Finding a place of peace

Dear Team Joy,

My brother LOVES Above & Beyond. Sees them every-time they come to his hometown kind of love. I am not a big electronic dance music fan, but they have an album called Flow which features spoken word poetry. The album is EDM meets spiritual vibes. I wanted to begin this week by sharing a spoken word poem from one of my favorite tracks with you:

Above & Beyond, Elena Bower – Greater Falls – Spoken Word

There is a place within you that is always at rest, always at peace.

An aspect of your being that is always within your reach, and yet somehow, we all forget.

When we are in that place of peace, we experience our innermost strength. Smoother edges and boundless depth.

When we come from that place in our inner and outer relations, every choice we make resounds throughout all creation.

To come from this place of peace, think of your life as an ongoing broadcast everyday.

There is a broadcast within you— your thoughts, words, judgements, feelings.

This broadcast is ancestral. Often utterly unconscious. Sometimes deeply healing.

Especially when we’re attentive to our breathing.

There is also the broadcast going out to the world around you.

Not necessarily through your words or your point of view, but through your subtlest, silent signals that are teaching others how to treat you.

And both of these transmissions need our attention.

When we forget to live from that place of peace for too many hours, days, even a moment, we begin to believe we can’t hold ourselves up.

We easily forget that we’re far more than enough.

Not enough

I deeply struggle with thoughts of not being enough. Not a good enough businesswoman, coach, athlete, daughter, caretaker, friend, lover, etc. It rings through my mind chatter so subconsciously and insidiously I mistake the voice for me. I mistake the voice for truth. If I am not careful, it gets stuck in its own loops:

“You need to be doing more. This is not going to get you where you need to go.”

“You’re not making enough money yet. Hustle. Let’s go.”

“You’re not very good at this.”

“You don’t deserve to take a break, think about everything there is to do.”

“Your dream life is not going to build itself.”

“You’re behind.”

Honestly, I feel my chest tighten just writing these thoughts down. The energy of the voice is frantic, and causes my heart rate to quicken, as if I am getting ready for a fight.

This sense of not enough-ness fuels me toward action. It’s easy to believe I would be inactive without it. But the intense desire for action never arrives with clear directions.?It’s a frantic energy that bounces around within me, looking to be channeled into something. It leaves me unsettled and annoyed, agitating my senses.

I try to problem-solve, fix, anticipate, reprioritize, or refocus. SOMETHING. Anything to change this state. It’s exhausting. I am a bit ashamed to admit sometimes the voice can be so loud I don’t want to spend time present alone with myself, knowing the voice will get louder without distraction.

I was not intending to hire my own coach, but when we met her essence resonated so strongly with me, I knew I wanted to work with her. She told me our work together would support me in building a more secure attachment with my own soul. That may sound kooky, but to me it sounded like relief. After a lifetime of clinging to outside sources (family, men, work) to fill my cup of worthiness, maybe…just maybe, I could do it for myself? Securely attach to myself. ??

Every time I get on the phone with her at some point during the conversation, she asks me to drop in. I close my eyes. I slow my breathing. I let go of my abs that have been trained to suck in my stomach all day long. I allow my shoulders to come down. I find a place within myself that knows truth.

But the hustler within me resists. How is breathing going to build a business? How is any of this going to help me achieve my dreams. “I don’t have time for this!” it quips back like a whiny teenager.

With my coach's patient and persistent guidance, I often find it. A place within me that relishes my own attention. The grips of fear slowly loosen its grasp.

I am different in this place of peace. More full. More aware of my own power. More aware of my own desire. From this place, I sense something about myself that I can’t quite grasp yet with words.

I have more access to magic. More access to love. More access to me. ??

I hang up with my coach and try to remind myself to live more from this place. But after 24 hours, the peace has faded away. I am back to spinning, the frantic energy recapturing my being. The to-do lists are long and the fear is big.

The fear-based life comes more naturally to me than peace. I have lived from this place for so long. I can sometimes let my guard down for a moment, allowing myself to rest in meditation or in a journaling session. But the voice tells me truly resting and allowing myself to just be for an extended period of time will destroy me.

Motivation, gone. Love and affection, gone. Money, gone.

But in the brief moments when I can access that place of fullness, I am reminded this place won’t destroy me…it will probably save me.

The process of living more from this place has been truly humbling. I have been trying for months, and progress has been slow. I have a lot of internal resistance within myself. But I am starting again by starting small.

Finding a place of peace

The insidious mind-chatter is a directionless buzzy energy, it doesn’t know what it needs or where to go next. But the energy that moves through my body when I dance is clear. It doesn’t need to be questioned, justified or reprioritized. The flow I can access through movement, especially when I give myself the compassion to stop judging what comes through, is the fastest most satisfying way I know back to my true self.

Lately, I haven’t consistently made time for it. It never feels like the right time to pause my to-do list, close my laptop and dance in my room like I did when I was a kid. I used to do it when there was accountability, to teach a class, or practice for a performance. But it’s rare for me to do it simply for my own enjoyment.

My coach asked me recently how I thought I could slow my frantic pace more frequently in between our sessions. I quietly offered, maybe I could dance? If I want to start small, I asked “How often should I dance?”

She offered, “I don’t think that’s a powerful question. How often do you need to dance to honor yourself? To honor your needs.”

My honest answer, “Everyday.”

“Why?” She challenged gently.

I sat there quietly, honestly searching. Not from my head, but from my belly.

“Because it’s who I am.”

That’s enough. That answer is enough. Honoring my own knowing is enough.

I sense we all have things like this. Expressions of our being that just know, that don’t need to be analyzed or strategized. That knowing is a tender energy; requiring quiet, presence, and safety to emerge from within us to be breathed into the world. But when we let it come through, we can access our own magic. We can remember we are far more than enough.

Sending love,

Isabel

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