Hi Friends-
Happy almost new year!
I thought that I was going to have my upcoming "year of offerings" all mapped out to share with you today, but it turns out Mercury retrograde had different ideas! 🙃
What I do know is this:
If you are making any resolutions related to working in a more life-affirming way in the new year, I am running a limited-time, $60-off coupon for my RESET course. Rejecting the draining ethos of grind culture, RESET teaches a nourishing, "heart-centered" approach to productivity. It is also my most popular self-guided course! If you're interested in the discount and/or learning more about what RESET offers, click here to opt into a sweet educational email and podcast series about the course. (And don't worry: You'll get the discount code in the first message, and you can opt out anytime. ; )
If you're making any resolutions related to stepping into fuller self-expression, speaking your truth, or coming out from "behind-the-scenes," registration for my new Finding Your Voice course is open through January 2nd. I'll be guiding participants into a new spaciousness around self-expression with talks, guided energy meditations, journaling, rituals, and more. I love delving into the mystery of connecting with our gifts, and I have no doubt this is going to be a deep, transformative journey. You can learn more and book your spot here.
Below, I share an essay inviting you to meditate on the idea of "not going it alone" in 2024, revisit one of my all-time favorite Hurry Slowly interviews with adrienne maree brown, and share a handful of links that meditate on being in community with other humans and our more-than-human kin.
Sending you much love,
Jocelyn
You can't do it alone.
This past spring, I wrote in this newsletter about how, when I tuned into my higher self during meditation, I would regularly get the message: Remember who you are. A comforting piece of guidance to receive when so much of our cultural conditioning encourages us to focus on who we are not, what we haven't achieved, how we could always be better — as I discussed in a podcast a few weeks ago.
More recently, when I tune in, I've been getting the message: You can't do it alone, anymore.
To provide some context: I love doing things alone. I am a Capricorn rising born under the sign of American individualism, which means that I love being self-sufficient, and I am more-than-willing to work hard to achieve my goal. What's more, I'm a generalist, and I pride myself on having a wide range of skills that allow me to complete complex tasks — like, say, designing and building a website — without relying on outside help. I also love going fast, and doing things solo means I don't have to wait for anyone.
You might be inclined to guess that I would prefer going slow, given the title of my podcast, but it turns out "hurry slowly" is a message that I need to hear as much as anyone. (You teach what you need to learn as they say.)
To be clear: I'm not saying that the way of operating in the world that I have just described is particularly good or desirable. There are aspects of it that I am fond of, and aspects that are quite problematic — that I am actively re-examining and/or shedding. I'm simply sharing this little bit of backstory to illustrate how focused on individualism and self-sufficiency I have been for most of my life.
So when I get the message, "you can't do it alone, anymore," it's butting up against some deeply embedded mental and emotional scaffolding that I have erected about how I show up in the world.
The other day, a good friend and I were talking about this idea of "going it alone" in terms of healing. She was describing how she had long believed that if she did all the things — went to therapy, did yoga, worked on her mental patterns, etc — she could heal herself on her own. And how she was now unwinding from that belief. We agreed that the true practice ground of healing only arrives in connection, in relationship, in community.
It's nice to fantasize about being in this individualistic bubble and having 100% control over your healing process, but that's not the way it works. Particularly because all of the wounds that we are trying to heal from — literally, all of them — come from being in relationship.
When I first started working with plant medicine in 2014, it felt very important to me to do it in a 1-1 setting — to not be a part of a group. At that time, and for many years after, I had negative ideas about what might happen if I did healing work in a group setting. My most primary belief was that other people's energy would interfere with my own healing experience.
It wasn't until earlier this year that I had what felt like the "right" opportunity to do healing work in a group setting. What I found, much to my surprise, was that a key part of the healing I needed to do could only be done in community — because there were deep personal and ancestral patterns about how I showed up in community that needed to be addressed.
So I was in this very, individualistic, Western mindset like, Oh, I'm going to keep my healing to myself. I'll just be doing it over here in this neat, tidy, controlled way and then I'll come back into community and I'll be good. But because all of our loves and our hurts and our challenges unfold in relationship, it doesn't really work that way. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are all connected, and that means we are all connected in our healing as well.
I thought that being in community would interfere with my healing process, but it was actually the missing ingredient in the process.
You can't do it alone, anymore.
I recorded a podcast a few months ago that was about unravelling my own limiting beliefs around making things hard. And I think part of how I, and probably many of us, make things hard for ourselves is by "going it alone" when we don't need to. Or by thinking that going it alone is superior to accepting help.
Our individualism runs so deep.
As I continue this unravelling, my focus for 2024 is about taking things that were previously hard and learning how to do them with joy. And my vision for how I want to do that is in community — with you all. So that we can all learn how to invite in more joy and lightness together. : )
So stay tuned… I have a new idea percolating for a brand-new, 6-month-long creative incubator that creates a joyous, fun, and generative space for birthing big creative projects, career reinventions, and new business incarnations into the world — together!
I'm looking forward to sharing more details with you in early 2024 as the pieces fall into place.
In the meantime...
As you reflect on the year ahead, I would like to invite you to think about where you might be holding energy or limiting beliefs around the necessity of "going it alone."
Are there ways that you could open up to more community and support in 2024? Who are the allies you can call upon? What are the ways you can enlist more help and lighten your load? Where could inviting others into your process create more joy?
✨
LINK ABOUT IT
Are you in touch with what it is to have enough? For end-of-year reflection, I'm resurfacing one of my all-time favorite Hurry Slowly interviews with writer and activist adrienne maree brown about her book Pleasure Activism: "So for me, I was like, I want to get a felt sense of it, what does it mean to be satisfiable? I'll ask people, When was the last time you were satisfied? Can you imagine being satisfied? What are the things that satisfy you in a given day? How do you know that you have done enough in a given day? Do you understand that you don't have to produce anything to deserve satisfaction?"
Do elephants have souls? I have continued to think about this wondrous, awe-inspiring, and heart-breaking longread about elephants and how they communicate and commune and mourn since I read it years ago. So good!
The futurist vision of actor and and filmmaker Brit Marling. I enjoyed this conversation on the Talk Easy podcast with Brit Marling, who you may know from The OA or A Murder at the End of the World. I particularly liked her perspective on the idea of "choral authorship" and creating as a community.
The grief of the world feels too big to hold alone. I was thinking about this essay by Lisa Olivera about "going it alone" in grief as I was writing this week's newsletter: "I can't help but wonder what would be different if none of us were tasked with navigating this grief, these questions, or this witnessing alone."
Basic goodness and awe, a conversation with Dacher Keltner and Tara Brach. A lovely conversation about finding wonder, love, creativity and beauty in our daily lives, and how awe is a central part of the human (and more-than-human) experience. As with the elephants article above, this conversation, too, touches on the contemplative and awe-some nature of animals.
Orienting to your destiny through stone medicine healing. It won't be for everyone, but I very much enjoyed this conversation about how crystals are the "bones of the earth" and, as such, can offer very deep healing. Of particular note, is Sarah Thomas' explanation around the 8-minute mark of how the term "woo-woo" comes from the Chinese term "wu," and what it originally meant.
Offerings: How you can work with me ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ Registration for Finding Your Voice closes in just a few days — on January 2nd! This four-week course will help you build the trust and self-confidence you need to step fully into your voice and let your unique ideas and offerings flow freely. If you are being called to more expansive expression in 2024, this course is for you! Learn more and register here. Save $60 off registration for RESET, a cosmic tune-up for your workday. If you're dealing with burnout or just coming into awareness that the way you are working is not sustainable, RESET is the reboot you need. It will show you how to let go of the soul-sucking productivity mindset of grind culture and move into what I call a "heart-centered approach to productivity." Click here to opt into an educational newsletter and podcast series about the course and get the discount code. ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ |
SHOUT-OUTS:
The illustrations are from: David Drbal, who is based in Prague in the Czech Republic.
Link ideas from: Roxane Gay and Sebene Selassie.
You can support me & my work by: Participating in one of the many offerings listed above! : )
Website: jkg.co
Twitter/X: @jkglei
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