Site Has Moved!

Hi everyone! Thanks for checking out my blog. It has now relocated to www.courtneylawrence.ca. Sign up there for my newsletter to receive blog updates.

Many thanks!
Courtney

How to Avoid Fall Burnout: Stop Reacting! Start Responding!

"Reactionary life flow" is one of the key culprits of sickness, stress, and exhaustion. It’s a dangerous loop that we all get sucked into from time to time yet never really question what it’s about until its too late.

Here’s a post about what it means, and what to do about it.

Reactionary Life Flow Prevents Whole-hearted Living:

Do you respond to emails as soon as you get them? Do you feel compelled to write back to a text the minute it hits your inbox?

This is what Scott Belsky (author of Making Ideas Happens) calls “reactionary work flow”. It’s when you respond immediately and automatically to day-to-day work stimulus that are thrown your way (emails, memos, phone calls, and other work-related tasks).

After reading Belsky’s book this summer, I began to realize that we also live in a world dictated by what I call “reactionary life flow”.

In reactionary life flow we react immediately and unconsciously to whatever demands, crises, requests, or even opportunities get thrown our way. For better or worse, we are, most of the time, acting on a default setting that ceases to question what’s coming in and automatically leaps to a patterned response or action on the way out.

We have a constant stream of this stuff each and every day. To help manage it, we have designed a way that works for us to filter it all out. However, acting on default prevents us from living a whole-hearted, fully conscious life!

Do you Seize or Shut Down Opportunity too Quickly?

Here's a very simple example. Imagine an old friend emails you up to have a “catch up” coffee date this week. Do you drop what you’ve doing to write back “yes!” right away? Or do you write “no” without even considering it?

Most likely, you respond in less than 24 hours and you have your default reaction that doesn't take time to consider all the options. Either you think you are too busy and don’t want to even consider the idea or how to make it work, or you may be too excited and say yes even if it means cramming your schedule even more.

In both cases, you are making a decision based on a patterned behavioural response that doesn't pause and ask what’s good for YOU right now. Rather it might be a decision based on initial excitement to see that person, or a feeling of not wanting to make that friend unhappy. Alternatively, you feel you can’t cope with another thing on the menu and react with a “no”. Either way, taking more time to respond could be beneficial.

A more recent example from my life, was when a young couple asked if I could teach them an in-home yoga class once a week. I was so excited that I said, “yes” immediately without thinking twice. I later realized after a class that it wasn’t going to honour my schedule or my needs by taking this on. I simply dealt with the request as it came because I was excited by the opportunity and didn’t want to give it up.

I realized that my patterned reaction to new opportunities has always been “seize them right now because they won’t be around later”. But this is false.

Opportunities are not always there to be seized right away. Sometimes they are there to be considered in the moment and to plant the seeds for more opportunities to come later.

Just because I CAN do something, doesn’t mean I SHOULD do it (at least, not right now).

What I am learning is not to live in reactionary life flow, but in “response-ible life flow”.

Time to Pause and Prioritize:

Just like with work, we need periods of non-stimulation in our lives where we can re-group and prioritize our next steps. Even if this means taking a day or even a week before making a big decision.

We’re so accustomed to responding in real-time that even pausing to take 10 deep breaths before giving an answer seems like eternity.

When we’re being carried along a current of stimulus that is outside of ourselves, we just want to deal with the flow of life situations, demands, requests, and opportunities RIGHT NOW so that we feel some control over what’s going on.

I’m learning to avoid this reactionary-ness that can either shut me off from opportunity right away or fill my glass so high that I drown.

I’ve learned that first and foremost, it’s about looking at what’s important RIGHT NOW.
Try pausing, taking a breath and deciding: what is important to pursue RIGHT NOW, what CAN WAIT, and what IS JUST NOT FOR ME.

Despite the culture of urgency we’ve created since the rise of mobile technology, you never need to decide on the spot.

Sometimes drawing a mind map helps me to illustrate everything going on in my life. When faced with the flow of things coming my way, I’m more able to discern how full or free “my stream” really is.

Time to Harvest What You Have:

I think being aware of reactionary life flow is particularly pertinent for fall, because in this season we get bombarded by all sorts of “newness” – new opportunities at work, opportunities to reconnect with friends after the summer, and chances to take new courses or start new projects.

Maybe it’s the crispness in the air that whisks away the summer heat and makes room for autumn, or maybe it’s the feeling leftover from years of being programmed at school that September signifies a new beginning.

But in reality, fall is actually the time to “harvest” what you’ve already started. It’s the time to reflect on what you have and use it over the winter before planting new life seeds in the spring.

It’s no wonder so many people get sick or exhausted by November; they falsely (and maybe unconsciously) take on way too much in September/October.

By being more aware of the life flow, and knowing that you have the ability to pause, reflect, and decide what’s important now, later, or never.

This applies to everything. It can be as simple as assessing what to do with an email from a friend who wants to catch up with you this fall, to larger decisions around work, relationships, money, or family.

Please remember, fall is the perfect season to be practicing the art of responding thoughtfully, living in “response-ible life flow”, not automatically in “reactionary life flow”.

This will ensure a healthy and happy few months!

All the best!
Court



 

How Mindfulness can help you SPEAK UP!

Have you ever thought of your body as a chat room? Have you ever thought about the thousands and millions of conversations that your body hosts in every given moment?

Your body is like a huge conference centre and there are ongoing panel discussions between your physical body, your emotional body, your mental thoughts, and your spirit every single second of the day.

This is something I’ve been learning in my yoga practice. In yin yoga we hold poses for up to 5 minutes each, giving us an opportunity to feel our physical body, hear our mental thoughts, and notice our emotional responses.

We say, “listen to what your body is saying to you, and listen to what your mind is saying back to your body”.

But who’s talking?

If you can imagine for a moment that you are in an intense leg lunge, and you’re holding it for 5 minutes. Here’s what might happen…

Speaker #1 (physical body) says, “Oh man, my hip really hurts, it feels quite stuck”. It puts that statement out there for all the other panelists to respond to. Speaker #2 (the mental body) might pipe in with it’s opinion first. It might say, “Well, my hips are always tight and they always hurt and there’s no point trying to stay here any longer because nothing will ever change.” To which, Speaker #3 (emotional body) might say, “This is making me feel really frustrated, I hate being in this pose, I’m getting really irritated and want to be doing something fun instead. This sucks!”

This dialogue shows us that in the blink of an eye, we could be having all sorts of conversations amongst multiple speakers that we’re not even aware of.

This brings us to the foundation of a yoga practice. The word “yoga” comes from the root, “to yolk” or “union”. This means that we come together.

However, to me, it also speaks to what one of our life goals should be – oneness with ourselves.

So why is this helpful?

When you start to get comfortable listening to this "conference" dialogue, you get clues as to the general TYPES of conversations that YOU tend to have. Once you know this, in an everyday life situation, you can become a better moderator of that discussion.

Here’s an example:

Imagine you’re at a table with a bunch of loud, outspoken, and over-powering people (for example, a meeting with big-wig clients or dominating co-workers, at dinner with a bunch of extroverted friends, or at a huge gathering with your entire extended family). Everyone at the table is going back and forth loudly giving their opinions but not leaving much room for anyone else to speak.

You try to butt in but no one listens. You start to feel frustrated. Maybe you start to feel hot in the face, maybe your chest clenches a bit. You want to chime in but no one is listening. You keep wanting to open your mouth but there’s no point.

This is a major conversation going on inside your body.

Here, your mind might be saying “No one is listening to you, your words aren’t worth being listened to, don’t even bother”, your emotions might be saying “this makes me feel like I’m a 5 year old again and no one is listening, I’m frustrated and sad and don’t want to be here”, and your body might be saying “ya, you’re right, I can’t relax, I need to clench my chest and close off my heart”.

What do you do?

If you KNOW this conversation is going on, if you KNOW because you’ve experienced this pattern in a safe space before (e.g. on a yoga mat, meditating, or elsewhere), then are better able to shift it. You can see that it’s not what’s going on outside that's making all of this happen, it’s the dialogue that’s going on inside.

As moderator you can change gears.

In this example, you could first change your mental statement to – “I AM worth being listened to, my ideas and opinions ARE great, and I AM confident in my voice”.

This then forces your emotional body to respond with a different emotion, “Oh, you are? Ok, well in that case, I feel a bit better. Actually I feel kind of good. Yah, I totally feel worthy of being here”. And then your physical body might say, “Well you guys seem to be doing alright, I guess I can relax a bit now”.

And so, in my opinion, it’s really important to start listening to this dialogue, because no matter what the situation, can always step back and take a look at what your speakers are saying, and which one is directing the conversation and shift it.

It’s important to love all of these speakers, but then guide them in the direction that you desire when things get a little off track!

Can you do a soul strip show?

I just got back from the Hay House “I Can Do It!” Conference in Toronto. It was a seriously magnificent day and has left me super charged on positive, spiritual energy!

Because of that, I’ve been inspired to write about something that I often think about, and something that many of the speakers spoke to today. I had the honour of listening to Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Michael Chase, and Robert Holden all speak to some extent or another about the relationship between our soul and our ego.

The whole time I was doodling my way through the concepts. For hours I was drawing stick people to represent how we actually co-exist with these two entities.

One of the things that has become super clear to me today and in my experience, is that as humans, we have an unbelievable ability to oscillate between our ego and our soul at any given moment. . We can strip away the ego and show the soul.

I mean that we can switch back and forth between the wisdom-filled sage and the drama-infused mortal.

I think back to recent conversations I’ve had with friends and co-workers and I find it unbelievable how we, in one instant are able to give such strong advice and in another we plea for that same advice to be given back to us.

I had this experience this week, when I was comforting to my friend, tears streaming down her face, as she talked about a challenging relationship. 20 minutes later, I was also stirred to tears over my own personal relationship journey and suddenly she was the confident cool sage. She instantaneously became my source of advice and support.

How often do we find ourselves telling someone something that we are so sure of – “just listen to your heart”, “be firm with your needs and stand your ground”, or “don’t be so hard on yourself, love yourself first and foremost.”

Why is it easier to speak the truth to someone else than to ourselves?

This is the ego at play.

From what I’ve gathered today and in my own experience is that our ego, aka our conditioned personality or our “head”, is like a cloak that we wear to cover the purity of our being, aka our “heart”, or our soul.

As babies, we are literally and figuratively born naked. We don’t yet have a cloak.

As we are exposed to the circumstances that life gives us – the trauma of getting rejected, feeling failure, feeling inadequate, experiencing heartbreak, sadness, or anger – our ego works overtime to weave us an even thicker cloak.

As time goes on, this cloak becomes our shield. It protects us from experiencing more of what hurts. In the midst of our drama – “I lost my job”, “My family is unbearable”, “My boyfriend didn’t call me” – the cloak is all that we think we have to cope. The more we wear it, the more we come to identify ourselves as the cloak that we wear.

If you imagine the ego as a stick person sitting on top of your shoulder, the stick person is holding out the cloak for you. In his right hand he is also carrying a suitcase full of belief systems that you have collected over the years.

The suitcase might be full of things like, “I suck at relationships, I’m never going to find a romantic partner”, “I have to prove myself through my accomplishments in order to be accepted in the world”, or “if I lose 10 lbs then I’ll finally be happy.”

The cloak and the suitcase prevent us from actually feeling and connecting with what our soul is actually experiencing and saying on the inside.

But it doesn’t change the fact that we are still pure and naked souls underneath.

And yet, when we seek guidance and advice, we seek what is actually inside of us.

How can we be so resilient when it comes to others drama, but not our own?

It seems that in times of connection with others our ego shrinks and our soul comes out to play. When we feel safe and feel like we are supporting others, we remove the cloak effortlessly.

So the point is, in every given moment we have the ability to switch. We have the answers. We don’t need to ask the ego stick person for a cloak.

Those around us are the best mirrors for what we are all capable of. We are capable of being our own sage.

If we listen to the advice that we give others, we are listening to our soul. ☺

What does self love truly mean?

What’s your first reaction to the words “self” and “love”?

Take a minute here.

Are you irritated by those words? Do you feel comfortable with them? Do you think of someone in your life who is “self-loving” and feel annoyed? What do these words mean to you?

I wanted to write this post just before starting the 30-Day Self Love challenge as part of the 30x30 Project because “self love” is a bit of a tricky topic. In fact, it is quite controversial.

I’ve had a number of conversations with friends recently who are worried, nervous, or even unsure of this challenge. Well guess what…SO AM I!

How do we come across as being sincere genuine people wanting to explore ourselves by making positive self affirming statements everyday and not come across as ego-maniacs?

Well here’s my best attempt to dispel myth, share my perspective, listen to what I believe is true, and hopefully calm some nerves.

Why “self love”?

From my point of view, the term “self love” has been appropriated in an interesting yet unhealthy way in recent history.

Love + self = selfish.
Love + self = egotistical.
Love + self = self-absorbed.

Is that what you thought? Well here’s my defense.

There’s so much talk these days about “doing good”, helping others, being socially conscious. But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past few years it’s that the best way to serve and love others, is to serve and love yourself first (see writings by Cheryl Richardson for more on this).

You can’t give wholeheartedly from a place that is empty or depleted. And for those of us that might react strongly to hearing the term "self love", might examine what our relationship is to giving and helping others.

What is it?

From my point of view, self-love is NOT about stroking our ego. It’s not about coming up with false flattery to make ourselves feel better, or thinking that we are better than anybody else. In fact, it’s about separating from the ego, in order to honour who it is that we really are. It’s about self-appreciation, affirmation, and respect. Perhaps a better term is soul-love.

But how often do we do this?

Versus, how often in your life do you find that you judge yourself? How often do you analyze or critique your every action? Every word that you speak? When you do something at work, say something to a friend, or try something new, do you walk away from it and say to yourself “oh my god, I shouldn’t have said that, that was so stupid” or “why did I do that?” or “I should have thought of that instead?”

Well that is the exact OPPOSITE of self love.

Imagine your best friend had done the same thing. Would you judge them as harshly? Would you remind them over and over again about what they could have done better? Probably not.

Instead, how often do you compliment yourself? What does it mean to compliment yourself? How do you feel when others compliment themselves?

To me, self love really boils down to this: love, compassion and non-judgment for yourself. That’s it.

Why 30 days?

According to research in neuroscience, we can actually re-program our brains by re-wiring the neurological pathways that send signals and messages to certain parts of our brain. The more we do something/say something/think something, the more it is repeated in the mind and body, the more it gets deeply ingrained in our cells and changes us. However, our brains are "plastic" and can change.

So what would happen if we consciously practiced this attitude of self-affirming love for 30 Days instead of self judgment and criticism? What if we had to own up to it publicly? How might this transform us? How might this trigger, stimulate or change the way others view the term “self love”?

Will we learn that loving the self is not about loving the ego, but about deeply caring for and seeing the worth and value that each and every one of us bring to this world? Whether it’s the pride we take in the home-baked cookies we made, or whether it’s the ability to congratulate ourselves on a tough talk with the boss at work.

Either way, it’s not about putting yourself up one pedestal, it’s about being honest, vulnerable, and genuinely happy to be the person that you are. So here’s to the courage it takes to do this challenge and to explore your relationship with yourself over the next 30 Days.

Who knows what will happen, but I’m grateful to have others that will be courageously joining along on this exploration! Here we go…..

Does your ego drive your ideas?

Has someone ever said to you “just put that thought in your parking lot?” i.e. great idea, we'll get back to it later when there's more time, money, resources etc.

Or perhaps you might have had someone say to you “you’re such a great visionary” i.e. love the ideas, now how’re we going to do it?

Well I’ve heard it. Sometimes I have so many thoughts running through my head that my mental roadways start to get full of traffic jams. In those instances no “cars” get to move forward because everyone is stuck. I just need some parking lots.

Last month was a particularly traffic jammy type month. I think maybe because it was the start of a new year so I was so eager to jump ahead and get going with plans, new yoga workshop ideas, connections I wanted to make, and interesting people I hoped to meet.

Yet, by the end of the month I had little to show for it, except for a pair of baggy eyes, and an overbooked calendar.

My head was ready to explode.

In yoga and other energy healing modalities, they might say I wasn’t fully “grounded”. I was in my upper chakras of sight/vision and not my lower ones of manifestation, feeling, and creation. I wasn’t fully in my body, I was in my mind, living in the realm of ideas, and not really getting anywhere, just getting overwhelmed.

I had ODed on ideas.

I was paralyzed and didn’t know which way to go because everything seemed so interesting and important. I was in a major mental traffic jam.

Or if each idea/plan/vision were represented by a post-it note, I had no board to post them on. My mind was cluttered with beautiful, multi-coloured stickies, but no wall to stick them to!

With the help of a very dear healer of mine, we spent some time mind-mapping out all of my mental post-its, dumping them onto a table, noticing which were taking up lots of my energy, which I wished would take up more of my energy, what I could park/throw away, and highlighted what I needed to move forward.


Aside from helping me prioritize, this visually showed me something even more interesting…my ego!

My ego was at fault for creating this post-it insanity or this mental car pill up.

I had never really thought about it this way, but yes, all my ideas and eagerness to pursue them right now, was simply my ego taking over (not to be confused with being egotistical, or self-centered).

So I spent some time contemplating this ego.

What was happening in this state of un-groundedness, was I was allowing my ego to orchestrate the symphony of post-its up there. He/she/it was telling me “I want to do it all, I can do it all, I think everything is interesting and worth pursuing, do it…NOW!”.

The problem was, nowhere was my ego telling me what to do first or where to start, or reminding me that I had choice. Ego was not providing me with a bulletin board for support.

So I called in my good friends humility and patience. They helped me sort things out.

I realized that yes, while I find so many ideas interesting and often want to pursue them all, I need to be gentle and not expect my physical self to be able to keep up or make all the ideas into reality.

As soon as I saw it was my ego trying to make me do all of these things, it changed how I approached my list. Even though it wasn’t coming from a place of self-centeredness, it still meant that some inner part of me felt I needed to accomplish it all – that’s ego.

So I created a sort of separation from the ideas, allowed myself to step back, and to say, “who is really driving this urge to get it done? Who is telling me it’s all important?”

And so from now on, I hope to pause before getting overwhelmed with pursuing intriguing ideas and plans, take a look at the mental post-its and remember to always call in patience and humility for help.

What are the post-its that are floating in your head? How might you see them differently if you were to ask yourself “where are these coming from?” and “Who says I need to do them?”

What can gratitude do for YOU?

On a scale from 1 to 10, how grateful are you? If you could chop up your day into little bits, how much time is taken by sincere moments of being thankful? What does your relationship with gratitude look like and what does that word even mean to you?

I just spent 30 days exploring and consciously cultivating my ability to be grateful and to MEAN it.

I’m not UNgrateful. I mean, I always say “thank you”. I’m very polite. But does that mean I am truly grateful?

For example, when asked on the spot to think of something I’m grateful for in a yoga class, do I feel that “thank you” in my bones? Does my entire body sit in that moment of appreciation even after it has gone? Um, maybe, maybe not.

Well I decided I was going to find out.

Starting on Jan. 4, for a full month I posted one statement of gratitude to my Facebook and Twitter walls every day – that way, I would be held fully accountable for my postings (yes, by the FB police and the FB stalker fans I imagine I have)!

So Day 1. I was grateful for the wisdom of my girlfriends. I reflected on the amazing advice I was constantly receiving from them, and it struck me how brilliant and wise friends can be when you really listen.

Day 2. I was grateful for new faces and familiar faces at my yoga classes. Still being a relatively new teacher, I couldn’t have been happier to have their support, so I really sat in that moment of pure happiness.

Day 9. “I’m grateful to have my furnace working again after a 48 hour hiatus”. Never had I been so thankful to have heat. Something so simple, yet had I not been doing this challenge, I probably would not have thought twice about when it came back on. IN FACT, I probably would have thought “stupid landlord, why is he such an incompetent lazy idiot, everything keeps breaking. I want compensation for the hassle”. But instead, I was happy to have heat.

Day 17. I’m grateful for hip-hop music. Enough said.

Day 19. I’m grateful for snuggles with Trapper.

As the days went on, I realized I couldn’t wait to post my gratitude statement. It was something I looked forward to every day!

And then end of January hit. This, I have to say was the lowest point in my month. For about 4 days, I really struggled with finding things to be grateful for. My energy level was so low, my body was tired, work was ramping up, things weren’t going as I had planned, and I felt like I had a million things on my plate. Gratitude was getting tough.

One morning during that period, I had a catch up breakfast planned with my dad. To be honest, the last thing I wanted or needed to do was add another item to “my agenda” for the week. Though I love my dad VERY dearly, I felt stressed just thinking about having a leisurely breakfast on a very busy workday.

Needless to say, I went.

And as a result, I felt one of the deepest moments of gratitude that I had during the whole challenge.

I told myself, “Courtney, you are here with dad, the office is not here, you aren’t going to find your new apartment in this moment, you aren’t going to make your yoga lesson plan here, why think about that, you are here”.

So I looked at him, and let my heart open. I let the breakfast go on much longer than I had planned. I let myself cry in front of him from exhaustion. I let myself feel.

And as I continued to feel, I started to feel a sense of lightness. I realized I was feeling sincere happiness for having the eternal love of my parents. I was feeling gratitude.

As a result, I left with happy tears in my eyes for that moment of reflection. And a post to write:

Day 24. I’m grateful for heart to heart chats over breakfast with my dad :)

I left thinking, when I can say I’m grateful for heart to heart chats with someone I love, then searching for an apartment, sending out those emails, or writing that report, don’t seem like such big deals.

I gave my dad a hug goodbye, and it wasn’t just a thank you, it was a THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

As my month drew to a close, I continued my posts and I saw more and more people joining the challenge. Every day I would log on and my wall would be speckled with “Day 3. Today I’m grateful for…”, “Day 17. I am grateful for…”. It literally made my heart jump, I was so THRILLED!

As my final post for Day 30 I wrote, “Today I am grateful for being witness to all the gratitude and inspirational stories that came from this challenge”. The number of people who reached out to me, letting me know what it meant for them to be a part of it, was amazing.

Being one who didn’t grow up in a religious household and has not adhered to many rituals before, I realized that the 30 Day Gratitude Challenge became more than just posting statement or funny remarks on a wall. It really became a ritual – it became an exercise in strengthening optimism and hope. It became a ritual that others became a part of.

The challenge made me feel so connected to the others that were participating (and still are participating – keep going guys!!)

Knowing that every single day, we were all sharing the exact same human emotion, was exquisitely moving and powerful. And I miss it now!

And so, as I end my story, I open it up to you and your experiences with gratitude. I welcome your thoughts and reflections on the challenge or on gratitude in general. How do you experience it? How might it change your perception of situations or people in your life? What can gratitude make possible for you?

With lots of love (and eternal gratitude ☺),
Court xo