I was on a Zoom call with my somatic experience coach a couple of weeks ago and she noticed something peculiar. As I spoke, I held each hand out to the side, cupped toward the sky, moving them up and down as if they were opposite sides of a scale. She pointed out that I seemed to be weighing each of the feelings I was having in relation to our topic of discussion. It is her job to notice these things...how my body physically reacts as I speak, something I never would have paid attention to until I worked with her.
Later, this exercise made me think about how many times I use “either-or”, or all-or-nothing thinking as an approach to my life. In my drinking days, it happened all the time. Can’t follow this workout plan to the letter? Might as well give up. Cheated and ate some ice cream on my diet? Might as well consume all the junk in the world until next Monday. Can’t get what I want out of life? Might as well numb out and wallow in hopelessness. I mentally told myself “I blew it” all the damn time.
A huge gift of my transformation is that I’m slowly beginning to see the value of all of the baby steps taken between the nothing and the all. Or how sometimes things can feel miles apart and yet they are connected by seemingly insignificant choices, like the birds I learned about who migrate well before the first hurricane of the season strikes.
I have some big dreams for my life right now. I am well on my way to finishing my memoir. I am determined to host retreats out at our land. It feels sometimes as though I’m holding my life today in one hand and this future in the other, as if they are miles apart. The difference between who I am today and who I was five years ago is that I have the determination to follow through on all the steps it will take to get there. Yes, I can still have a productive, wholehearted life and career today...and, I can start writing my next chapter, one word at a time.
At the reiki mentoring session I attended Friday, I saw someone I met at a reiki share circle eighteen months ago. She walked up to me later and said “you were the one who told me about a vision you had that I still think of today. You have a gift.” At the beginning of the workshop, I had pulled a card with an image of a woman looking up toward the earth. Hovering above one hand was an apple, above the other was an orange. Her hands were locked in the exact same position I held on my coaching session. What do YOU feel?, it asked.
Optimistic.