The Goal of Your Self Study Practice is to Sound More Like You

Storytime With Kate

I love everything about the Self Study Program (except the admin stuff on the backend of course but I'm grateful that Ruby and I get to do that together, like everything else.)

Anyway, one of my favorite parts of the Self Study Program are the one-on-one coaching calls that happen in between each of the group calls.

This week, one of the SSPs was feeling like she couldn't articulate her feelings in the same way some of the others in the group do.

And then we got to talking about the theme of Rest and how that's showing up in her life. As we were talking through what feels like rest to her, mid sentence she said, "... where I finally feel like I can take a breath and..." I said, "stop right there."

That's a feeling.

Gentle reader, please pause for a moment and take a big deep breath.

That's what rest feels like.

I think it's so great that the study of feelings, emotions, mental health, physical health, identity health... is so prevalent. Because what it shows me is that an entire generation of people has become interested in understanding themselves in this way. I love that. And I think it's changing culture and the world, for good.

and

Sometimes, this intellectualizing of your feelings: meaning, thinking about them, defining them, using the right word for them... can take you away from the very way that they feel.

So yes, telling someone that you need to take a big deep breath is telling someone how you feel. That is articulating your feelings :)

You're doing a great job.

I very much think of each one of our feelings as art.

because isn't that just what art it? an expression of emotion.

our emotions tell stories and make music and paint pictures and move bodies.

yours, specifically, tell your stories, move your body.

So as you begin, or continue, your Self Study Practice, know that the goal here isn't to sound like everybody else and to use the words that everybody else uses.

The goal is to sound more like you. To use more of the words that, according to you, express your internal experience of all this *gestures broadly at life.*

You'll sound more like yourself in your role as a Parent, as a new Manager at work, as the CEO of a company, as a Personal Trainer, as an Entrepreneur, an Aunt or Uncle... Your voice is what will shift the culture forward in whatever it is your specific realm of influence is. We all have one... and yours is probably bigger than you realize. 

Just as much as academia teaches us, remember that stories teach us too. Music teaches us. Art teaches. Movement teaches. Nature teaches. Your experience of all of this, teaches.

You will learn, as you pay attention.

Remember that attention is a finite resource. A delicate, magical, transformational resource. It requires your care. You have to make space for it, practice it like a skill with integrity and purpose :: notice here if this makes you feel squashed with perfectionism, or heaviness, or too much seriousness - fun fact: play helps you focus and expand your capacity for attention! So maybe try taking your attention to play :)

What are people/places/things that get in the way of you being able to play?

What are people/places/things that make you want to play?

*play: according to you.

Artfully Onward.
I love you.
You're doing great,
Kate