What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Free Article
Take a Break
There are so many self-improvement books, programs, and teachers. Motivational speakers and authors are everywhere — at conferences, on television, in magazines and newspapers. Companies demand that their employees change with every performance evaluation and project assignment. And whether at New Year’s or any other time, we struggle in a constant effort to break old habits and form new ones.
In short, we’re inundated with endless messages about how we’re not right and not enough, how we need to be better — need to be “improved.”
The quest to be better becomes exhausting.
Stop. Take a break.
And consider this question: What if you already are, and always have been, whole, enough, and complete?
Your quest for self-improvement isn’t a bad thing. It’s great that you want to be more and better than you believe you are.
But that assumes that there’s something to be improved, something that needs to be fixed.
Is that true?
Give yourself a break from it all. Stop trying so hard. Take a vacation from the effort and allow yourself to simply be where you are, to simply feel what you feel.
One client noticed that she had 18 running feet (four shelves, each four and a half feet long) of self-help books she'd collected and read in just the last two years. She said, “Each morning, I see these books, their titles, and the unspoken thought that I continuously need improvement.”
What a weight of expectation and implied wrongness! In the process of redecorating her bedroom, she wrote, “I decided to move this bookcase into the family room — and I will fill the shelves with my treasures. The books will stay in boxes for the time being. I can just be me, take a break from self-improvement books, and relax.”
She even suggested she might read a trashy novel instead. That was music to my ears — a real expression of freedom, and of taking a break.
What does taking a break mean to you? Here are some possibilities to play with.
Play hooky
Take an unscheduled day off from work.
You may not have that freedom — I know many corporate environments are extremely stressed right now. So if a whole day isn’t possible, then sneak out for your lunch hour.
If neither are possible, at least claim a weekend for your own. And please, be real about what is and isn’t possible. Is it really true that you can’t take a day off — or a lunch-hour break?
Be frivolous!
Go somewhere and do something unexpected.
Depending on whether you have a day, a whole weekend, or just your lunch hour, your range of options will vary.
For instance, over the 4th of July weekend my wife Ellen took me to Northern California and my beloved redwoods for a combined anniversary and birthday gift. It seemed like a daunting effort to stop our usual work momentum and take the break. But sitting in our cozy room, enjoying breakfast by the fire and a stunning view of the Pacific coast, we deeply relaxed and realized the great and essential gift of changing our usual perspective.
A little closer to home, a client wrote of the joy of simply getting away from her computer for a few moments in the garden.
Where can you go that’s personally meaningful — and completely luxurious? It could be a day spa or a hiking trip, but whatever it is, go for simple, pure fun and relaxation.
Rest in Silence
Another of my clients has been digging through some particularly turbulent personal stuff. While it’s certainly stuff that needs to be brought into the light of day, I suggested that she hold it a bit more lightly.
She is, as you may also be, an over-achiever. She takes her commitments and responsibilities, to herself as well as to others, very seriously — maybe a tad too seriously. What would it be like if she could take a break? Rest, I suggested; rest in Silence, without trying and working so hard.
She was dubious, of course. And yet she reported a few days later that in relaxing her determination to “do it right,” she found a greater sense of spaciousness than she had with all her concentrated effort.
Put down the burden
Whether it’s a load of self-improvement books looming over you, or your internal determination to create change and become better, put down the weight of it.
Give yourself a break. Allow yourself the time, space, and freedom to just be, without trying to accomplish or change anything.
Change doesn’t happen through dogged determination and enforced discipline. In fact, the less effort you make, the more you’re likely to experience shifts in perspective, shifts in feelings, shifts in experience — shifts in being. Just observing — and being with what you notice — is enough to keep the process moving.
So take a break. What would it be like to just experience your own life, without trying to change anything?
“Once in a while, you have to take a break and visit yourself.” Audrey Giorgi (No reference available for who this person is — anyone know? The quote is too perfect to pass up!)
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