An invitation to play: imagine you are the speaker quoted below. What she sees, you see. You hear and smell and feel the air on your skin, as she does. Her emotions manifest as muscle tension or relaxation, energetic disturbance or peace in your body.

The horses walk, steady and swift, their heads bobbing up and down with each step, pulling my cart past the steep drop-offs and around the blind curves. The reins that connect me to their halters lie loosely over my forearm, I rest my hands easily upon my knees. Although the road ahead is utterly invisible, I trust my equine partners as they move.

I cannot see beyond the lead mare’s nose, yet offer her no guidance or control...the reins slack across my wrist. Just then, instinctively, she steps high to clear a boulder I never saw. Each of her teammates, in turn, smoothly imitates the motion. I remain at rest, at peace, allowing in trust as I am carried on my path.

Now, in your imagination of this experience: Notice any part of you not aligned with this apparently peaceful, relaxed, trusting feeling. As you read this speaker’s sensations and emotions, imagining them for yourself, do any internal conflicts arise?

Does your personal experience of life usually allow this relaxed sense of trust?

Or, as you read, did your ancient history waken, shouting, “Now wait just a minute here!”

As an alternative to powering through your life, stop cracking your energetic whip over the heads of the horses that pull your personal chariot.

If you haven’t before, then now is a great time to learn: The most successful folx in life know it's wise to cultivate options beyond “Never fear! I’m in charge!”

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If Authentic Communication is your goal, where do you begin? In this month's reflection on what we are asked to "leave at the door" of various venues, I explore the “on the ground” implementation. What does authenticity look like, in action?

Authentic communication is both loving and polite, both truly expressive of one’s inner world and considerate of others. I have called it an artform and it truly is!

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In reality, none of us can Leave It At the Door, when the “it” is heavy baggage from our history. Mid-month, long-form reflection as a scaffold shelf to pause for self-awareness and integration. Off-load old patterns that are no longer working and climb lighter.

Can you remember when you last felt an inner knowing of what to expect next, what to DO next? Was it recently, or did you stop a while ago listening to and trusting that beautiful intuition?

Are your inner ears simply deaf now to this voice of wisdom?

If you have silenced your intuition, or are well-practiced at ignoring it, I guarantee that the reason was never a faulty intuition, one that proved unreliable. You didn’t stop intuiting, beloved. You “only” stopped listening and trusting.

Trusting your intuition certainly served you well when you were young! Yet some well-meaning adults in your childhood may have “educated” that trust right out of you. Some of those sad, early lessons likely taught you that they–the adults in charge–knew better. Tish-tosh on your “feeling,” honey!

They told you what was what, really. They held the keys to the sacred text of the rational, logical, and explainable. Your culture’s folk wisdom and traditions were wiser, or science knew the truth. Maybe the truth holder was your minister at church or rabbi at temple.

One or more of those authorities overrode your intuitive brilliance and its messages. Those flashes of insight faded into the shadows of “they know better” when you stopped striving for SASSy Trust.

Once upon a time, your inner wisdom whispered your needs to you. You trusted that voice and you expressed those needs to others. And then, when your needs appeared irrelevant to them, were disregarded by them, or were disputed with “superior” sources of knowledge, you gave it all up. First, you gave up needing the “wrong” things. Later, you lost trust in the rightness of the still small voice that, even now, softly murmurs, “I need ______.”

Mostly, now...? You notice that you need what those voices of authority told you was acceptable to need, not what you actually need.

Remember, your SASS of Trust is only and always about getting your needs met. As an infant, you maybe learned to trust that others are there for you, have your back, and care about what you need for peace and well-being. Or you learned that they are not there for you and do not care. From that sadder outcome–learning I cannot trust others to meet my needs—your journey to the next "lesson" is short, ending with: I cannot trust my inner awareness of what my needs are.

If you know it is time to regain trust in your own inner knowing, I offer these practical tools for reclaiming the Success Strategy of Trust as it applies to your instinct. Here’s a short How-To on opening your inner ears to begin, or to hear more clearly that “still, small voice within.”

Presence/Mindfulness. Noticing the present moment without judgment begins most easily with “neutral” moments...often when you are alone.

• You’re filling a pan or pitcher with water and drop out of your ever-chattering mind into your senses. See the light reflect off the water and the ribbon-like flow. Hear the humming of water through plumbing and its splashing entry into your receptacle. Feel the temperature of the water touching skin.

• Start with pulling yourself out of your head and into your body for experiences when judgment is largely irrelevant, not in the middle of a hot disagreement with a loved one. Mindfulness for that comes later.

• Mindful presence in the moment always–ALWAYS–relies on a shift from thinking to feeling. Stop listening to the inner chatter and tune into the sensory experience of what you’re doing.

Meditation. This practice quiets that chattering mind. And, yes “sitting meditation” (there are other forms) is a challenging practice with a long learning curve for most of us.

• Our default is the continuous inner talk that begins when we open our eyes…”Oh, it’s morning.” A glance out the window. “I wonder what time it is.” Reach for the phone. “Oh, time to get up!” Move the body a bit under the sheets. “I need to go pee.” And on it goes, my inner narration of what I think, want, feel, and need…even a step-by-step description of whatever I see and do. What a pretty day. Wow, nice tree. I need to get a move on or I’ll be late. I wonder if it’s going to rain. Yep, look at those clouds. Did I remember to leave a light on? Oh, wow, look at that bird! I wish I knew how to identify an osprey…
  

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In reality, none of us can Leave It At the Door, when the “it” is heavy baggage from our history. Mid-month, long-form reflection as a scaffold shelf to pause for self-awareness and integration. Off-load old patterns that are no longer working and climb lighter.

Change is easy, beloved, once you get SASSy about it! All that big ol’ bad-ass called CHANGE wants from you is a little integration!

Change does not invite. She pushes. Hard. She pushes you to tie up a tidy package, connecting the first and the last of your Self-Aware Success Strategies: number one and numbers six and seven are calling for connection within you!

First, TRUST empowers you to embrace the simple fact of change. When you trust transformation—knowing and living from the truth that change is as natural as breathing—you become a change-lover! Welcome to the 20% of the population that embraces change.

Once you trust change as natural, your strategy of COMPROMISE empowers you to let go of trying to control it. Compromise relaxes and then releases your grip on outcomes and their management. It asks you to clarify your values and define what is most important…but not what is most important to DO.

This definition clarifies what is most important to BE while change occurs around you, as it always will. Be grumpy and resistant and complain. Change will happen anyway. So, why not be grateful, welcoming, and curious?

Finally, your SASS of ACCEPTANCE invites your grateful, curious welcome for whatever that feisty force, Change, lays out as the options. Acceptance works hand-in-hand with Compromise. After your Compromise allows you to relax your grip of control, and clarify how you most want to be, Acceptance enables you to be thrilled with the process of becoming, the process of change!

Together, these three SASSy bits of you—your Trust, Compromise, and Acceptance—show you this powerful truth: you can allow change. Let go of what has been and own it as choice. Choose to be graceful and dance with change, rather than wrestling her to the ground and pinning her. The non-negotiable that is change doesn’t erase your agency in life. Change changes. And you choose how to BE about that.

It’s my view that gender is culturally formed, but it’s also a domain of agency or freedom… ~Judith Butler, U.S. feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar

I love this quote because if I can live with gender as a domain of choice, that broadens the definition of what we call “possibility.”

Anything is possible, IF you Trust Change to be good at her role, Compromise with her a bit, and relax into Acceptance that what feels like stumbling chaos is actually an intense but smoothly gliding tango you’re dancing with Change.

And the steps are perfect.

From within that view of a dance with Change, think about this quote from Marianne Williamson.

“The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins.” ~Marianne Williamson, U.S. author and political activist

The moment you step into the arms of a dance partner is not when the dance ends. First, two co-creators of life’s rhythm must surrender to each other’s embrace. Then, the dance begins. You and Change, baby…

Ready? One-and-two-and… 🎶💃🎵💃

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