I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you

it all starts with how you talk to yourself

After several days of rain, the sun had popped tentatively through the usual river fog, making me want to eat breakfast outside on the patio. It is a ritual for me three seasons of the year — even when just above freezing, some early spring or late fall mornings, and I bundle up just to get to enjoy a breakfast outside. One of the bigger pleasures of life for me. Packing a tray with all good things and taking it outside to savor in the Slow Down feels absolutely like a recreation of my childhood rituals to inhabit favorite quiet outdoor spaces for reading, writing, drawing, snacking. Listening to the birds, the waves, my thoughts.

Arriving at the Slow Down, however, is often a rush ‘n go affair. Ironic, I know. This is when I am acutely aware of just how embedded my own Committee has become in the repeated gestures and expressions of my own body’s way of moving through my day. This morning was one of them.

In my last (first) post, Start Somewhere, start small, I introduced the idea of the Committee — that gallery of selves at work in all of us that can be a crazy awesome powerful gang of a creative force, if we take the time to get to know and listen to the often competing perspectives jockeying for our attention, so we might bring them together in an integrated, symphonic whole. I’ve since recorded (and shared) that post, because whelp, it is long — and because sometimes just listening can be a wonderful way to be.

I also shared the idea of creating your own starting points, however small, to move you forward when your own Committee, perhaps, has been feuding for so long that you’re feeling stuck in a quagmire of dissension. One of those starting points could be to simply tune in and get to know your Committee. To listen. What are they saying? I included several guided notebooking exercises to get you started — and I hope you will — there are more at the end of this post, too. I’d love to hear what you unearth along the way, so be sure to share in the comments. Thanks. 

I’ve been thinking more about my own Committee, realizing that it’s not just in our thoughts and emotions and decision-making processes that our band of troubadours and troublemakers shows up, but in our body’s own habit energies and physical signature, too. In the way we move, quite literally, through space and time. In what we think we can do, and how we regulate ourselves through that — or not. And maybe most importantly, in how our thought patterns and ongoing self-talk becomes stored in the body as energy — to either engage our healthiest bits in awesome ways, or reinforce and activate the troubling messaging of our wounded parts.

The body absorbs the blows of life — including those that are self-inflicted — in a hold and/or release pattern, creating tension and imbalance, and occasional exhilaration, too, if we’re lucky. It can feel impossible to stay flush and familiar with all the ways our bodies become patterned and mapped to do things a certain way — and our brains circuited to create belief systems around the ongoing indoctrinations. Quite often, we are simply unaware. Those thought patterns, beliefs, and unprocessed or in-process emotions — the very conversations of the Committee — become woven, too, into that larger somatic movement map, ever-straining with the ongoing work of compensating for all our human imperfections and vulnerabilities. It starts with each one of us taking responsibility for ourselves in this space, so we can move and act with eyes-wide-open intention. If we aren’t paying attention to how we talk to ourselves — whether out loud or part of that ongoing inner dialogue — it can amplify the blow tenfold. If not properly dealt with, that sense of lack that runs concurrent through all of us can reign terror on both ourselves and those around us. Oof.

On this morning, I’m doing my usual — toasting and buttering two slices of bread from our local market, making some eggs (three in total, from the farm next door, scrambled right in the pan — rustic scrambled, we call them), and putting everything on my favorite breakfast plate, the spackled blue rooster plate from a set my aunt gave me, atop my mom’s old strawberry tray. I fill a big mason jar with water, grab my little packet of supplements from my drawer stash, both of which I add to the tray, along with a cloth napkin, fork and knife.

My mornings are run mostly by Weirdo Spice — who needs routine as well as the natural dopamine that eggs provide to jump start the day. But oh wait! My notebook! I also need to write things down — every morning — draining the brain on paper to help sort things out, lighten my boots, and energize the day with possibility.

Sorrow and Egg join the chorus with Spice Don’t forget to bring your notebook! so I grab not one but two of my trusty composition notebooks currently in use for the Daily Pages and a more general, ongoing figuring. Suddenly, everyone’s chiming in — Elder Sage, Earth Mother that she is, wants to bring the stack of gardening books and planning folder out too, the witch’s datebook. A new pencil for Sorrow, Egg, and Spice. It’s a large stack — but it’s a happy stack — so I put the tray on top of it and head out the door. I realize I need to put on some boots, so Rodeo Clown balances the whole kit and caboodle in the left hand while simultaneously trying to slip on a pair of low rain boots that do not want to be slipped on. 

My dog watches from the deck, as if he’s in cahoots with Lizard, who is starting to sound the alarm. You’re going to drop it! Stop! Danger! She is drowned out. We got this! We do this all the time! Rodeo Clown — the one who doesn’t always know what she’s doing or what’s going to happen, and doesn’t care — tries to reassure her. Watch this! She is actually very capable behind the clown-face. That’s the whole point, right? She gets me into trouble just as often as she gets me out of it.

I start to wiggle into the boot. Balancing now on one foot, the tray on the opposite hand, I am now in too deep. The tray lurches. The mason jar of water teeters and falls, the coffee mug jumps. Thankfully, with all her athleticism, Rodeo Clown is able to somehow put the tray down before all hell breaks loose — but still, water and coffee have spilled all over the tray, the napkin. Spice yells, Nothing broke! I am lucky the water or coffee did not ruin my eggs and toast — or, gasp! my stack of notebooks and other Egg-sanctioned delights.

My Inner Critic explodes. F*ck! Are you f*cking kidding me? What were you thinking? You total idiot. You really are a Rodeo Clown. 

Ouch.

Warrior Girl steps in. Hey, I’m tired, remember? The cat woke me up in the middle of the night. It’s ok. IC retreats, for now. Sorrow can feel the sting of the outburst — she always does. She comforts the dog, who knows that if I’m dropping F bombs, something is amiss — and I have to explain things. Good boy, Basho — Mommy nearly dropped the tray! You didn’t do anything wrong. I love you.

I head back into the kitchen with the tray, leaving the stack of books outside with the dog for him to guard. I refill the water and coffee, wipe up the tray, get a new napkin. Warrior Girl says See? Not a big deal. 

I am over it. Outside, on the patio, the dog settles in next to me. He knows I will share my eggs and toast with him — that third egg is earmarked for him — as I do every morning, and will get pats besides. I scribble this, these words, in my notebook, in between bites of brekkie and scratches. The patio — that I put in myself a few summers ago, Warrior Girl, IC, and Rodeo Clown teaming up to do a damn fine job — should be reminder enough of what my body can handle. She has come through for me in so many ways and has been through so much, that I have no right taking issue with her for stupid things. 

For now, I can enjoy a few moments of quiet repose and nourishment that seems to satisfy most all of me. Lizard and Spice, though, are starting to get antsy, for different reasons, of course. There is so much to do! I need to get up and move! I can be a perpetual motion machine; my morning routine grounds me in the Slow Down with greater presence and intention before all that energy takes over. 

So, I shift to making a quick to-do list as part of my Daily Pages (more on that later). I haven’t yet figured out who the List Maker is on the Committee, but whoever she is, she’s really f*cking good at it. 

Maybe she’s a part of Spice, who has learned the benefits of sticking to a routine, breaking tasks down into smaller next, right steps, and writing things down, always. Lizard too has a hand in it — the Noticer, the one who tallies tasks and worries in her head as if her life depended on it. Part of IC’s you’re not doing enough/you’re not doing it right charm is her ability to get me to make to-do lists of all the undone things — errands, ideas, and projects, fully-conceptualized but half-finished — zillions of them in different categories. There are quite a few who join forces in the list-making space.

List Maker could be a stand alone, given her presence on the Committee, and how much I rely on her. She is the systems-oriented organizer, the one who makes it possible, really, giving shape to the endless stream of consciousness, thoughts, and brainstorms that the rest of the gang generates. Egg and Spice come up with ideas all day long. Rodeo Clown, too, but mostly in-the-moment and not-so-great ones. List Maker can sort through them, put the good ones into action, making tangible and concrete the more ethereal, ephemeral, airy part of me. She’s the one who organized the neighborhood kids when I was still a kid myself, and later, as an adult, infused my community organizing and program directing spaces with some serious can-do verve. Clearly housed in my prefrontal cortex, List Maker reassures Lizard and the rest that we will get shit done — and that it will be done well — even if some things fall by the wayside, ha.

I learned from my mother, after all, who was the consummate list maker — the one who calculated her car’s mpg for each and every gas fill up, writing them on receipts she saved in files I went through after she died with a kind of awe and respect for the part of her that kept at it so consistently. I do not have that in me. Mostly, though, I will be eternally grateful for how she took on the often bone-crushing estate and end-of-life planning with her usual organizational finesse, making her final chapter so much less of a shitshow for those of us tasked with managing the business side of her death. It is hard enough, holy sh*t. I will be eternally grateful. Thank you, Mom.

Yes, it’s official — I think I just welcomed List Maker to the Committee, haha. I am already feeling where and when she shows up — and realizing she’s been a presence for a long time.

Just this afternoon, I was securing field fencing to T-posts with clips as part of a larger fence project happening at my place this spring, when, ta-da!, List Maker showed up to help. The clips, with all their twists and turns, were in a tangle in the bowl, making it nearly impossible to extract one of the wiry bodies out of the mosh pit without bringing along the whole clump. I often hand off tangled things to other people to untangle, Here. You do it. Not only did I have to figure out how to secure the clips with my trusty screwdriver (thank you, YouTube), but I also had to trust my hand strength and focus to just get it done. I had to summon that part of me that could calmly and patiently work those little clip bodies out of the mess without nary a drop of stress. Learn a new thing. Not get frustrated. Get it done efficiently — and well. Level-headed List Maker to the rescue! She must have helped with the patio installs, too. And — it may very well be List Maker who washes the dishes when I don’t feel like it. The one I give a shout out to in the morning when I come downstairs and there are no — none! — dishes in the sink. Did I do the dishes last night? Whoever did them, I love that part of me! Thank you!

“The most terrifying thing to do is to accept oneself completely.” - Carl Jung

It is indeed good practice to show all your different parts and selves on your Committee some love and appreciation, and as much compassion, too, as you can muster. Especially when you have to do something challenging or you’re in a dark spot — whether temporarily, and you’ve just blown up at yourself over something stupid, or for a longer stretch, when the sheer weight of the world feels like it’s too much — bringing awareness to how you’re talking to yourself can enable you to make some really important, consequential shifts. Having the internal conversations — sometimes out loud — can help you retrain yourself to recognize and name the very things you’re grappling with, so you can be more appreciative of how hard you’re fighting through your days, and more aware of what you might need to feel better — or simply feel what you need to feel. This can enable you to welcome in more healing energy into your day to day. 

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit” - E.E. Cummings

Cultivating your mind with care and strengthening connections with different emotional pathways can be a powerful one-two punch for feeling more aligned and integrated. Here are a few exercises to get you started —

❀ Try this. No, really. As soon as you get up in the morning, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. This forces your brain to grapple with a new neural pathway, which can be so very good for the aging brain! Exercise your elasticity! Then, look at yourself in the mirror — into your eyes — and say I love you, ten times over. It might feel a little awkward the first time you do it. It certainly was for me! I used all the jokey voices I could muster, as if it wasn’t really me saying it, or maybe just my entire Committee having a go at it. It was not the usual way I talked to myself — which is exactly why I was doing it. It got less awkward the more I did it.

I encourage you to stick with it! We aren’t used to being so loving and kind to ourselves, after all. But it’s such good practice! The non-dominant hand teeth-brushing activates your neural plasticity so that you can create a new pathway. As you tell yourself I love you ten times in the mirror as you look into your eyes, you are essentially talking to your subconscious, taking it by the hand along that new pathway as you build a new, more compassionate connection with yourself.

To finish, take some strong, deep, exaggerated breaths — around 25 of them — to bring some oxygen into the lungs, to activate and energize this new space. Keep at it. With a little practice, you can turn those new pathways into well-worn desire paths — and the act of outwardly showing yourself some love might not feel so icky.

I frequently talk to myself — and have tried to do so with much greater appreciation for all I am and all I am dealing with on any given day. And, as a sidebar, I also live alone, so there’s usually no one around to call me out. Ah, hey, Liz — who the F are you talking to anyway? The dog and cat might raise their eyebrows every now and again, but mostly they are used to it.

I don’t think I would be able to carry the weight of this world with any semblance of grace if I couldn’t talk about all the things with all the parts of me — and offer some solace and encouragement to the parts who are struggling the most besides.

❀ Notebooking work: Pay attention to the thought patterns at work in your headspace — and how they might be showing up in your body. Take note of how you’re moving through your day, and how your body’s particular physical signature might reflect your Committee. Who’s at work there? Who might you be noticing for the first time? Unpack a recent physical mishap or mini-triumph. Who might need a little more appreciation, or compassion? Who’s working together in your morning routine? In your sleep patterns? How might you change things to optimize it for yourself?

❀  Go back to those thought patterns. What negative thought patterns are you noticing? Committee work can strengthen your ability to shift perspective and break free from patterns of negative or unhealthy spirals of thinking. We do get to choose whether those neural pathways will be paved in gold or barbed wire. We can rewire our brains through our self-talk alone, particularly by addressing the repetitive, more automatic patterns of negativity we most likely have normalized over the years as just part of our self-deprecating, loser selves. Haha, joking! But seriously — rewiring your brain to build new pathways for greater acceptance and possibility is ongoing work. Keep reminding yourself who the F you are and what you’re made of. Remember that inner SuperHero? Keep them close. 

We all overload the metaphoric tray sometimes and create inadvertent chaos for ourselves. You are an imperfect human being. Show yourself some grace. Be kind to yourself most of all. 

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” - Mark Twain

We know that greater compassion for self can radiate outward, towards others. Imagine what would happen if we all turned that into a daily practice for ourselves — how we might shift the cosmic energy of the collective. So — start by showing yourself to yourself. A brave space for some. And don’t forget — I love you. I’m listening. See what happens.