A Spell for Sustaining Growth
Whatever you’re growing - your skills, your business, your relationships, your mental and physical wellness - sustainability is KEY. This spell helps you feed the fires of transformation in your life without burning yourself out.
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Mentioned:
Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin
Make Magic:
Check your internal fuel gauge. If you’re honest with yourself, how full is your tank?
What could Giving More to Yourself look like? What would fuel your body? Your mind? Your heart-soul?
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Transcript: A Spell for Sustaining Your Growth
Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.
Hello, my friend. I’m so glad that you pressed play on this episode today, a spell for sustaining your growth. So, I had a hard time titling this episode because this is such a powerful spell. But I do think, in the end, it does come down to sustainability—sustainability of the kind of evolutionary actions that help us to make our lives better, our communities better.
So, if you are listening to this podcast, if you are attracted to my work, I bet that you have a deep desire to be a good person who does good in the world. Like, I bet you want to live well, you want to make the most of your life, and you want to make our shared world better. I bet that you, like me [laugh], have really high standards for yourself. You have really high standards for your work. You have really high standards for the way that you show up in your relationships, and for your body. I bet you have high standards for this world that we share.
And if you do, then I know that you are living on purpose. I know that you are committed to doing better and better—maybe in your own self-care, in exercising, and eating well, and sleeping. It may be in your work, in being focused and innovative, and always growing and learning. It may be in your relationships. Maybe you’re really committed to being a great neighbor, to being a different kind of parent or partner than you’ve had examples of. So, there is healing happening. There is investment of time and attention and intention happening.
And when we’re living in this way, when we’re living on purpose, it’s beautiful, it’s evolutionary, and it also takes a lot of energy. So, I bet that if you are holding high standards for yourself, for your life, for this world, that you can tend sometimes to lose steam, and even to burn out. And that it’s very possible that when you lose energy, lose motivation, when you burn out that you blame yourself.
How do I know this? Well, because I do this. How do I know this? Because we do this. [laugh] We do this as people who have high standards for ourselves, our work, our lives, our relationships, our world. Did you hear it took me [laugh]—it was a lot to fit all of those pieces into one breath. When we have high standards for all of that, it takes an enormous amount of energy to sustain growth.
So, here’s the spell, and I learned this spell from Gretchen Rubin, who is an author, a self-help writer. I learned this spell in her book, Better than Before. It’s a book about habit-making, about different people’s differing approaches to building new habits, and sustaining them. So, she’s one of us, right? She [laugh] holds high standards for herself and for her life, for her work, for this world.
So, here’s the spell. To ask more from myself, I must give more to myself. When I am asking more from me, when I’m asking myself to show up for the workout, when I’m asking myself to show up for cooking good meals for myself, when I’m asking myself to show up more boldly in my work, when I’m asking myself to show up for my community, when I’m asking myself to show up for racial justice, when I’m asking myself to show up for a better me, a better world, I must give more to myself. That fuel has got to come from somewhere.
When I talk about this concept, when I teach this idea, I like to use a metaphor of a car. A car, as we know, needs fuel. And while sometimes a car can just coast around locally, doing little errands here and there, oftentimes we’re asking our cars to take us on an adventure. Living on purpose, living in an evolutionary way, is akin to driving a car through the mountains or through hills. There are climbs where you really have to press the gas pedal, and you really need a lot of energy to ascend. And then, yes, there are moments where you get to coast and enjoy as you begin to move down again.
You’ve—let’s say, for example, you’ve been working to strengthen your body. You’ve invested in a trainer. You’ve established a habit where you’re going to the gym, and lifting weights. Wonderful! So, you’re expending energy in order to climb and in order to ascend. And then perhaps, your back and shoulders stop hurting so much, and you really get to enjoy the benefits of that hard work, and you get to coast a little bit.
Here’s another example. Perhaps in your business, you are working really hard, and you’re doing all of the things, and you decide, you know what, I’m going to do the work to hire an assistant. And, so, you put in that work to hire and to train an assistant, and you’re expending energy, and you’re coming up and up and up and up. And then you get to coast a little bit when you give over those tasks to your assistant. But here’s the thing. We don’t coast forever because we’re still climbing.
Here I am. I’m working out. I’m lifting weights. I’m getting stronger and stronger. And, in many ways, that helps me to feel better. And, also, as I have reached this next level of strength and vitality in my body, I’m showing up differently in the world in such a way that invites new adventures.
When I have help in my business, I have my assistant who’s taking care of some of the tasks that were eating up my time, now I’m available for new adventures. I’m available for the next hill, the next mountain. And guess what? That one is even bigger, often. As we get more and more powerful, as we get more and more ease and vitality in our bodies, in our businesses, in our everyday lives, we are up for bigger challenges, and those bigger challenges are going to require even more energy.
So, think about it. If you were going to go on a road trip, if you knew that you were going to be driving through the mountains, that you had a marvelous destination in mind, wouldn’t you be very careful to fuel up your car before you went? Not expecting a gas station [laugh] at the top of the hill, but knowing that in order to get to the top, you’ll need all the fuel that you can get.
As we ask more and more of ourselves, we require more and more from ourselves. Remember the spell. To ask more of myself, I must give more to myself. What I find in myself, in my clients, is that it’s very easy to ask more of ourselves. And this is beautiful. This is because we hold such high standards for our lives, for our work, for the world. It’s very easy to see, oh, here’s somewhere that I want to improve. Here’s somewhere that I want to invest. Here is some growth that I want to sustain.
We do not, I find, have that same perspective on understanding of comfort with looking for the places we can give more to ourselves. In fact, what I notice is that as we are more and more vibrant and vital in the world, and we need more and more sustenance for that, we need more and more help at home. Maybe we need more and more love and attention for our bodies. Maybe we need more and more unstructured time—time to think, time to be creative.
Here we are, building castles in the air. We need time to relax, to decompress, time to be imaginative, time to just be present in this beautiful word. As we’re doing more and more, we need so much more, and we are deeply uncomfortable with that. We need more than we want to need. We need more than we feel OK needing.
And there’s this weird thing that happens. Because we are building such beautiful lives, we look around at our beautiful lives, and we think, “Oh, my life is so extraordinary. I’m so blessed. What kind of selfishness, what kind of greed do I have that I want to add another massage, that I want to have even more afternoons off?” Not understanding that this road trip we’re on, this beautiful life depends on the fuel, depends on the free time, the massage, the good food, the help at home and at work.
It’s easy to ask ourselves to do more and more. After all, capitalism sort of depends on that, right? There’s a focus on enhanced productivity. And, at the same time, there’s a pride in doing more with less. Oh, if I have fewer resources needed for a higher output, then I must be doing really well. But when we align with material reality, when we understand that energy is neither created nor restored, it’s only exchanged, asking for a higher output will have a draining effect somewhere.
We see that with Amazon.com right now. Yes, they can get you your book or your vitamins or your pretty new butter dish. They can get it for you tomorrow, maybe even today if you place the order in time. It won’t cost you anything extra. They’re very innovative. And, at the same time, someone somewhere is peeing into a bottle rather than taking a bathroom break so that you can get that. Someone somewhere who’s written that book or published that book is making much less money because you’re paying less for it, right?
There’s always somewhere an energy drain wherever there is an energy boost. OK. Energy boost—all this stuff gets to you for cheap and quickly. Energy drain on the workers who pack and ship and deliver your items. Energy drain on the planet. In our culture, we are often not so honest about the energy expenditure required in order to climb, in order to grow, in order to produce more or to do it more quickly, efficiently, in order to grow.
Let’s go back to our road trip. Imagine yourself on the road trip in your car. You’re driving. You’re on your adventure, and the low fuel light—click—blinks on. How does your experience of the trip change? So [laugh], it’s kind of funny. When that happens to me, I will turn off the air conditioner or the heater. I will do everything I can to sort of conserve energy inside the car, right? So, I begin to take measures that decrease my comfort but ensure my survival.
That’s what we do in our lives too. When we’re asking so much of ourselves, we cancel the massage appointment. We tell our personal trainer, “Hey, I’m sorry, I can’t make it.” We work until 7 p.m., and then we tell our friends, “Oh, hey, I know we were going to talk on the phone tonight, but I’m just too tired.” We order takeout or we drive through instead of taking the time to eat a well-prepared meal. We tend to privilege keeping going over our own comfort, over what sustains us.
OK. Here’s what else I do when the fuel light blinks on, and I’m on the road trip. I get really anxious and busy in my mind. I start thinking, “OK. I think that the car’s gas tank holds 13 gallons of gas, and it’s 38 miles to the next town. And, so, 38 miles when the car gets, you know, 40 miles to the gallon”—I start doing all these calculations, and I start getting anxious. I start getting a little bit hypervigilant. I’m checking my phone. Where’s the nearest gas station? I’m wondering, “OK. That’s .2 miles off the route. I don’t—you know, is it worth it?”
That happens to us too in our lives when we’re running low on fuel. We get anxious. We start overthinking. We worry a lot. And all of that inside of ourselves takes an enormous amount of energy. It burns the fuel of ourselves even faster.
Here’s another thing that happens when I’m running low on fuel on my road trip. I get really irritated. I am not any more singing along to the songs that are on the radio. I turn the radio off. [laugh] I’m conserving fuel. When my kids are joking around in the back seat, or they’re asking me for simple things—“Hey, Mom, can you turn the air back on? It’s getting hot in here”—I’m super cranky. That also takes up a lot of fuel, and it tends to generate behaviors in me. It tends to generate responses in me that make me even more self-critical.
So, when we are low on fuel, and still trying to get somewhere, not only are we less likely to get there, we’re more likely to break down. We’re more likely to run out of fuel. We’re also showing up so differently on the journey. We are enjoying the journey so much less. Here we are, we’re trying to build the better world. We’re trying to go somewhere. We’re trying to have an adventure. But we’re inside of it, and we’re hating [laugh] it. We’re inside of it, and we’re just pissed and frustrated.
To ask more from myself, I must give more to myself. And, yes, it’s difficult to receive. Especially those of us who have been socialized to understand giving as virtuous, and receiving as selfish, it’s difficult to receive. And, at the same time, when we are well-fed, well-rested, well-assisted, when we are fueled, we are actually showing up. We’re able to show up in the way that we really want to in these businesses and relationships and work and everyday lives that we really want to lead.
So, yes, as you grow, as you ascend, as your journey becomes more and more amazing with higher climbs and better coasts, you are going to require more resources. So, what is that for you? What is that for you? What spoke to you of the examples that I gave? Do you want just more free time, more alone time? Some of us, that really is the best fuel, just time to be by myself, not attending to anyone’s feelings or anyone’s needs or anyone’s thoughts, anyone’s requests but my own.
If you’re asking a lot of your body, what is it that you could give to your body? Does your body want more sleep, better food, more sex? My body right now wants a lot of help. [laugh] It wants massages. It wants facials. My body wants to be cared for, not only by me but by professionals. And, listen, when I think about it, when I get out of the kind of bullshit trap of, “Oh, that’s so selfish to invest that much in self-care,” when I get out of that, I realize what is the world that I want to live in? I want to live in a world where we all care for one another, where, yes, my personal trainer is making a great living because lots of people are investing in her expertise and her motivation.
Listen, these days, when I get to the gym, I don’t always have so much wherewithal to motivate myself to lift heavy things. But when I go and I hang out with Emily, with my trainer, I do have that motivation because she’s there. She’s helping me. And I want to live in a world where a personal trainer can make a great living. I want to live in a world where we get massages, healing touch. I want to live in a world where we get to relax. I want to live in the world where we care for one another. And what I have to trust is in order to be part of building that world, in order to be able to be sitting here today, recording this podcast, I must give more to myself.
So, what does your body want? Does it want you to invest in help? Does it just need more time and space? What would be fuel for your body? How about in the ways you’re connecting with other people? What are you hungry for? Especially if you’re giving a lot to people, if you are in a profession where you care for other people, how are you receiving care? Do you want to invest in coaching or a great therapist? Do you need time with friends?
Do you, like me, need to read really beautiful books? I’m reading so many novels right now because that’s a way that I can connect with humanity, with humanness. It’s a way that I can be receptive to the beauty of other people, but by flipping pages, not having a conversation. That’s replenishing to me. So, what is replenishing to you where relationships are concerned?
OK. If you, like me, want to be a better person, want to build a better world, then you, like me, have to get more and more comfortable receiving, more and more comfortable asking yourself, “What do I need? How can I replenish?” More and more comfortable taking a break, pausing, having a pitstop, having a refueling.
To come [laugh] back again to my car analogy, I’ve been on a road trip where I’ve looked at the gas gauge, and it says like maybe a quarter of a tank. And I’m passing a gas station, and I think to myself, “Ugh, I should get gas, but I just want to get there. Maybe I can just get there with this much fuel in the tank.” And then, of course, down the road, after some unexpected hills, the gas gauge is low. The little light clicks on, and I’m like, “Ugh, I knew I should’ve stopped.” [laugh]
Do you know what I’m talking about? We need to do that—not to wait until we are irritated and anxious and resentful because we’re running so low on fuel, but to get used to replenishing on the regular, and to trusting that the more we replenish, the more we’re investing in the kind of being, the kind of human being, a way of being that we want for everyone. It does start with you.
OK. So, for me, this is a foundational spell. Oftentimes when I am in my planner in the morning, I’m writing out my to-do list. I’m writing down all of the things that I’m asking from myself. All of the things that I’m asking myself to do, I write in my planner to ask more from myself. I must give more to myself. And then I’m careful to also add those things to my plan for the day, understanding that the energy to up-level, the energy to make this world better, it’s got to come from somewhere. And I’m responsible for fueling myself.
So, as you are moving back into the world, having listened to this episode, I hope you’ll practice this one like right away. Practice it in the next couple of hours. What can you give yourself? How can you let go of whatever self-judgment and blame and shame that you’re feeling because you’ve been short-tempered, because you’ve been unable to focus, because you’ve made all of these great changes in your life, and somehow you’re finding that it’s really difficult to sustain them?
Letting go of the self-blame and self-judgment, and instead understanding, oh, in order to ask more from myself, I must give more to myself. And then immediately going in and saying, “OK. So, what would be replenishing? What is the fuel that I really want and need for my body, my heart, and my soul?” Listen to the answer, and trust that your evolution and our collective co-created evolution depends on you fueling yourself. Get to it. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.
Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.