I'll be blunt. It can be really difficult to trust the process and fully lean into the idea of Everything Happens for a Reason when everything seems to be in the middle of a giant dumpster fire.

Why do I say everything is in a dumpster fire? Well….

There have been over 1.8M confirmed COVID 19 cases and nearly 106K related deaths in the United States alone. With summer approaching, towns are transitioning into the yellow phase despite the lack of vaccines, testing, or contact tracing to truly determine how safe it is to re-open stores and activities. The increased interaction with others and uncertainty of safety leads to increased stress, fear, and judgment of the behaviors of others.
Racism is real. History is repeating itself. Cities are on fire. The black/brown community continues to suffer and be subjugated to cruel and unjust acts of violence. A lot of white, privileged individuals just had the wake-up call that the way they were raised to quietly respect and be color blind was, in fact, contributing to the problem. It’s like a scene from the 1960’s.
Hatred is real and extends past the racism. In addition to the black/brown communities, other minorities and communities such as Muslims, Jews, LGBTQIA, and immigrants are being outwardly discriminated against and continue to fear for their own personal safety.
Global warming and climate change continue to threaten our ecosystems and the future adult lives of our children. Increased trash in our oceans is killing sea creatures and washing up on shores.
Spotted Lantern Flies are back in full force in effected regions on the East Coast with hundreds, if not thousands, hatching every day. (PSA: tape your trees, load up on Sevin, and kill on site!)
Oh, and Murder Hornets are terrifying. Those nasty little buggers have not reached where I live and are sequestered to the Pacific Northwest, but those things are truly frightening to look at, and they are wiping out the already-at-risk honeybee population.

Give me four more things and we have the ten plagues that I’ve read about every year on Passover.

The Reality of Stress

Joking aside, with all of this going on, plus the additional stress that life puts on us daily (looking at you: work, societal pressures, parents, kids, and self-judgment), it can be hard to lean in. It can be hard to understand why any of this is happening.

Why don’t we have enough tests or ventilators?
Why don’t COVID 19 first responders and healthcare heroes have enough PPE?
Why are innocent people losing their lives due to the color of their skin?
Why are these god damn bugs so invasive?!

This shit is catabolic in nature. It is MEANT to put us into a stress reaction. It is MEANT to force us to press pause. It is MEANT to force us to take action.

However, staying in a stress reaction and living with conflict is not helpful in the long run, and can have a dramatic impact on our health and well-being.

Throwing our hands up in the air and asking what's the point in trying, or being so overwhelmed by the weight of the world that we retreat so far into our own minds and skin that we don't take action, isn't helpful.

Being angry, pointing fingers, judging others, resisting the news, resisting change, looting, being in conflict with truth, living out of conflict with your values, and fighting may be productive initially; but it is draining, destructive and not sustainable.

When the anger subsides, where will we be? As a certified Mindset and Energy Leadership Coach, it is my job to ask hard questions. It is my job to get people to challenge the stories they’ve been taught and telling themselves for years. It is my job to help people who want to live greater to step out of their comfort zones and lean into the process of personal growth and change.

If you’re watching everything that is going on and feel an alarm clock of distress going within you, that’s completely normal. The world has thrown the rule book out the window and it is forcing us outside of our comfort zones. We’re being forced to make decisions, some of which challenge every belief that we’ve held up until this very moment. The world is forcing us to look within and make decisions about what is best for us; and that can be scary, icky, and cause distress because many of us have not done the work to determine what is best. Our inner critic, aka, the Gremlin, has a megaphone in our ear yelling “You’re not good enough. You make bad choices. You’re not smart enough to navigate this. You’re not worthy!” And it is hard to argue the Gremlin’s logic if you haven’t done the work to realize that they are wrong.

Self-awareness is self-leadership.

So, what can we do? For starters, we can change the question from “why” to “what.”

“Why” leads to an internal dialogue of conflict – wishing something is different than it is. Changing the question to “what” or more specifically “what am I supposed to learn here,” provides us with an opportunity to move past the stress, into acceptance, and gives us the opportunity to find solutions.

Switching to “what” allows us to do the work to unravel the old stories, and create new stories that better serve us, and the new world that we are living in. But how can we increase self-awareness, understand our core values, and make conscious choices? How can we trust the process, lean into our authenticity, and become fearless and confident? How do we know that our choices and actions are coming from a place of grounding?

Don’t worry. There is a 10-step process that, when fully embraced and practiced, allows us to fearlessly and confidently step into our authenticity. It allows us to be fully engaged, with a solution-focused mindset, in everything we do. Embodying this process removes judgment and allows us to take control of our perceptions and, in turn, allows us to make grounded decisions, trust the process, and make the world a better place by inspiring others to do the same. The first four steps are outlined below.

Step 1: Awareness

The first step to unraveling stories and is to understand when, how, and why we judge ourselves and others. For this, I typically recommend that my clients keep a judgment journal.

Every time you sense yourself making a judgment, jot it down. Whether it’s judging your spouse for loading the dishwasher wrong, judging yourself for putting on a few pounds, or judging others for how they are responding to world events (not wearing masks, murdering, looting, protesting, tweeting), write it down. This helps you understand how frequently you judge, and trust me when I say, it’s more than you think.

Then, when you have time, go back and look at your judgments, Consider a different perspective. Put yourself in their shoes, come up with their side of the story. If you believed that everyone, in every given moment, is doing the best they can based upon how they were raised, what they were taught, and past interactions that they had which formed their personal truth, how would that help you shift your perspective on the judgment that you made? This isn’t about right or wrong, or morals, this is just to help raise awareness around the fact that there are multiple sides to every story, and our judgments and actions are based on our own personal history and truths.

Step 2: Acceptance

The second step to start unraveling stories is to accept things for what they are. Forgive yourself and others for not knowing any better in the moment. Each moment gives us the opportunity to evaluate who we are and choose who we want to be. By accepting that, for the most part, everyone does the best they can given the information they have, we are able to transition out of a stress reaction and regain control. Then, we can accept that collectively things are what they are.

Acceptance does NOT mean settling. It is reconciliation and reduction of built-up conflict and stress within us so that we can make grounded choices. It means accepting that personally, we may have more work to do and may need to better educate ourselves. It means accepting we can’t control the behaviors of other people. So, let’s focus on what is within our control – and that is the decisions that we make.

Steps 3 and 4: Conscious Choice and Trusting the Process

This brings me to the third and fourth step in the process of unraveling stories and creating new ones: making conscious choices and trusting the process. Once we raise awareness and acceptance to how and why things are, to the stories we tell about those things, and to the fact that there are alternative perspectives can be considered “true” to others and universally, we can make grounded, conscious choices. Choices that come from our awareness and our soul, rather than choices that are made from stress or fear. Conscious, grounded choices that are based on our core values allow us to lean in, minimize self-doubt, and trust the process. They allow us to focus on the journey, to learn, to grow, to adapt, and to change. Here, we continue to navigate from a higher level of energy that embodies self-awareness, self-acceptance, compassion, empathy, and broader perspectives.

Conscious choices and trusting the process help us embrace that everything happens for a reason. And while we may not know fully know or understand the reason, we embrace it anyway – because we’re able to look at it, without judgment and say “Okay Universe, I see what you did there. I don’t understand why you did it, and that is OK, but I’d like to understand what it is I’m supposed to learn from this.”

Leaning in.

I don’t know why COVID 19 has claimed thousands of lives. I don’t know why the black/brown community continues to be prejudiced against and murdered. I don’t know why peaceful protests to protect the black/brown community are met with swat teams, while non-peaceful protests led by armored white privileged individuals are met with patience and grace. I don’t know why people won’t take the threats of global warming seriously. I don’t know why a armored guard needs to sit at the entrance of my synagogue during the high holidays. I don’t know why Spotted Lantern Flies and Murder Hornets are a thing.

But, I DO know there is a lesson to be learned.

In fact, I believe that this is all happening at the same time because collectively, we have been ignoring the silent alarm clocks that have been going off around us, and that collectively, we needed to have the covers ripped off to expose the cold hard truth, and to be smacked over the head with a pillow to ensure we were listening.

Personally, I’m done hitting the snooze button. Sure, I’d like the fire to end as much as the next person, but let’s control the burn like the do for forest restoration efforts. Let’s lean in to learn, to grow, and to try to do better so that the smoldering embers don’t spark another fire in the future. I know that personally, I will say or do the wrong things on this journey, and that is OK. Because I will continue to learn, I will continue to grow.

I hope that you will join me on this journey. I hope you lean in to help control the burn so that we can create a new, beautiful, better life for all people. It won’t be easy, but it sure will be worth it.

If you are interested in partnering with a coach to help you reconcile and accept all the thoughts and emotions that are surfacing for you right now, please reach out. Working with a coach can help you challenge your perceptions and create a new truth that better serves you.

If you are interested in learning more about the 10-step process which, when embodied, will allow you to fearlessly and confidently step into your authenticity, I have a course starting on June 8th that is structured around this framework and would love to have you join the other women who have already enrolled in the program.

Interested in learning more? Head over to the Work With Me page and schedule your free coaching exploration call today!

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