Rekindling Values-Led Living
Welcome to a Rekindling, my love,
pairing and re-airing two of the most popular,
most impactful episodes of Mind Witchery.
Rekindling Values-Led Living features
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Mentioned:
The fantastic, insightful book Values in Therapy, by Jenna LeJeune and Jason B. Luoma.
The delightful plant that started with sticks in a jar of water, and refused to grow on any timetable but its own.
Transcript: Rekindling Values-Led Living
Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.
Natalie Miller: Hello, my love, welcome, and welcome to something a little different, something that we are calling Rekindling episodes. So I am taking a little break from creating new spells and new Mind Witchery episodes.
In the meantime, I didn't want to just go on hiatus. I didn't want to leave you with nothing to listen to. So this new thing, this Rekindling, is going to be a re-airing and a pairing up of some of the spells that you have loved the most.
I super hope that you will join me in trusting that these re-airings are arriving to your ears in just the right moment, and that even if you've listened once, that listening again, you are gonna get a message that is right on time for you. If you are new to Mind Witchery, if you're a new listener here, well, then you get a little tour of some of the most popular, most impactful episodes that we've released.
So thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoy these pairings and I will be back all extra charged up and ready with more magic for you.
Natalie Miller: Today's rekindling is about values-led living. I hope this is perfect for you as we are nearing the end of a season, we're heading into fall in the Northern hemisphere, into Spring in the Southern hemisphere. And there is perhaps you can feel it in the air or in your schedules, there is a momentum that is pulling us back into everyday life.
So important on our way in to move on purpose. To move on purpose, to remember not only what we need to do, but also who we want to be and how we want to be. So today's pair of spells are a Spell for Living your Values. And then an example of that, which is a Spell for Unhooking from Urgency.
We'll begin with a Spell for Living your Values. Here's a lovely listener, letting you know what that's changed for her.
Chrystina: I'm Chrystina, and right now I am in Minneapolis. The spell around connecting with your values. That was so eye-opening, powerful, and helpful. Um, I love that first question, that was: what makes life worth living for you? That was from the Jenna LeJeune book maybe?
And the first thing that came to my mind was beauty. And it just explained so much about what drives me to wanna relocate. What motivates me, um, in my space and how I approach my work, how I approach life. It helped me to own it more, and to see, uh, maybe where I wasn't respecting that as, as my own value.
This spell, the spell of looking at my values is really empowering me to value that, to value my values and to be curious about what they are and allow them to be whatever they are for me. And so kind of looking within versus looking without, for the answer.
And it's empowering me to move forward with those in my pocket with those as priorities for how I wanna live my life and how I wanna interact in the world and with the world. Yeah. So it's, it's just given me - it kind of anchored - it's kind of an anchor for me.
Mind Witchery Episode 67, A Spell for Living Your Values
Natalie Miller: Hi there. I am recording this on a Monday morning, and it is a Monday morning where there is not a single appointment on my calendar. Isn't that just the most glorious thing? [laugh] It's such a treat and such a delight. And it's actually evidence of what I want to talk to you about today, because today's episode is about values-led living.
This is something that is so top of mind for me because it's the current focus of the small group coaching program I lead called Cauldron. So, the Cauldron witches and I are working together to clarify and then to more fully embody our values. One of my values is spaciousness. I love to have room to create. I love to have room to innovate. I love to have space in my everyday life.
So, when I wake up on a Monday morning, and I realize, oh, I have a whole day to do what feels good. I am so grateful to that part of me that knew spaciousness is important, and managed to create this life, this workflow in which I have extra space and time.
OK. So, I know if you listen to this podcast, you are committed or, at the very least, you are interested in making the most of your one wild and precious life. And I really think that attention to values—not just the ones we hold dear for ourselves but also the dominating values in our dominating cultural systems—I think awareness of these can help us to make sense of why we do what we do, and can help us to understand why sometimes even if we know we want a spacious life, and even if we create some space in our calendars, why it is so difficult sometimes to maintain that.
Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, I know I need rest. I know rest is important. I know I want more rest. But, somehow, I just can't give myself a break. I think attention to values can help us a lot to understand what's going on there.
So, today's spell—a spell for living your values—really is just the beginning. This is something I want to talk about over several episodes to come. But today, let's start with the very, very basics, which number one is, what even are our values? I do want to talk about that. What are values anyway? And then number two, what will help me to discover what my values are? And then number three, what are some of the values of the dominating culture that are perhaps challenging to or even incompatible with my personal values?
OK. So, I want to tell you from the get-go, because I love to cite my sources, that my much more nuanced understanding of values comes from a book by a woman named Jenna LeJeune, and Jenna has written this book called Values in Therapy. If you're a coach, if you're a therapist, it is so excellent. I highly recommend you find it because Jenna says so many things that I think are really, really helpful in understanding what even are values.
I imagine that you, like me, at some point in your life, you have googled for a list of values, or someone's given a list of values to you, and so maybe you were constructing a mission statement or maybe you were figuring them out for your team or your company. Maybe you were attending a workshop. I mean, hell, maybe you were attending one of my workshops [laugh] and I gave you a list of words that represented values.
But Jenna says—and I totally agree with this—that values are not words. Values are ways of living. They are active. They're not on a page. They are in a life. They are vibes and they are qualities. Values are the aspects of life that are the most meaningful to us.
Values are—and this is kind of my thought—the parts of life that wake us up to our lives. So, when I think about my values, when I think about what makes my life meaningful, I always think about those moments that wake me up. I always think about those moments that remind me I am here. I am on Planet Earth. I am sentient stardust. Those moments, values are inherent in those moments.
Our values are created through, embodied through those actions, those behaviors, those ways of being that make life on Planet Earth, here, most meaningful; those ways of being that wake us up to the beauty and the possibility in this life. When we're living our values, we are being the kind of person we want to be. We're living the kind of life we want to live. We are being the kind of contributor to the grand cosmic potluck that we want to be.
So, here's a little pile of questions that I hope will help you think about what your values are. And I'd love to repeat the advice that Jenna LeJeune gives. It's really not about finding the exact word for the answers to any of these questions. Like, you don't have to narrow it down to a single world that really works.
OK. So, here's the first question. What makes life worth living for you? Like, what matters most? We can do big questions like, what do you want your life to be about? Like, why are you here? What are you here for? What are you here to show or what are you here to share or what are you here to make possible? A really big question like that.
Or we can also go with a smaller question like, what are the vibes and the feelings and the qualities that you want to embody in your everyday life? What are you bringing into this world energetically? And I already alluded to this but I love this one. What wakes you up to the beauty, the possibility of this life? Like, where do I find you? What are you doing? With what are you interacting? Like, what's going on when you feel fully here?
So, all of those questions are going to help you to clarify and, if not articulate, at least build awareness around your own personal values. And, listen, this is really, really important. Values are very individual. What makes your heart sing, what wakes you up to the miracle of this life, it is going to be a little different from what does that for me.
Just like we get pleasure in different ways, we make meaning in different ways. Just like we have different preferences when it comes to all the aspects of life, so too we have preferences when it comes to what matters most in this life. Values are highly individual.
I will admit to you that values are not something to which I'd given a lot of conscious thought, until the last couple of years really. And when I began thinking more about values, I was not actually in a place of curiosity and growth consciousness. I was in a place of trying to understand and even trying to rebuild [laugh] who I was after a really traumatizing and destabilizing professional experience that I'd had.
So, I want to say this because thinking about values, in one way, I think, helps us to develop and expand our self-understanding to enhance it and to maximize it. But I also think that attending to our values can help us to shore up our integrity, can help us to repair our self-conception after we've been through a situation that challenged our integrity.
And this repair, I think, is often necessary because we are all steeped in cultures that have their own sets of values. The dominating culture, especially, has its own set of values. And here on Mind Witchery, I am talking about this all the time so none of this will be surprising to you.
But I don't think I've talked about it in quite this way, that is, I don't think I have compared and contrasted what are the dominating cultural values or some of them, and how do those interact with your, my, our more personal values. What are the ways in which we are sometimes consciously but, even more often, subconsciously embodying the values of the dominating culture? And how might that be part of what's going on when it feels hard to turn toward and cultivate our personal values, right, to take that break when we know we value rest, or to create a more spacious schedule when we know we want room to be able to be creative?
Why is that so hard? I think it does come down to a values incompatibility. Right? So, when our personal values are incompatible with the cultural values that we've been imbibing and have been soaking in for so much of our lives, that's where our integrity as individual humans, our alignment of heart and mind and body and soul, that's where that becomes difficult.
So, let me give some examples of this. I've identified a few values from a dominating culture that is very active on our planet, and I see these dominating cultural values wreaking such havoc in my own consciousness and subconsciousness, and also in my colleagues, in my children, in my clients. Now, I think you will recognize a lot of these values because they are extremely prevalent on our planet today. But I also want to acknowledge and respect that everyone's experience of these values is going to be different.
In addition to the main dominating culture that we are swimming in, we also have various subcultures that we are immersed in. There are religious cultures. There are ethnic cultures. There are professional cultures. There are all kinds of cultures that also shape and shade our experience of these values. So, I am sharing mine. I'm sharing what I see. But yours will be different so I encourage you to reflect on how it's similar and how it's not.
All right. So, the first kind of dominating cultural value I want to talk about is productivity. The dominating culture loves productivity. And I don't know about you but when I get to the end of a day where I have been productive, where I've done a lot, I feel great. And there is a part of me that is celebrating productivity. Ah, look at me getting shit done. Look at me doing what I wanted to do. Look at me doing, really.
But with this value, there's another part of it that is a little less delicious. [laugh] There's a part of it where sometimes I sense that my value as a human is attached to my productivity, to what I do. I think you've heard of this concept before, that we are human doings rather than human beings. So, I acknowledge that productivity is something I know has a lot of value and weight in my consciousness, and more than I would prefer.
Hand-in-hand with this exalted value of productivity is efficiency. Oh, my gosh [laugh], our dominating culture loves efficiency. It prizes efficiency above so many other qualities. You've seen this, right? Like, in healthcare, for example, efficiency is prized over listening. Let's get the people in and out in a timely manner rather than really be with them for as long as it takes.
Now, I know that's not true everywhere but in most healthcare environments, that is how it works. I see a desire for efficiency come up so often when I and my beloveds and my clients are building something new, or going in a new direction, and we're just wanting it to be as clean and clear and efficient as possible. Like, what is the shortest path between A and B?
It's like we're all trying from the very beginning not to have any detours or any scenic routes, not to make any messes, no mistakes, no exploration, no experimentation. It's like success equals dialing in the very best and most efficient way to do this whole thing, rather than, oh, success is something that I discover slowly and gradually through trial and error and experimentation and creativity. Now, creativity's a huge personal value of mine but that can often lock horns with efficiency, which I've been accultured, I've been conditioned to prize.
OK. Here's the next one: competition and comparison. So, these dominating cultural values ask us to look around and see what's everyone doing? How's everyone else doing? How does what I'm doing compare to what they're doing?
OK. Again, values are very individual, and I know there will be some of you out there who are like, "Fuck, yeah, I love competition. I am competitive. It's meaningful for me. It's motivating for me. It wakes me up to this life." And I love that for you.
But I will also say that I so often see competition and comparison showing up in a disabling way. This need to look around and see what everyone else is doing, this focusing on being better than everyone else, for lots of us, it does not actually complement the way we want to be with our co-creators in this life.
OK. One more value from the dominating culture: accumulation. Ooh, we are encouraged to accumulate—accumulate like almost everything. Accumulate wealth. Accumulate properties. Accumulate investments. Accumulate letters behind your name. Accumulate trainings and certifications. Accumulate followers. Accumulate subscribers.
[laugh] At the very same time our culture has trouble with clutter and trouble with overwhelm and trouble with the too-muchness of life, underneath, there is a dominating cultural value of accumulation. OK. Maybe you've already solved this puzzle [laugh] but I'm going to repeat those four dominating cultural values, and you'll see where they come from.
So, we have productivity, efficiency, competition, comparison, and accumulation. That's all capitalism, especially the version of capitalism that is dominant on this planet right now. So, listen, it is no accident that we, even if not consciously, are subscribing to these values because, hey, this is the system within which we work, and this system values productivity, efficiency, competition, comparison, and accumulation.
That's how you succeed in this system, theoretically. It's what the system encourages. It's what the system values and so, of course, there's a part of me navigating the system that can't help but also value those things. And/but *** I also know that the system of capitalism is not built for people—not the way we use it. The system is built for companies. It's built for machines. It's built for its own self.
Now, I don't think it has to be that way but that is the way it is, and so if I'm adhering to the values of this system, if I'm being productive and efficient, and I'm always trying to be better than, and I'm obsessed with accumulating and getting more and more and more and more, maybe I will find success within the system. But will it be worth it? Will my life mean what I wanted it to mean? Will I be able to embody the values, the vibes, the qualities that I really want to see more of in the world?
Will I be able to be awake and alive to the miracle of this life? I am sad to say I have seen so many cases—personally and professionally—where success in the system and for the system has not actually led to a meaningful life, to fulfillment, like, to a fulfilling life for the person themselves, and even a fulfillment of that person's potential.
OK. Now, of course, this is from my perspective. I don't pretend to really know whether or not someone is fulfilled by the values they're embodying in their lives. All I have to go on is to see does their walk match their talk? Like, does their apparent success really feel successful? Does their life feel as good as it looks?
Because very honestly—and I have been here too—so many people that I work with look incredibly successful from the outside but they do not feel that way. They know their walk is not matching their talk, and that feels terrible. I know, from experience, from being in apparently very successful places, and feeling so shitty. This is that place where the dominating cultural value doesn't complement, doesn't support, doesn't even allow me to live my personal value. There's a lack of integrity.
And I share this because if there is a place in your life where you are feeling out of sorts, an aspect of your life could be your work, a relationship, a family thing, your neighborhood—I don’t know—if there's a place where you are feeling like you can't quite access your authority, your personal authority, where you are like, "Ugh, I am doing shit I don't want to be doing. Why? Why am I doing shit I don't want to be doing?"
If you're there, I really invite you to take a moment to explore your values—both your own personal values and the values of the dominating culture around you—remembering that, like Jenna LeJeune says, values are ways of living. Values are evident so much more in our walk than in our talk.
So, looking at your everyday life and looking at the bigger picture of your life, you can see which values am I bringing to life, and are they truly my own? Because my sense, sweetheart [laugh], is that if you feel either that you are falling short of a standard, or that you are doing shit you do not want to do in order to meet a standard, the problem is not you. The problem is a values misalignment. It is a values incompatibility.
I so hope that ascending way, way up to this eagle's perch to look at your life, to consider your communities and your choices from the perspective of values will help you reconnect to who it is that you want to be, to what it is that you want your life to be about, and will help you to see why some of the places where you're feeling out of sorts are actually places where your values are conflicting or unclear.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, a metaphor just came to me. Have you had that experience where you have your GPS on, and you're driving home, and you know how to get home but—I don’t know—the GPS is on because you needed it for earlier in the trip of something. But the GPS starts to lead you in a direction that you just know isn't the best one, because you know how to get home. You know it's better to turn here rather than there.
So, it's easy to ignore the robot voice or even to switch off the external navigation, and be guided instead by your internal navigation. Yeah? So, in this metaphor, obviously, the GPS is the dominating culture. It's telling you, "Go this way. Turn here. Do this."
But when you have your own clear sense of who you are and who you want to be, when you know your own values, it is easier to disconnect from that voice, and to find your own way home to you. So, that is available, I think, to us [laugh] when we are more clear on who and how we want to be in this life.
All right, my love, thank you so much for listening today. I hope that as you take a look at your life, you will do so with a very compassionate eye. You can trust we'll be talking more and more about values in the next few episodes, so stay tuned for some more ways of exploring this aspect of who you are. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.
Natalie Miller: One of the dominating cultural values that we encounter all over the place - and I think it's related to productivity, but I wanna name it specifically in this next spell - and that is urgency. It is being in such a hurry all the time. I don't know about you, but I do not want this next season to feel so pressed and rushed.
I don't want to miss the beauty. I don't want to miss the preciousness of this next season of life. Neither does our lovely listener Forrest. Let me let her tell you how the Spell for Unhooking from Urgency has shifted the way she is thinking about and showing up in her everyday life.
Forrest: Hi, I'm Forrest and I live in Black Mountain, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville. I have especially loved a Spell for Unhooking from Urgency. It's bled into every aspect of my life from the way I go about caring for my home. Yes, the dishes can wait until morning if need be. Or when getting ready to leave the house for an adventure, I will take the time that I need, thank you. And even on work trips, no, I don't want to stay out and party and cram every second of my day with something because a walk at night in a new city sounds peaceful and welcoming.
This is something I've known for a while, but always need to be reminded of because there is this ever-present pressure to keep doing and keep busy to keep creating memorable moments and to keep seeking photo-worthy adventures.
When I was healing from Lyme disease after high school, I thought I would just need the summer and then would be on my way to college in the fall like my friends. Well, I was very much mistaken. It took much longer to undergo treatments and give my body the time to recover it needed. And I know had I rushed through it, I wouldn't be healthy and strong now a decade later. And I also would've robbed myself of so many profound experiences that very much changed the person I was.
It's empowering me to trust that things will come to me when I truly need them. And that when I do, I will be ready for them and know how to make the most of them.
It's easy to want to rush through life and get to all the goal posts. But time is so precious that I find myself less and less wanting to wish time away. So often, the getting there is far more fun and exciting than arriving. It's good that things take time because we need that time. And it gives us space to prepare for all that's to come, whether it's joyous or sorrowful.
Mind Witchery Episode 53: A Spell for Unhooking from Urgency
Natalie Miller: Hello, my love. Thank you so much for being here today. Today’s spell, very frankly, is for me as much as it is for you. I should say I hope it’s for you. It’s definitely for me, because I am finding myself in a place where I’m asking myself to hurry up, to make things happen rather than allow things to happen, and to manifest, to do more quickly than I really feel like doing.
And I know this will resonate with some of you because this is something that I coach on a lot, this sense of urgency that we have. And, you know, I think in a lot of ways, this is cultural, right? I mean, we live in a time of Amazon Prime. [laugh] I remember I ordered a Lego set like at 7 p.m. in December, and it was at my door at midnight. Like, what? Whoa, that is really fast.
Besides living in a time of Amazon Prime, culturally, we do like urgency. [laugh] We do like a sense of urgency, and so we have 30-day money back guarantees. We have what’s going to happen in the president’s first 100 days? There’s a—there’s this privileging of immediacy, right? Two-day shipping, next-day shipping, see results in just seven days, yeah?
So, what I mean to say by this is that we are all immersed in a broader culture that really values urgency and immediacy and speed. And, yet, we are all organic creatures. We are humans, and life, it turns out, moves at the speed of life. So, for me personally, this is really resonating right now because I have a couple of projects that I am enthusiastic and excited to bring into the world and, at the same time, I’m noticing that I’m pushing for things to go more quickly than I really want them to go.
And that has created for me this internal conflict, right? You know me. I’m always here, and I’m always in your Sunday Letters. I’m always in the world saying that our desires, our ability to flow in the direction of what we want is the—that is the place where we have the most power. And, yet [laugh], I’m still a 21st century woman in the 21st century United States, just wishing things were going faster than they are.
So, I had this beautiful reminder this morning that life moves at the speed of life, and that things take time sometimes. This reminder came in the form of thinking and talking about a couple of my houseplants. I have a houseguest here, and she was admiring a couple of the different plants. And I pulled out this one that is a real favorite of mine, and I told her that this particular plant, once upon a time, started from what are called wet sticks.
I don’t know if—I don’t know how plant-y you all are. But in the plant community, there is a thing [laugh] called a wet stick. It’s basically—it’s a little chunk of a stem of a plant that has a growth node on it but nothing else. So, it’s not—a lot of propagations, it’ll be like a leaf with a node on it. But this has just—like, it’s a stem. It’s a stem chunk with a growth node.
And I think I swapped for these wet sticks in a plant swap or something last spring. And I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. The interwebs told me, hmm, put them in water, and put them on your windowsill—so, I did. And, my friend, nothing happened. I mean, it didn’t look like anything was happening. Obviously, something was happening under the surface but, from my vantage, nothing was happening.
I would change the water. I had basically like little two-inch sticks in a formerly spice jar [laugh] on my windowsill for months—months. And then one day, I went to change the water, and I noticed, oh, there are some little roots beginning to grow out of the growth node. Perfect. Oh, my gosh, the wet stick is growing roots.
But please be clear about this. No plant yet. No leaves. No sign of anything else; just some roots growing. So, I left them for another couple of months—months—on my windowsill. I let them, the roots, grow, and they did—grow, they did. And, oh, I should tell you there were, I think, five sticks, and a couple of them started, you know, let’s say, June, and then a couple of them lagged behind. So, they didn’t all start making their roots at the same time, and I just kept them all, yeah?
So, let’s say it’s now August or September, and the roots are a good two-inches long, so I know this plant is ready for soil, and I plant the sticks. Now, usually, when you do a propagation, you have a leaf sticking out, so you know that the leaf is photosynthesizing, and, you know, like, it’s just kind of—it seems more like a plant. [laugh] This was me just burying a stick with roots growing out of it into some potting soil, and that’s what I did. And I now put the little pot back on the windowsill, and I waited.
And before long, I started to see growth. Before long, I started to see little shoots coming up and out of the dirt. I started a month later to see tiny leaves beginning to form. And, so, as I was showing my houseguest, my friend, this plant, and I was telling her the story about it, I was remembering, oh, my gosh, for months, all I had were sticks in a jar of water.
But I—as we do with plants, because you really can’t rush them. You can give them fertilizer. You can give them grow lights. You can help the process along, but you can’t make it happen faster than it’s just going to happen. And I realized as I finished telling my friend, my houseguest, this story about this plant that that was exactly the medicine I needed for this moment. I needed to remember that things can and do unfold in their own time.
I’m definitely going to have to put a picture of this beautiful plant in the Show Notes [laugh] so you can see how pretty it is, and you can also see how there are parts of it that have really taken off, and then there are other parts that are going a little more slowly, growing a little more slowly, and that this plant is right on time. This is all happening right on time.
So, let’s talk a little bit about how to shift from urgency and hurry and rush, from a believing that this isn’t going fast enough, or I’m behind, into a more relaxed and open and receptive place. So, the first thing—and I guess this is the spell—is life moves at the speed of life. This project moves at the speed of this project. My relationship moves at the speed of my relationship—meaning, I’m going to trust that this particular cocreation is unfolding at just the right speed.
And just because someone else’s is going faster, or because my own anxiety and expectations are pressing and pulling this to go faster, it doesn’t mean that faster is actually better. So, it can help in these places to check in with our values. What is really important to me when it comes to this project, for example? Is it more important to me that it is fast, or that it is thorough? Is speed important, or is integrity important?
So, checking in with your values, like what is really important here, and also with your desired feelings, and so really thinking about, yeah, how do I really want to feel? How do I want to feel? Is it really speed that I’m after, or do I want to feel a sense of accomplishment? Is it really speed I’m after, or do I want to feel ease? So, checking in with values and feelings, and then taking the actions not that speed things along but, rather, the actions that cultivate, that promote those values and feelings.
And I do again here—I want to acknowledge and honor that this is deeply countercultural. It’s deeply countercultural. Our culture is in such a hurry, and the hurry that our culture is in comes at a very steep expense. It’s at the expense of our environment. It’s at the expense of working people. It’s at the expense of our mental health. We pay dearly for the hurry that we are in.
And for those of us who don’t want to live that way, for those of us who see a different and more aligned way of being, that values orientation is so important because we realize we are stans for a less urgent way of being on the planet. Please know that I know this asks for immense trust [laugh]: trust in yourself; trust in the process; trust—you know, I can say the project moves at the speed of the project. The urgency is not a measure of its goodness. I can say that.
But when the dominant culture is telling me the opposite all the time, when the dominant culture is saying, “No, the faster, the better; the faster, the better,” it is really courageous to say, “No, I trust that everything’s unfolding at its own pace; that life moves at the speed of life; that integrity and balance are more important than speed and urgency. I choose to cocreate in a way that lets me go with the flow of my inspiration, of my energy, and I’m not—I am no longer available to rush and hurry and push.”
One final note that I find helpful to remember is that when I say life moves at the speed of life, I don’t actually mean that it always goes so slowly because, as you have no doubt seen, sometimes, life moves very quickly. Sometimes, pieces that have been assembling themselves very slowly all come and click together and move very fast. So, when you are moving with the flow of life, that means that you also get to sometimes look down at the metaphorical plant, and realize that where there was one little, tiny leaf, now there are a dozen.
And it might help you to find examples of this in your own life, in the environment around you. I love to look at an avocado, right? [laugh] An avocado, it’s hard. It’s very hard. It’s hard as a rock. It’s hard as a rock. And then, all of a sudden, it’s over-ripe. [laugh] Like, that happens very quickly. And, so, what I like to do is to be very present with myself, with my environment, with whatever speed things are moving along at, and that is where I find the most potency, right, potency which is different than speed, and which is, I think, what we are actually after.
When we want something to go more quickly, really what we want is the good result. Really what we want is for it to work—and not everything works on the same next-day shipping timeline. Ooh, ooh, ooh, and one more thing I want to share. When a situation truly calls for urgency, like when you really need to make it happen, there’s very little resistance.
Like, if your child or your friend walked into the room with a big bleeding cut, and was like, “Help me,” you wouldn’t be like, “Oh, gosh, I don’t know. I know I should help you but I just really don’t feel like it.” No, it’s truly urgent. You would say, “Come here. Let’s take care of you. Let’s see what needs to be done.”
I’ve certainly had moments in my life where I have really needed to make a move or make some money. Like, it has been essential. And in those moments, it has not been difficult to step into the flow of action. I want you to trust that too. I want me to trust that too. As life moves at the speed of life, yes, sometimes, there are urgent moments, and we will meet the urgency of those moments with clear urgency ourselves.
It might help you to look for examples of that in your own life too. Where did a moment call for urgency, and how easy was it in that moment to respond with urgency? OK. So, this means that if you are feeling a sense of urgency but you’re also resisting that urgency, it’s probably culturally generated urgency; not actual urgency. Whew, human-ing, it is a challenge and a delight.
OK, my love, a little review. A spell for unhooking from urgency, because that is really what it is. It’s the cultural urgency that hooks us and drags us along. And if you will not be dragged, then you must unhook from the urgency. So, number one, remembering life moves at the speed of life. This project moves at the speed of this project. Everything is right on time. There is no hurry. There is no hurry. Life moves at the speed of life.
And where’s the proof of that? Where have I seen in my own life that something seemed to be going so slowly or nothing seemed to be happening? I had sticks in a jar and then, all of a sudden, everything blossomed in its right timing. So, remembering those moments, and doing a little bit of values orientation, a little bit of quality control, we could say.
What is more important than speed? What is more important than urgency? How do you want to feel? And can you trust that as life is moving at the speed of life, the very best thing for you to do is to be present and to be orienting toward that which is truly important to you, and that which feels good?
Just this morning, I did not want to record this podcast. I love you, and I love recording. I had no idea. I don’t know. I was just—ugh—I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to. And, so, instead of forcing myself to come down and to sit in front of the mic, I pottered around the plants, and I had a chat with my friend. And, sure enough, the inspiration came through, and here we are. That is how life and work and creativity really can flow if we are courageous enough, self-trusting enough to allow it.
OK. So, wherever it is that the cultural sense of urgency is dragging you along, wherever it is that you are in a hurry, that you are resisting allowing life to move at the speed of life, I hope so much that you will cast this spell. Because when you are doing it, you are joining the counterculture that is here for a more sustainable, a more loving, a more natural way of being. Thank you so much 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 cocreated 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.
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