What is Your New Way of Being?
“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.” Sonya Renee Taylor
As we experience our world and ourselves in deep transformation, I thought it could be helpful to speak to what I am doing to create my new normal and to provoke some thoughts on how you might create your new way of being.
I have been in a state of constant creativity since all this started and partly because of my work, partly because it is what I love and partly because it is what is being required of me to stay focused on the future I want to create verse being consumed by the fear and negativity of all that is alive right now in our culture.
The virus is here and it is having us stay vigilant and mindful of how we are choosing to take care of our health, our work, our families, our spiritual life and each other. This is a good thing as Sonya Renee Taylor’s quote above says. it doesn’t hurt for things to change and for us to wake up to what we may have become complacent about.
Change is healthy, what is uncomfortable is when change comes because we have been lax in making changes on our own. I have found the key is me being proactive in making change verse waiting for it to come surprise me. I have done this by being very vigilant in listening to my inner voice, that inner knowing that whispers to me in the night, during my meditation and at different times throughout my day. I have made a commitment to act on it when it directs me to make a change or do something different. Even if I am scared to do it, not sure how to make the change and not knowing the outcome.
I do it anyway and this supports me building trust in my inner knowing. It helps me strengthen it so that I hear it more often and listen to it more. Like a voice that becomes louder in my head verse the negative voice. Not to say the negative voice isn’t there because it is but I have made a conscious effort to listen to this voice and now for the most part it overpowers the negative voice.
Like any muscle if we want to strengthen it we have to put our attention on it. If we want to focus on feeling more balanced and less stressed or overwhelmed, we have to put our attention on things that keep us relaxed and calm, in a state of joy. If we want to stop thinking negative thoughts, we think about what we are grateful for and put our attention on what generates positive thoughts. It is the same with your intuition or inner knowing.
That voice knows what change we need to grow, expand and live into more of our authentic selves. Maybe COVID is here to teach us that, to get back to what makes you happy, fulfilled, empowered, balanced and experiencing more joy. When we learn new things, we feel invigorated and alive and isn’t that the experience we all strive for in our lives?
So my question is how can we lean into what is uncomfortable and start paying attention to the change that is nudging us from the inside out? What will support you in taking action on those thoughts?
Spending time in nature, sitting in quiet, journaling your thoughts are some practices that may help. The key is listening what will support you in listening, ask the question and sit in silence and see what is revealed to you. We each have practices that work for us and it is not one style fits all. Let COVID be your teacher to begin to honor you and your process of change. The practices that best serve you during this time in stretching into what may be uncomfortable or new or different.
In doing this we all create a new way of being that creates the new normal. The cool part is we do it from a place that is authentic to what we really want to create verse what we are told to create.
It is from here that we can create a world of diversity, inclusion and respect for ourselves and others.
My hope is that we each take this precious time we are given to dive into our deeper knowing and become friends with it, listen to it and allow it to guide us so that we can create a world that reflects the inside out and from a place that is authentic and honoring of all human life.