by Heather Plett | Apr 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
“If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.”
Thomas Edison
In last week’s blog post, I wrote about daring to stand in the trembling. I first recognized the trembling a dozen years ago when I taught my first course on creativity and spirituality. Since then, I’ve experienced it many times. It’s the signal my body sends me that I am in my right work, serving my right people. It’s like a divining rod that lets me know that I’m standing above water.
How do you experience the trembling? All over your body, in your heart, in your throat, in your legs?
Sometimes we assume the trembling is only fear or insecurity and we do our best to stay safe and step away from whatever causes it. When we do that, we fall short of our calling and don’t serve the better world our hearts know is possible.
I want to invite you to step into your own trembling and to find the path your trembling is pointing you toward. I want to stand there, in the trembling with you, holding your hand if you need it, reminding you of your courage, and coaxing you to step forward.
I want to invite you into the Pathfinder Circle.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned since I first recognized the trembling in my life is this… It’s much easier to find the courage to stay in it when you are in community with supportive, like-minded people.
Pathfinder Circle is such a place. It’s an intimate circle that will meet for 8 intense and intentional weeks. The ten participants will be invited on a journey through Pathfinder: A creative journal for finding your way. You’ll receive encouragement, support, and guidance as they seek the calling that takes them deep into their own trembling.
If you feel yourself at the edge of something new, something scary, and something bigger than you’ve ever stepped into before, then Pathfinder Circle is for you.
Join us now and we’ll begin on May 8, 2014. Register soon to secure one of the ten spots.
If you’re curious about what Pathfinder Circle will be like, below is an excerpt and some journal prompts from Pathfinder that will help you find your courage.
A Basket of Courage
“When we look for what’s right, instead of what’s wrong, we are able to see the good in every situation and every person.” – Debbie Ford
Appreciative Inquiry is a system most frequently used for organizational change which also has a lot of value in personal transformation. Instead of asking “What’s going wrong and how can I fix it?”, Appreciative Inquiry asks the question “What’s really working well around here and how can we do more of it?”
What we focus on becomes our reality.
If we focus on our problems, we become mired in the problems and can’t see our way through to the future. If we focus on our gifts, we give our energy to those gifts and we nourish and grow them. We are more confident moving into the future if we are looking at the strengths that carried us through the past than we are if we focus solely on the places where we failed.
To do an Appreciative Inquiry on our own lives, we need to focus on what has life, meaning and value. It’s about collecting our personal stories, asking good questions, and imagining how the meaningful stories from our pasts can help shape our futures.
One of my favourite Appreciate Inquiry practices is something I call the Basket of Courage Stories.
Along your pathfinding journey, imagine that you are walking through an orchard. You’re carrying a basket and filling it with fruit that you’re picking from the trees as you walk. This is the food that will nourish you in the journey later on, so you want to pick fruit wisely.
There is some fruit that has already fallen to the ground. It is juicy and smells heavenly, but you know that it has fallen because it is over-ripe – past its prime. You don’t want to bring that fruit along, because it will rot before you have time to eat it, and there’s a good chance it will cause the other fruit in your basket to rot prematurely as well.
There are wormholes in some of the fruit still hanging on the trees, and you know that you don’t want to pick those either because there will almost certainly be worms destroying the fruit from the inside.
You’re looking for plump, nearly ripe fruit that will nourish you and fill you with strength later when your energy flags. You can only carry so much without weighing yourself down, so you don’t want to waste space in your basket with fruit that’s over-ripe, that has wormholes, or that won’t taste good.
Sometimes we waste a lot of our energy carrying the fruit that will never feed us well.
The just-right fruit in your basket represents the courage stories that you will carry with you into the future. This is your Appreciative Inquiry that will help you grow your life and use your gifts in even more beautiful ways. In your moments of weakness, further down the path, when you begin to doubt your ability to complete the journey or doubt that you have enough courage to face the dragons, the courage stories will nourish you and give you strength.
Let’s begin to collect some of those courage stories that you’ll carry with you as you continue this journey. First, let’s take a look at what courage is.
Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the choice to step forward despite it.
Fear is a natural and necessary part of life. Without fear, we do irrational things – we hurt people we love and we never learn to recognize danger or the deep longings in our hearts.
Fear can be very useful to us. It keeps us from getting hurt when we spot an angry dog foaming at the mouth. It reminds us to lock our doors at night. It sends us physical signals – sweaty palms, racing pulse, trembling lips – when we need to protect ourselves. In this context, fear is a life-preserving reaction to a recognizable danger.
The problem is not that we HAVE fear in our lives, the problem is that we let fear CONTROL us and keep us from the things our hearts are longing for.
When we have courage, we feel the fear, we acknowledge it, and then we decide that fear is not in the driver’s seat. Fear may still be our companion on the journey, and it might even help us navigate some difficult terrain, but when courage is in charge, fear takes a back seat.
Courage is simply taking a step – even just a small step – in the direction our paths are calling us, even when fear tries to hold us back.
Courage is opening our mouths to speak when we’re sure nobody in the room will agree with us.
Courage is kissing our children good-bye when they leave the house to go places where we can’t keep them safe.
Courage is saying no when a friend asks us to help them when we know that we are in desperate need of self-care.
Journal Prompts
The last time I was courageous was when I…
When I was a child, I stepped into courage by…
The most courageous act in my life was…
Today’s simple small act of courage was (or will be)…
The area in my life that I need more courage is…
Creative Journaling
Draw a large basket full of fruit. (Or find a colouring book image online and print it.) On each piece of fruit, write a few key words from each of your courage stories. Imagine that you are carrying this basket on the journey with you, feeding on these morsels of courage when you need them most.
by Heather Plett | Apr 3, 2014 | Uncategorized
A dozen years ago, I taught my first class on creativity and spirituality. A small circle of women gathered each week to give themselves permission to play, to explore creativity as a spiritual practice, and to exhale deeply.
Each week, with our hands in clay or paint, we cracked open the vulnerable places in our hearts that held the shame of our unworthiness, the fear of our failure, and the resistance to allowing ourselves to do that which brought delight.
Almost every week, I found myself in the middle of “the trembling”. I’d spent most of my life ignoring my body, so I didn’t recognize at the time that it was sending me powerful messages. As I’d host the women’s stories of heartbreak, fear, shame, and triumph, my whole body would begin to tremble, like it was shivering from cold. I’d have to clench my jaw sometimes, or hold my hands under the table, afraid my shaking might be seen.
At first, I chalked it up to nervousness. This was brand new work – work I’d been longing to do for years – and I didn’t know if I would succeed.
But it wasn’t nervousness (or at least it wasn’t only nervousness). I’d done much scarier things in my career (like hosting press conferences for Prime Ministers) and none of those scary things had caused the shakes like that.
In the words of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the trembling came in those moments when I was in flow… “completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”
This was so much more than nervousness. This was the message my body was sending me that I was in my right work.
That class led to other classes, to other circles, to other soulful conversations, to other art-making, and to other work that made my body vibrate. It was the beginning that eventually lead to everything I do now.
The trembling showed up again and again, while working with coaching clients who dare to crack their hearts open, while hosting women’s retreats where tears reveal the most honest truths of the heart, while inviting corporate clients to risk exposing themselves in meaningful conversations, and while writing blog posts that come from a deeper place of knowing than anything I’ve tapped into before. The trembling tells me I am on the right path, doing the right work, talking to the right people.
When I hosted the first call for the Idea Incubator, I invited people to share where in their lives they are feeling the trembling. As they shared what was cracking their hearts open, I felt my own trembling begin again. This is my work. These people with open hearts and brave dreams are my people. I stand here, trembling with them.
What if, the first time it showed up, I’d simply interpreted the trembling as fear and learned to shy away from it in the future? What if I’d never taught another class because I was too embarrassed to be seen with shaking hands? What if I’d been careful to stay in work that never made me tremble?
What if YOU ignore the trembling? What if you take the safe road? What if you never dare to let yourself be scared? What will you miss?
The trembling is our messenger. It’s trying to get our attention. It’s trying to wake us up and point us in the direction of our hearts’ longing.
Don’t ignore the trembling.
by Heather Plett | Mar 27, 2014 | Uncategorized
Yesterday I got an email from a woman asking me if I ever offered scholarships for my programs. She’d visited the Lead with Your Wild Heart page and said “When I clicked on your course I felt immediately that this is exactly what I need to do.” The cost was a challenge for her, though, so she took a chance and asked.
As soon as I saw her email, I knew I wanted to help her get what she needed. “Tell me what you can pay,” I said, “and it’s yours. You can pay more in the future if it feels possible, or you can pay it forward in some way.”
She sent me a beautiful note of appreciation and a little more of her story and… suddenly something shifted in me. I felt the Spirit-nudge. “I need to do this for more women,” I thought. “I want to be a citizen of a world where more women step into their courage and leadership potential, and so I need to support them in getting there.”
Within about half an hour (that’s how quickly I can work when I trust the Spirit’s nudge) I’d changed the sales page for Lead with Your Wild Heart to “pay what you can” and sent an email to my list to let them know of the change. Within minutes, sales started coming in and almost all of them included a note with a variation of “This is EXACTLY the right thing at EXACTLY the right time. I feel like you are up in my head and know what I need even before I do!”
Did I make a lot of money? No. Did I follow Spirit’s leading and nurture leadership and courage in women? YES! That’s good enough for me.
Then this morning something else happened. I hosted the first call for the brand new (free) Idea Incubator. Twenty-seven people came together to seed their tender ideas in the incubator, offer compost and soil for each others ideas, and marvel at the possibility of the global garden we can grow together. We started with a group circle where everyone introduced themselves and shared a brief check-in about where we’re feeling the trembling in our lives, and then we broke into small groups of 4 or 5 to help each other grow these ideas. It was a tender beginning, with a few technological challenges, but it was full of energy and potential. None of us quite know what we’re doing in this new space, but – in the words of Meg Wheatley – we’ve agreed to “start anywhere and follow it everywhere.”
After the call, I had to close my computer and leave the house. I felt a physical trembling all over my body, fueled partly from the stress of hosting something brand new on technology I’m not very familiar with, but mostly from the excitement and energy that was shared by these beautiful people spread across North America and reaching across the ocean to Europe. I took my journal to the green space at the Conservatory to process what had just happened. The workers at the conservatory were planting fresh plants and I knew I’d come to the right place for my personal de-briefing (hence the photo above).
Am I making any money from the Idea Incubator? No. Did I follow Spirit’s leading and create an environment where people feel nurtured and supported and where beautiful ideas can grow ? YES!
That’s good enough for me!
I am simply being faithful to the call and trusting that the rest will follow. The outcome is not my responsibility. The commitment is.
p.s. You can join Idea Incubator any time you want. And you can buy Lead with Your Wild Heart with whatever you feel you can pay.
by Heather Plett | Mar 21, 2014 | Uncategorized
“We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul, that avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other, that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery, never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.” ― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
All around us, there is a hunger for belonging, a hunger for community, a hunger to be held in circles of grace where we can open our hearts and know that we will be treated tenderly and respectfully. Some of us have not yet awakened to that hunger, believing instead that we can go through life as independent, self-reliant souls. It’s there, though, hidden under the armour we’ve built up in our efforts to avoid being wounded.
To feed this hunger in the world, we need to create more places where people are fed. These are the places I call Circles of Grace.
A Circle of Grace is a place where people gather for meaningful conversation, for compassion, for support, for encouragement, and for growth. While in the circle, we do our best to extend grace to everyone there, including ourselves. We speak with openness and listen with intention. We make a commitment within the circle to be as authentic as we know how to be, and we welcome the same from others. We share, laugh, cry, grow, stretch, and tremble. Even when we disagree and conflict arises, we respond with compassion and open hearts and minds.
A Circle of Grace can be hosted as part of a retreat, it can be the frame for a weekly class (as I do with Creative Writing for Self-Discovery), it can be a way for your family to work through some difficult issues, it can be the way a community or church gathers regularly, and it can even be used in virtual gatherings (as I do with Openhearted Writing Circle).
How do you host a Circle of Grace? Here are some tips.
1. Create enough structure to hold the container, but enough flexibility to adapt to what wants to emerge. The best structure I know of can be found in PeerSpirit’s Circle Guidelines (which you can download for free). Sometimes it feels a little strange to bring structure into something that seems organic, but the structure helps you hold whatever is going on in the circle and helps you take conversation to a deeper place without falling into chaos. You can adapt the structure to what needs to happen in the space. For example, I always use a talking piece at the beginning of a gathering for check-in and at the end for check-out, so that each person has an opportunity to speak without interruption, and then I set it aside in between for less structured conversation.
2. Set guidelines and intentions so that everyone has a sense of their commitment while in circle. Guidelines help us feel more secure in the container because we know how to behave with each other and know what to expect from others. This is a sample of the guidelines and intentions I use when I host Openhearted Writing Circles:
- This is a circle of grace. It is a safe space for all of us, and to make it so, we will treat each other with kindness and grace.
- This is a confidential circle. Nothing that is shared here will leave the circle without the permission of the person speaking.
- This is a sharing circle. Each of us will be invited and encouraged to share questions, wisdom, writing, etc. Nobody will be pushed to share if they don’t feel ready, but everyone will be invited.
- This is a learning circle. We are all here to learn, and so no questions will be considered foolish and no wisdom shared will be silenced. We are all learners together, including the teacher.
- This circle belongs to each of us. Each of us is individually and collectively responsible for how we interact, what we share, and what we get out of this time together.
3. Keep an open mind and suspend judgement. It is important that everyone in the circle feels safe and accepted. This doesn’t mean that any kind of behaviour is acceptable (the guidelines and intentions help with that), but it means that people can share their stories, hurts, and wounds without fearing that they are being judged. Sometimes that will be hard to do (e.g. when someone shares an opinion or worldview that is very different from your own and you’re pretty sure they’re wrong) but it is crucial to extending grace in a meaningful way.
4. Don’t try to fix anyone. As Parker Palmer mentions in the above quote, we need to “avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other”. When others share the struggles they are dealing with, it is human nature to want to help them resolve those struggles, but more often than not, they are sharing in order to feel heard rather than to be fixed. According to Brene Brown in Daring Greatly, these efforts to fix each other are our defenses against vulnerability. We are afraid to see too much vulnerability in each other and in ourselves, and so we try to rush past the brokenness to a place where we feel more comfortable and struggles are resolved. In a Circle of Grace, we welcome vulnerability and we offer support without trying to fix.
5. Encourage people to ask for what they need. While we don’t rush in to fix things for people, we are happy – as hosts and co-creators of the circle – to respond to their requests if they ask for hugs, advice, encouragement, or silence. Create a space where people learn to be comfortable asking for what they need. This will probably take time (most of us have been taught to stifle our needs and not to extend trust to each other too quickly), but it’s worth the investment.
This is part of a document I am creating for people who wish to use Pathfinder in women’s circles and classrooms. It will be available as a free downloadable pdf. To be notified of its release, sign up for my newsletter (on the top right of this page).
If you wish to learn more about hosting circles, I encourage you to read The Circle Way by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea of PeerSpirit, or A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer.
by Heather Plett | Mar 17, 2014 | Uncategorized
Because these are the only three people on the planet who:
Know the sound of our dad’s voice singing “his eye is on the sparrow” from across the farmyard,
Shoveled manure from a pigpen with me,
Knew the combination of rings we had to answer on the party line,
Crawled through attics looking for kittens with me,
Built bale forts and mazes with me and then pulled the bales apart when I panicked and couldn’t find my way out,
Have tasted the sweetness of the berries along Raspberry Lane,
Remember that feeling of nervous responsibility while holding the flashlight and/or ladder while Dad climbed down into the well,
Know the sound of our mother’s voice when she’d sing “Good morning Merry Sunshine, how did you get up there?”
Remember a dog named Curly and a horse named Prince,
Know what it’s like to be woken in the middle of the night to drag waterlogged cows out of flooded pastures,
Remember exactly what Dad’s aftershave smelled like once he was clean and ready for church,
Enjoyed a good chuckle when Mom accidentally brought a marijuana t-shirt home from Holland,
Know the precise way Dad liked his eggs, fried in the cast iron frying pan with crispy edges and a yoke that “would run down your chin”,
Remember the taste of Mom’s freshly baked buns with “Gramma jam”,
And know the ache of grief from losing Dad to a tractor accident and Mom to cancer;
We drove hundreds of miles across the prairies for a short visit to the mountains because one of us has been beaten up by cancer (and other worries) and needed some companionship.
by Heather Plett | Mar 12, 2014 | Uncategorized
“Beliefs that deviate substantially from the general social consensus are especially hard to maintain, requiring usually some kind of sanctuary… in which the deviant belief receives constant affirmation… They provide a kind of incubator for the fragile, nascent beliefs of the new story to develop. There they can grow a bed of roots to sustain them from the onslaughts of the inclement climate of belief outside.” – Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible
All around me, I see people who want to step out of old stories and into something new, but they don’t know where to start and they’re not connected to enough people who believe in this new vision that’s emerging for them. These people are dreaming of a better world, but they face loneliness, isolation, and sometimes even ridicule for daring to voice something that’s outside of the accepted norm.
Some of these people have opted out of the financial economy and choose to live instead in the gift economy. Some of them have moved away from traditional agriculture and are experimenting with more sustainable earth practices. Some have left corporate jobs to teach art-making to troubled teens, poetry to prisoners, or yoga to executives. Some are stepping out of the rat race to live a more intentional and mindful life.
These creative and hopeful people are making music in the town square, planting trees in empty lots, building labyrinths out of garbage, turning ramshackle old buildings into community centres, wrapping yarn around trees and park benches, turning parking lots into parks, making bags out of old clothes, ignoring church policy to bring marginalized people through their doors, gathering people into conversation circles, growing vegetables in barrels, teaching elders to dance, and finding one hundred and one other ways to break from the norm.
All around the world, dreamers are waking up and breathing love and life into their dreams.
Are you one of those people? Or are you still in the dreaming stage and you haven’t yet found the kind of incubator Charles Eisenstein is talking about where your new belief system can grow and flourish?
If you are one of those daring dreamers, let me say first of all that I love and support you. There are no people I’d rather spend my time with than daring dreamers, radical revolutionaries, and openhearted lovers. I want to gather you all into a big circle, look deeply into your eyes, and let you know that you are seen. I SEE YOU. And I love you.
I want to create a space for your dreams to begin to grow. I want to see those tender little seeds find a safe place to dig their roots into the soil and reach their tender sprouts toward the sun.
For this purpose, I’m creating an Idea Incubator, and I welcome you to join me.
What will the Idea Incubator look like?
1. Once a month we’ll have an Idea Incubator call where you can share your ideas and get advice, feedback, and (most importantly) moral support. The format for the call will depend on the number of people who attend. If there is a small number (under 8), we’ll stay in one circle and all participate in the same conversation. If there are more than 8, we’ll break into smaller, self-facilitated groups where ideas can be shared.
2. We’ll also have a private Facebook group that will support the monthly calls and give you a secondary space where you can share your ideas and ask for advice, feedback, and support. This may also be a place where you can build networks and find partners and allies for your work.
Who should participate in the Idea Incubator?
You should participate if you:
- Have an idea (or two or three) that needs an incubator to help it grow.
- Want to support other people’s ideas.
- Believe that the world needs people who will help us find a path into a new “Story of Interbeing” (Charles Eisenstein’s term).
- Have become disillusioned with the systems (industrial, financial, health care, education, government, etc.) that are not serving people as well as they should.
- Are willing to contribute to meaningful conversations in a positive, optimistic, and supportive way.
- Believe that we are all responsible for our world and that each of us can make a positive contribution.
What kind of ideas are welcome?
Any ideas that hold the intention of making a positive contribution to the world, your community, your family, and/or to yourself are welcome. These ideas might look like:
- new art/yoga/dance/music/personal development courses/retreats/workshops/conferences you want to create
- new community projects you want to initiate
- a new business you want to grow, or an old business you want to change
- a conversation you want to host in your community/church/government/youth group/etc.
- a youth initiative you feel your community would benefit from
What’s not welcome?
I hesitate to answer this question, because I want all to feel welcome. However, I feel the need to be clear that this is not a place to promote your business, sell products or services, pour cold water on other people’s ideas, be a doomsday prophet about the state of the world, or proselytize about your belief system. We want positive, engaged, generous people in the circle.
What are our guiding principles?
- This is a circle of trust and grace. It is a safe and supportive space for all of us, and to make it so, we will treat each other with kindness and generosity.
- This is a confidential circle. Nothing that is shared here will leave the circle without the permission of the person speaking.
- This is a sharing circle. Each of us will be invited and encouraged to share ideas, questions, wisdom, resources, etc.
- This is a learning and growth circle. We are all here to learn, and so no questions will be considered foolish and no wisdom shared will be silenced. We are all learners together on a path to a more beautiful world.
- This circle belongs to each of us. Each of us is individually and collectively responsible for how we interact, what we share, and what we get out of this time together.
How will the Idea Incubator calls be facilitated?
This work is will be guided by elements of the following practices:
1. The Circle Way that Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea of PeerSpirit teach (read more about it in The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair)
2. The Circle of Trust approach that Parker Palmer teaches (read more about it in A Hidden Wholeness).
3. The Pro-Action Cafe that is one of the practices of The Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter.
We will start with a collective circle, setting our intentions and doing a short check-in to see who’s on the call. If the numbers warrant, we will then break into smaller groups and each person who has brought an idea to the circle will have a chance to share the idea and get feedback and support. If enough time is available, we may do a second round of small group conversations so that you can get feedback from another small group. We will end back in the larger group. (Note: As this is still in the development phase and the idea has not been fully tested, the format may change once we’ve tried it once or twice.)
How much does it cost?
There is no financial contribution required. The only contribution will be your time, ideas, and supportive feedback to other people’s ideas.
How can I join?
If you are interested in being part of this initiative, fill out the form below. You will then be added to the private Facebook group and you will receive emails notifying you of when the calls will be held and how to join them. Adding your name does not mean that you are obligated to be on the calls, but we do hope that you will choose to contribute when you can.
Questions? Contact me.
“If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.”
