I’ve been talking a lot about The Willingness Practice lately.
My biggest desire and willingness right now is to be a part of the collective helping bring about the change in consciousness I believe is required for us to prevent climate disaster.
I started thinking about the book I’m reading, called The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent, and how the ways of thinking that have led to us treating the planet in this way have been around for thousands of years.
Then I thought about how change is most likely to happen when people are faced with a huge reason to change.
Even individually, we often don’t change old patterns and ways of being unless serious symptoms or life events call us to make changes – the whole crisis/opportunity thing.
Then I was thinking about my experience around birth.
My own experience, being 10 weeks premature and 5 weeks in an incubator was part of my search for healing.
In my twenties I declared that I would do 10 years of psychotherapy and inner work before even contemplating becoming a parent.
Doing such a huge amount of work on my birth, learning for many years about the cascade of interventions that can happen in medicalised birth, studying and researching and training in modalities around infant and childhood development and birth all led to me having two profoundly empowering and beautiful birth experiences.
I went from literally being terrified at even the thought of giving birth to the most profound trust in my body and my baby and our capacity for birthing. I could never have imagined shifting from terror to profound trust and empowerment and freebirthing.
Had my own birth not been as it had been, I don’t think I would have learnt all those things; nor prepared to that profound extent.
Sometimes, really hard and challenging things can give us a huge impetus to change.
I am standing in my willingness to believe that the climate crisis is the biggest wake up call we have faced as humanity, and that it may lead us to make beautiful shifts in consciousness that we could not have thought possible.
I am willing to be a part of the collective helping bring about a change in consciousness on our planet.
I don’t know how that looks yet.
But I am willing.
What do you most want, and are you willing to have, do or be that?
Yesterday, I had two unenjoyable interactions with my 12 year old son (both of them were caused by me).
What I realised after them was that, despite doing A LOT of work around feeling comfortable with saying, “no” in my life when I feel a no, there is more to do around this!
I was contemplating saying “no” and realised that I felt scared that I would lose love if I did.
I wonder if you have anything similar?
Growing up in the culture we did, often our ‘no’s’ weren’t so welcome as children and teens.
We live in a domination culture which is all about ignoring the ‘no’ of people with less power (including children).
We may have experienced a loss of love when we said “no”, or we may have been judged, shamed or punished.
That can profoundly affect our willingness to say “no” as adults.
I remember when I was younger feeling deeply uncomfortable if I said “no” to a friend asking me to do something with them. I would tel myself that I ‘should’ do what they wanted to do, even if I really didn’t want to do that thing.
Over the years, I have become SO much more comfortable with listening to my inner barometer, and expressing my ‘no’.
I’ve found Neo No’s to be particularly helpful!
Yesterday, I realised the next piece.
That I am willing to know, and to deeply live from, a place of knowing that an authentic, true “no” actually brings more closeness and more intimacy in relationships and friendships.
A ‘no’ can be deeply loving and connecting, if we speak it from a place of listening to ourselves and compassion for the other.
The more we can speak our ‘no’s’, the freer we are to claim our authentic ‘yeses’ too!
This is all part of willingness – what we’re not willing for is as important as what we ARE willing to have, do and be!
And if you want to learn my Willingness Practice, I have three options –
1 The Willingness Practice for free (but it doesn’t have the Quantum Quick version)
2 the ebook ($4)
3 The $50 Wonder of Willingness Course – I’m going to be doing a couple of live trainings in there this week!