken. Great risk of true heart and grit will take us into the unknown where we will grow and you can’t grow in a marshmallow. There IS resistance. There will be disappointment and choices to stay down or get up.
So we nourish our body to hold us.
We feed our minds to discern for us.
We listen to our spirit, like we would a lover, someone we hold dearer to ourselves than we ever thought possible. We listen. We listen. We listen.
We honour.
And we follow out inner wisdom.
There’s gonna be days where we’ve given ‘rrrrr and are triumphant and days were face down in the mud and the part of us who picks ourselves up and dusts ourselves off and notices the insight from what just ‘happened’ is the part of us who can ‘hear’.
It’s a practice.
And it’s a fuel tank which is never empty and will never leave you.
Spirit is in our business.
Our work is sacred.
Your instrument of a ‘self’ is made for what you do.
Listen.
Tina Overbury is a core-communications specialist who works with individuals and organizations who feel called. She is a storyteller, performer, and a professional listener who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Her work is rooted in Myth, Mysticism, and the practice of personal faith. She brings thirty years of collaborative storytelling in theatre, film, marketing, team based selling, and workshop facilitation. She is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat of deep listening held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada and is the voice and story behind TinaOLife, home to Story Stones, TinaO’s weekly online gathering of listening in to sacred stories. Tina is a proud associate of PowHERhouse media where she listens and supports the ‘stories’ of whole and integrated leaders of tomorrow.
If you would like to know more about Tina’s approach to story, click here.
We make some people harder to love because they defy our societal and cultural norms. They’re pure. They don’t mince expectations with filtered down possibilities so everyone else is comfortable. They don’t stop to give you their spot in the sun because they know we all have one. They think: Why create shade when there’s enough heat for all?
That’s Jake.
She’s highly misunderstood, and it’s precisely what I love about her. What you see is who she is and what she wants for you is everything. Tricky to believe these days: someone who actually wants the best for you because she understands what it is.
And therein lies the rub.
Her standards are high.
She comes by it honestly. She was raised that way (but that’s next week’s story). Here’s a glimpse though. I can’t help myself.
“My parents are truly incredible human beings. They exposed me to life across it’s multiple landscapes. I had it all. During the week, life in a fine home with velvet curtains and stunning design and then weekends running barefoot in the grass with scads of artists and hippies. There was no room for judgement in my life, only experiences. My parents gave us and showed us what the best truly is: a full and confident life.”
No wonder I liked her immediately even though I wasn’t sure I should. She challenged me right from the get-go. There was no nicey-nicey dumbing it down small-talk. She asked what I did. I told her I’m a Core Story Specialist. I help people articulate exactly who they are and intrinsically, why they do what they do.
And she got it.
“Cool”, she said. And that was it.
I liked that.
She didn’t offer any polite ‘filler’ conversation. She just moved on to what was next.
What you see is who she is and what she wants for you is everything.
I’ll come completely clean on this one, we work together now and I offered to write this article because I feel lucky to know her. Holy Hannah and mutha of all that is F-bomb sacred, Jake Hassel-Gren has a MASSIVE VISION for female entrepreneurs. She (and I) can drop more F-bombs than a bus load of 14 year olds on Dorritos. The difference is kids do it ’cause they can, and she does it ’cause sometimes it’s called for. Some moments deserve a capital F in the front with a big ole K at the back.
The truth is though, as much as I send her up now, I completely couldn’t figure her out when we first met. “I’ll connect you with my friend Jake”, said Charlene SanJenko of PowHERhouse Women’s Media Group to me last August. “She’s the woman behind The LEAP Learning Lab. You two can talk about building a program to help women bring their book from concept to publish-ready. Jake is as tired as you and I are of seeing women continue to work in silos. We have to change how we do things and Jake’s LEAP Learning Lab is all about that.”
Where does she live? I asked.
“Toronto”, said Charlene.
Oh gawd I thought, not another perfectly coiffed Toronto woman to snicker at my hippy hair and make snide comments about my closet full of Crocs. Sure… let’s talk. I thought. We’ll see.
We got on a video chat in September and in perfect post summer form, I had sun-fried frizzy hippy hair and was still bumbling around with beach brain struggling to finish complete thoughts and sentences as we shared big ideas about what would make the lives of female entrepreneur’s easier AND more powHERful. Jake, once upon a time a VP in the banking world, now an entrepreneur on a mission to create a global, world class online Community of Practice for women and set a platinum standard for online learning, showed up exactly as she is: stunning, primed and ready for anything.
I’m going to write another piece about Jake next week. This is just the beginning. It’s going to take a lot more than one article to capture this woman’s story. I spent a few hours on the phone with her doing what I do best, which is pulling together who she is at the Core so I can understand why she cares so deeply about women taking their spot, as she calls it.
For today though, my focus is on WHY Jake rather than WHO is Jake. I want you to know why I decided to hitch my online learning wagon to LEAP, and you know me, my reasons always have less to do with business and everything to do with the person. A long time ago, in an entrepreneurial class I took in my early twenties, the teacher at the front of the room said “never do business with someone you wouldn’t have over for dinner”. That truth has stayed with me. So here’s a bit about Jake and why I think she’s pretty dang spectacular.
TinaO’s Top Ten Reasons Why I Love Jake Hassel-Gren.
Do women even say that about women anymore? I do.
#1 – She’s wicked, and every other totally awesome and righteous word I used in the 80’s. Remember how the 80’s defied logic? There was only one direction, and it was UP. That’s how it feels to work beside Jake. We’re going somewhere and it’s gonna be florescent green, Madonna awesome.
#2 – She likes dogs. Seriously, her dogs have matching winter jackets and she’d never treat them like an accessory though they will look fantastic. She’s a ‘small dog’ parent and yes she does post funny dog videos on Facebook.
#3 – She speaks artist. Okay, I’m stretching the truth a little (maybe a lot). She doesn’t actually SPEAK artist, but she FEELS artist which is harder and far more vulnerable to do. I couldn’t hang with this chick if we didn’t connect in this way.
#4 – She wears red lipstick like it’s a signature. Red is primary. It isn’t made from something else by anything else. Perfect.
BTW, it’s Chanel. I asked.
#5 – She can flip you the bird while screaming your praises. Expression is like that. It’s a full contact sport. Jake does life out loud and what she doesn’t say with her words, she’ll tell you with her eyes.
#6 – It took less than 3 seconds for my phone to ring when I told her about my sister passing. Not a text. She phoned. Who calls anyone anymore? Jake.
#7 – She asks “How are you?” at least twice a week. In her world of ‘best’, of ‘do’, of ‘be’ she still finds the time to connect with those she cares about. She says things like “I was thinking about you today. How did your doctor’s appointment go?”, or “How are you holding up?”, and “Do you need anything?”. Again, I ask you, how many people do you have in your life who do that regularly?
#8 – She calls me out on my greatness and I’m not talkin’ blowing sunshine up my butt. It’s not about compliments, it’s about saying what is so. She’s the first to say “You know that. You do that. You are that.” – When she says it, I believe it. When I say it, I talk myself out of it. I’d rather listen to her.
#9 – She loves football. Okay, so I grew up with too many brothers and I can’t stand watching sports on tv or in an arena, but I frickin’ love that she’s over-the-top, beyond-all-understanding, geeked-out C R A Z Y about The New England Patriots. I gotta respect that kinda passion you know?
#10 – When I asked her what is ‘home’ for her, and what is her greatest medicine? She said LOVE.
Jake is a big game of life player. She gets up every morning and asks: How can I be of service today? Some of us are harder to understand because our whole package doesn’t match the stories set up and made-up by others on the outside. Jake is like that.
I thought she was tough. She is.
I thought she was an uncompromising high achiever. She is.
I thought she was opinionated, driven and sharp. She is that too.
I thought she cared about success. She does.
Yours.
and Hers.
and Mine.
Because in Jake’s world, you don’t have to step into the shade to give someone else a piece of the sun.
The best is meant for all of us, and a woman need only stand and claim her spot to know that for herself.
This is PART ONE of TinaO’s Exclusive on Jake Hassel-Gren. Watch for Jake’s Core Story in PART TWO coming out next week. For more about Jake’s LEAP Learning Lab, you can visit her site.
TinaO is a Core Story Specialist and a Program Director of PUBLISH with Meribeth Deen for The LEAP Learning Lab. She’s a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub to Live, Give and Be Your Story, plus the deep listening weekend retreat Live Your Best Story. She’s been in the PR and Marketing world since she could put words together and has been a professional network marketer for over twelve years. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey, marketing isn’t make-believe and writing won’t give you an aneurysm (it’s not hard). You can be yourself in all that you do. In fact, that’s what the world is waiting for.
Our story is a personal invitation to learn. It’s not our curse nor our blessing. It’s not our label or paradigm or racket or reason to blame or run or justify. It’s not our grandeur or accomplishment or title or goals. Story just is, and it never ends, while we have breath in our body, blood in our veins and synapses firing between our ears, it is our story that invites us to keep on learning. Why? Because an experience of living doesn’t happen in what we know, it’s in the minute after minute of discovery, and it’s vital to our happiness.
Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, comparison did. You know what happens when we stop learning? We start believing that we know stuff and God help us when that happens because that’s how comparison creeps in. You’ll notice when you start using position statements like: I’m right, they’re wrong. She’s good enough, I’m not. They can do it, I can’t. Why me? Why her? We begin to use words like always and never, as in…I always have to… or I never get to… as if there’s another option out there that we’re not allowed to have.
Comparison killed the cat.
The remedy? Operate in the learning and living zone. Let your story unfold. Be curious. Can we have knowledge? Yes of course it’s just that we mustn’t stop there. We must develop skills and gain wisdom, be guided by our experiences, but the very second we stop learning it’s as if we’re saying I’ve had enough of my story thanks. That’s enough learning for me.
Really?
How about this: what makes an unbelievable book? Some fictional character or person’s real life experience takes us on a roller-coaster ride of happenings that move, inspire or transform us. Most importantly, it’s a journey that we can see ourselves in. Memorable books reflect our human experience and that’s why a killer book compels us to turn the page. We are addicted to learning. We have an insatiable desire to answer the question: What next? Think about your morning routine. When your feet hit the floor and you raise your first cuppa, doesn’t the little voice in your head ask you that very question? Isn’t that why you move forward? What’s next?
That is the juju of our story. That’s what learning is.
We say: Teach me. What else is there? I want to know. I’m ready. More please. I want to be better at this. I want to try something new. I want to expand, to stretch, to lift, to enjoy, to be thrilled, to be moved. I am a life-long learner.
Life IS learning.
In today’s seemingly chaotic world governed by technology, at-capacity-thresholds and relentless change, those of us who embrace life by continuing to sit in the learning seat, (dare I say it?) will be HAPPIER than those who don’t (there I said it) because it takes more energy to hang on than it does to let go and learn.
It takes more energy to hang on than it does to let go and learn.
If you’re in business, and you don’t get story, you’re in trouble because today’s marketing is steeped in it. If you’re still selling pain instead of freedom your days are numbered because today’s consumers are done with adrenaline based marketing. Fear hurts more now because it’s difficult to get away from. If you have a website (and come on now, you must if you’re in business) and you don’t have a book: you are totally missing it. Today we are story based. That is how we learn. That is what we respect and that is what we are yearning for.
Enough with telling me what you know.
Teach me what I want to know instead.
I’m a program director with The Leap Learning Lab and along with Meribeth Deen, the two of us lead a program called PUBLISH supporting the stories of Canadian women from concept to publish ready. And while I can tell you about the tangible benefits of writing your book with us, it’s not the ‘how to’ stuff like this that you’ll take with you once you’re done.
HOW TO:
craft a title that connects to your core.
conduct a research based interview.
link one chapter to the next so your reader is compelled to turn the page.
bring the vibrancy of your inner story up and out to live on the page.
magnify your voice to cut through the noise of other books in your genre.
etc… etc… etc…
Those are just some of the writing take-aways of PUBLISH, but what about the intangibles? Because this is where life as a committed learner enters the picture. This is where we follow, and yes possibly even run along our path to happiness.
TAKE AWAYS:
Honouring the roots of where you’ve been so that your wisdom is a gift.
Connecting to the core of your why to make sense of why any of it matters.
Trusting the story that wants to tell you instead of feeling the pressure of having to drive it all the time.
Allowing a relationship with your creative side to lighten your load a bit more.
Developing a greater sense of confidence in who you are, where you come from and your place in the world.
Finding deeper meaning in all of it.
How do you put that into a curriculum? You can’t because it’s a bi-product of showing up and doing the work whatever that may be. In PUBLISH it’s about getting your book written. In Live Your Best Story(a retreat I lead), it’s about listening so as to lead your life. Whatever it is, take it on as the life-long learner that you are designed to be.
Happiness is connected to our sense of belonging, to understanding what brings us peace, and to doing life within the design of who we truly are. None of us get there by standing on a mountain of what we know. All of us will get there when we’re committed to living by learning.
Our story is an invitation to learn and as we do, we invite more happiness in to our life.
xxT
If you are a Canadian woman entrepreneur, leader, innovator, millennial or your business offers services to women in Canada we invite you to find out more about LEAP Learning Lab.
We are a team of 10 fabulous Canadian women creating opportunities for other Canadian women to accelerate their success and their results across multiple disciplines. We also offer corporate learning solutions for businesses committed to the development of their women leaders.
We are looking for fabulous Canadian women to learn, live and lead with us. Collectively, through learning, we will make each other better humans.
Here’s where you can find out more about Tina’s upcoming retreat: Live Your Best Story. Here’s where you can find out more about PUBLISH and become a VIP in the Leap Learning Lab.
Here’s an excerpt from the first draft of Chapter One of You Matter – Identifying your Core Story that will be complete by December 31st. Follow along if it speaks to you. Big love to Meribeth Deen for being my Story Doula through this process. She said to me once a few months ago: ‘I can see that my challenge with you is going to be when and how to reign you in to a specific focus.’ She was right. But as is true with all my core story work, the focus found me and all I had to do was follow the thread.
Here is an excerpt for you:
I begin every Core Story client with a complimentary inquiry call and while this may shift as my work carries on, here’s why I do it this way: I am creating the best place I know how to let the story tell us and not the other way around. It follows the same belief that we can never run faster than our story and by making the call free, both you and I can step into the ring of ‘what have I got to lose?’ and that’s where permission begins. It’s not a flippant, what have I got to lose? although it can start out that way, usually and very quickly with that kind of freedom between us, I can establish a sense of ‘it’s just you and me here’ so that the story that wants to be known by you can feel safe enough to emerge.
Is my time valuable? Yes, no more than yours. Is my experience worthy of payment, yes, no more than yours. Do I deserve to be paid for my work? Yes, and at this stage of our relationship, only if it’s of value to you. If we decide to move forward together we’re going to be doing some intimate work so we need to choose each other. I like to think of it like dating. Imagine if we charged for that. What would that do to our connectivity? What I’m saying is, we have to authentically decide for it to be real. We don’t kiss the guy or girl at the end of the first date simply because we’re supposed to, or because it’s deserved, we kiss them because we want to, because the desire to be together emerges out of us.
One of my favourite moments with my now husband happened at the end of our second date. We had gone to the movies or something (I totally don’t remember the details), and we both knew that the next day he was going on tour and wouldn’t be back for a week. He walked me up to my door and I let him inside. We had an awkward hug and a peck on the cheek followed by stilted small talk about when he’d be back and how he’d call me when he returned and then I let him out and closed the door. I took a few confused steps down my hallway towards the living room when I heard a gentle knock, and I smiled. I didn’t even have a thought yet, but I somehow knew this was honest. This felt true. I curiously walked back, turned the deadbolt and opened the door. He looked at me, hesitating briefly and trembling just a little and said “If I went on tour without kissing you, and I mean really kissing you I’d have to kick my own ass.” With that he planted one on me and left. His desire to kiss me emerged out of him. It behooved him not to leave without a real, risky, whole-hearted kiss. He could not run faster than the story of that kiss. As for me, I felt confused when he left the first time because I didn’t get it, but I didn’t know what the it was that I didn’t get yet. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t formulaic. It just didn’t feel right, him leaving like that. It wasn’t until he knocked the second time that I kind of understood, and then when he kissed me, I fell, and hard. That was the moment of our connection. Neither one of us needed to take charge of the end of the date, we simply had to follow the thread of the story and then show up and live it out fully.
And that’s why I don’t charge for my inquiry call, I am creating space for what is real to emerge so that the truth can happen without our own alpha-agendas of how things should be or my own story of self-worth getting in the way.
Don’t worry, I won’t be kissing you, but I may knock twice.
By December 31st 2016 the first draft of this book will be done. If you’d like a complimentary digital copy of TinaO’s Identifying your Core Story, pop your name in here and we’ll be sure to send it to you once it’s complete early 2017.
As well, if you are a Canadian woman with a story to tell and would like to be considered for PUBLISH, a book writing program launching in mid January 2017 through powHERhouse Media Group, you may want to consider becoming a Woman we Celebrate so TinaO and Meribeth Deen can support you to get your book written this year.
TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.
By December 31st the first draft of You Matter – Identifying your Core Story will be complete. You can follow along as I share some sneak peeks with you until then. Big thanks to Meribeth Deen for being my Story Doula as I give birth to this word-baby. Did I just say that? Word-baby. Oh boy. I said it again.
We live our life unconsciously as stories with excited beginnings, doubtful mid-way points and then panicked or impending endings. We feel the timing of stories. We are captivated by the unknown because we expect an inevitable resolution. We control our lives to avoid the terror of unnecessary surprises. We get story and because the construct of beginning, middle, end is so ingrained into us, we woe-fully take on the dangerous pretense of being able to write our own story, as if we ultimately can. I’m here to tell you that while that’s possible, yes you can pick up the pen and write your own story, set your own course, and create the life you’ve dreamed of (as the inspirational wall art we buy never stops reminding us), this one-sided alpha position approach to living, while it may bring you short-term confidence, perceived control and seemingly peaceful order, it comes at a high price and that usually means your life, figuratively and sometimes even literally.
Yes you know where you’re going
Yes you may have the means to get there
Yes you may even have full confidence that you can ‘make it happen’
Until one day, you don’t, or unspeakably you can’t, or you simply won’t, and you don’t know why. It’s as if you can’t quite put your finger on it, you just know you can’t do this, whatever this is, anymore.
By December 31st 2016 the first draft of this book will be done. If you’d like a complimentary digital copy of TinaO’s Identifying your Core Story, pop your name in here and we’ll be sure to send it to you once it’s complete early 2017.
As well, if you are a Canadian woman with a story to tell and would like to be considered for PUBLISH, a book writing program through powHERhouse Media Group, you may want to consider becoming a Woman we Celebrate so TinaO and Meribeth Deen can support you to get your book written this year.
TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.
I’m intuitive and that doesn’t make me special or any different from you. I write to listen to what I already know but can’t hear.
It started last summer after a cancer diagnosis. I don’t call it ‘my cancer’, because I don’t choose to personalize it that way. It never belonged to me, nor do I take ownership of the creation of it. I may have ‘asked’ for a shift, or ‘attracted’ a change, but I most certainly did not ask for cancer.
That said, a black sticky-outy thingy arrived as the messenger for my particular ‘asked for’ shift.
In processing this I began to write in a way I hadn’t before. I’ve always had a journal… yawwwnnnnnnnn and as you can see, I had become rather tired of that. I’ve written poetry forever, but somehow that felt too dark, almost too intimate. Frankly too indulgent really. I’ve also written opinion pieces when I’m wrestling with things as a way to figure them out. Here’s one of my favourites, only because the sheer writing of it filled me up when I’d been feeling empty. But writing that way seemed far too daunting and frankly too cerebral a process for what I was aching for.
Nothing fit. At that time in my life, I had been ready to roll out my own life’s red-carpet and reallllly get shit done. At the time of the diagnosis, my business had just started to rebound after a self-enforced, four year hibernation, my husband and I had finally closed a painful chapter in our marriage – together, and our children were growing up. Life was ready for a new growth stage. I was standing on the precipice of right now, in the clearing, ready to act, to start, to begin again, and a stranger broke into my house. My body. My throat. Full stop.
The last bloody thing I wanted to do was write about it. I didn’t want to listen to my own self-reflecting. I didn’t want to ‘make friends’ with the cancer. I didn’t want to fight it, to ‘kick it’, to give IT any more of my life-force energy than it was already attempting to gobble up. I didn’t want to be in my own skin, let alone go into the depths of more self-discovery or listen to the words in my head. Good gawd. I’m a blabber mouth, blab blab blab blab blab. All I ever do is talk, and wonder, and question and press further to understand. Do you ever feel like you just don’t want to learn anymore?
It’s that place where entering one rabbit hole opens up another to lead to again more and more and then still more. How exhausting. I was empty. I know now, that’s how the cancer got in. I had left my post. I was too tired and forgot to lock the door. I probably didn’t even care really, if I’m truly honest. The door was abandoned open and the gate was swinging wide on it’s hinge. I did not have the energy to learn anything else. Instead,
I wanted to land.
I wanted to come home.
I wanted answers.
So I began to ask questions. I asked about the cancer, about being tired, about love, about soul mates, about purpose and work. I asked about my career and whether I had one, about being an artist, about my skills, about heaviness and healing. I asked and asked and I still ask today.
Sometimes the answers are deep like this one:
Dear Tina, what are the parts of my life that I must release to finish the journey?
…you are asked to release doubt. Between you and your call on your soul is doubt. Tina this circle is complete when the mask of doubt is dropped and transforms into the essence of what it truly is: curiosity, intrigue, fascination, perplexed, passion, drive. Tina there is shame around your curiosity and it has become doubt…
Sometimes they are informative:
Dear Tina, how are you today?
…Well you haven’t been taking great care of me these last few days. You haven’t been outside. You haven’t cooked anything and you haven’t written. These three things are your life blood and without them you will get sick, remain sick and everything else is just a measure to balance the toxicity instead of simply saying no to it. …saying no to what is not your life-force and saying yes to what is your life-force.
Sometimes it’s challenging.
Dear Tina, What is the story of this anger?
…Oh Tina, it’s before you – it’s young, it’s so young. When you are ready to go there you will.
Today, I woke up in a fog and with a headache. I went back to bed to try to sleep it off. I woke up still heavy with it. I went to my desk. I pulled out my ‘to do’ list. I cracked it open pretending this is what I was supposed to do. Then I looked over at my Dear Tina Journal and knew that was the call for me. Today’s message was so ridiculously banal and perfect. Here it is:
Dear Tina, Something is wrong. What is it? Tina something is wrong. What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?
Tina you are chasing again. Chasing the money. Chasing the life. Chasing the body. You are acting out and holding back.
My tummy is upset. Why?
Because of restaurant food. That is all.
I have a headache. Why?
Because you’ve been wrapping your body up in knots.
I’m in a fog. What do I do?
You do what needs to be done. You sleep.
Why does everything seem so stupid?
Your period is coming.
Oh right. That’s what it is.
You are chasing the money. Chasing the body. Chasing the peace. You are still fighting the shift Tina.
No coffee. No, low, No, low wine. No sugar. More gardening and veggies. This fog you are in is self induced. We wouldn’t want a fog for you. You have everything you need. Your children are happy. Your marriage is strong. Your network is with you. You can rest in your Arbonne business. You have everything you need. Simply show up and do. You needn’t push. When you push, you get angry and push back. Pushing for you is counter productive.
Find the groove Tina.
Live in the groove of it all.
You got this.
This one made my laugh. You got this? Ha! Has my higher self just entered into today’s date. Who am I to judge?
The message was clear.
#1 – my period is coming. Let go of high intensity today. How ridiculously simple is that?
#2 – the insight is that I’m chasing again and it’s taking me away from my centre. It’s a familiar feeling so when it landed I knew exactly what it meant.
#3 – the take away, because there is always a take-away, ‘pushing for me is counter productive, find the groove instead.’
Why do I share all of this with you? For lots of reasons. It’s part of what I’m designed to do. I write to share and in the sharing, you all become part of my own ‘witness protection program’. When you witness me, I can hear my own voice. So thank you for being my witness today. I also do this because I want you to see how accessible your inner-wisdom is to you. I want you to see how, with just a few breaths and patience you can come home to yourself, for yourself. For some this practice becomes their prayer, for others it’s their meditation and still more, simply, their listening.
All of us are intuitive. All of us are more than our five senses. All of us can listen our way out of a fog as I did today.
On July 23rd on beautiful Bowen Island, just outside of Vancouver, BC at Rivendell Retreat Centre, I am offering Writing as Witness, a one day retreat into the story and/or wisdom inside of you that wants to be heard.
The day includes: Walking meditation, Writing, baring Witness to others, and witnessing our own wisdom. The retreat time will be as private or as connected as you want it to be, which means, you needn’t share your writing or insights if it doesn’t feel right.
There will be a few ‘how to’s and offered best practices’, but mostly, the day is a guided conversation with your-self and the ‘practice’ is in the following of how and what you are wanting to have heard.
Journals are provided. Snacks are also offered however, please bring a picnic lunch to enjoy outside (weather permitting).
When you were a kid did you have a lock and key, gold leaf five year journal? Kind of palm size, perfect for someone under twelve? Did you write KEEP OUT all over it? Did it have a button latch with a key hole across the front? Did you write threatening things inside so that just in case someone dared to crack open your precious life story book that would know the depths of your seriousness? There would be dire consequences to pay.
Did you have one?
Did you know that journaling has been linked to healing?
How the act of writing about stressful things not only makes things better but can prevent them from getting worse?
Did you know about mental health and the power of creative journaling?
I was insanely nervous. No kidding. I had decided to show up and speak from the stage fully alive and semi-prepared. Well, not true, I was fully prepared and by choice, only semi rehearsed.
I had an idea of what the beginning would be and I had a thought about how how the story would end, after all, I was connecting the dots between various moments in my own life plus, I understand the structure of a great ending: it has to be surprising but inevitable(thank you Roger Larry for your film-making tip that stuck).
Surprising but inevitable…
Well, how just like life that is isn’t it? It always makes sense when you track it back from the end. That’s easy. Ha ha… but did you know that everything makes sense as it unfolds too – only that’s the hard part because it requires trusting the process.
Watch this clip about how I came to trust my own living story as I shared a powHERtalk with an audience.
If only I had remembered to breathe at the beginning, perhaps my voice wouldn’t have dropped quite so far. Ah well, if that had happened, sure I would’ve ”sounded” better, but that’s not how this piece wanted to live.
The truth is subjective right? I mean, I have one idea and I KNOW it’s true, but you do too and you KNOW it’s true as well. Okay, so if that’s the case, then which is it? Why all the fuss and fighting about it? And why are we on this incessant pursuit of knowing it? Why the pre-occupation with ‘finding our truth’?
Because we’re unaccustomed to living it.
And that’s perfectly natural.
We are born as itty bitty babies relying on those around us to be there, to take care of us, to make sense of us, to be the bubble that is our world. Our first conscious exposure to our living story is a completely EXTERNAL one. Our truth is based on what others do around us.
We see our mother’s face, feel her touch, hear her voice and that’s how we know we’re not alone. We don’t even know what alone is, we just know that we’re more than one.
We hear, smell, taste and sense our environment and that’s how we know where we are.
We are born without words, without context, without place, yet with a soul story to know and to give away, but we can’t yet because we haven’t developed the tangible tools like language to do it.
It’s as if it’s a set up! Life positions us to meet who we are through how we’re received. Now this is a beautiful opportunity to grow if our ‘truth’ is always reflected back at us which is probably why we call this life thing a magnificent journey. There’s so much to learn. But come on, it sure seems wildly inefficient though. Doesn’t it? That we should come in to the world perfect, whole and living our ‘truth’, only to spend the first 40 years of our life (usually) living on auto-pilot then waking up during a mid-life crisis, or a 20-something existential emptiness, or our 30-something drive to ‘be someone’. And then Some of us just skip it all together by playing the ‘acceptance game’ which isn’t acceptance at all, but rather resignation. Ewwwwww. I’ve seen it and so have you. I’ve even lived it a few times.
When my husband and I couldn’t stand each other for about ten years of our first fifteen together (yup no kidding), the only way I knew how to cope was to say to myself: Okay well I guess he’ll just watch TV and I’ll live in the kitchen (I’m simplifying but you probably get it). No wonder I crash and burned. Resignation ate me up and spit me out.
Here’s the thing, once I took the dangerous step of actually LISTENING for whom I’ve always been, I realized, I’d never actually left. I wasn’t lost, I just wasn’t found.
Did you know that we can’t ditch ourselves? There is no where we can run to lose ourselves either. It’s not like we get to shed our ‘truth’ on the floor as a rumpled outfit as we reach into the closet to wear someone else. We’re not a costume nor a wardrobe. We’re not inter-changeable, well, at least not on the inside.
All the self-help books, personal growth workshops, inspirational wall-art and lit up catch phrases that we devour as a way to ‘find’ our truth is the habitual way we’ve moved through world since we arrived. It makes sense right? We think: I am because you see me, I do because you know me, I say because you hear me, I love because you love me… There’s beauty in this ‘we’, in this interconnectedness. There is. I get that, but it still has nothing to do with the ‘truth’ quest we all end up on.
Today I ask you – Who are you in relation to only you? Who are you beyond what fills your mind all day? Who are you outside of where and how you live? Who are you and who have you always been?
Oh mannnnnn big questions and you’re probably feeling the desire to skip it. I mean, why ask when you can’t ever truly know. There’s no proof, no check mark, no enlightened someone to say: Yes, you’re right, that’s who you are. There’s only you and all you can do is listen for you. Listen to the story that has been telling YOU since you arrived.
A life and business coach I once worked with Isabelle Mercier Turcotte said to me in a day long session together: “That’s not your gig” and she wrote it on a yellow sticky and stuck it to one of the many massive post-it notes on the wall. For months I walked through my life with two imaginary yellow stickies: one that said THAT’S MY GIG, and another that said THAT’S NOT MY GIG and in every single interaction I would figuratively hold up my two stickies and decide which one was true: my gig, or not my gig. If you’re interested, here’s a quick video in my own words that I made for Isabelle about it.
I had a good life five years ago when I was holding up those stickies, in fact, most would’ve thought that I was at the top of my game. I was at the pinnacle of my profession, by all accounts I had a great life: two kids, a house, husband, career, passions and my health. My truth however was that a lot of that good life wasn’t actually mine, I just lived it like it was.
Today, I ask you: What’s your gig? What’s not your gig? The truth will always always always tell you, you need only listen for it.
I challenge you this week to hold up your two yellow stickies and see what answers come back.
TinaO is a 
As well, if you are a Canadian woman with a story to tell and would like to be considered for PUBLISH, a book writing program launching in mid January 2017 through powHERhouse Media Group, you may want to consider becoming a 
TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.
