But…“I Don’t Have the Capacity”: Recovering from People Pleasing
For The Worldbuilders Ep. 034
Hello fellow Worldbuilder,
I’m back again with another data transmission. The one above comes in the container of a podcast, the other comes in the container of a dream. Last night I was visited by a Condor. They weren’t flying above my head inviting me to bow at the majesty of their wingspan, no. They were on foot, not trying to attack, but patiently following me. This went on for a while as if they were only trying to whisper in my ear. As if they were simply trying to deliver a message but afraid of letting them get too close I kept moving. I kept moving. I kept moving. I woke up wishing I had the courage to stand still. What were they trying to tell me?
What have the texture of your dreams felt like lately?
Have they been calling you to take up space in the sky? Have they been calling you home? Lately I have found myself missing my home in Virginia, missing writing inside Dawn’s crack, missing the spaciousness it afforded, missing the soil encoded with my ancestors song. I’m unsure what to do about this and I’m unsure if I have the capacity to move again but next time I’ll stay still enough to listen. Speaking of capacity…
In this episode we:
Remind ourselves the new year doesn’t start until spring
Refuse the capitalist impulse to hit the ground running and meet ourselves with grace, compassion, stillness instead
Talk about all we have to unlearn to return
Remember our spells only work when we’re in deep alignment with the work
Consider how orienting around external validation becomes a commitment to working in deep misalignment
Strategy: Reflect on how tending to our creative curiosity and nurturing our creative desire might actually expand and renew our sense of felt possibility in this season. How might we look at our weekly to-do lists and start slowly removing things that might be tasks solely tied external validation and people pleasing so we might expand and deepen our capacity to garden our creative ecosystem? Which, by the way, includes our community and coalition building efforts. This is the garden that feeds us and replenishes our capacity instead of depleting it.
Tip: Register for the Worldbuilding Workshop this Tuesday at 12PM EST to get support on this reflecting. In this workshop we’ll learn how we determine what tasks are in our “Zone of Validation” vs. our “Zone of Desire”. We’ll use the Element X Quadrant Worksheet to help us locate our “Zone of Desire”, a place for generating income in alignment with our pleasure, curiosity and internal validation instead of external validation.
Remember: We can learn to trust ourselves to protect our capacity by honoring our boundaries (work and otherwise). We can learn to trust ourselves to live and dream inside the framework of our ease and capacity. We remember collective liberation will never require us to step outside of that framework for unsustainable periods of time. We can trust ourselves to recalibrate and return when we step outside the framework of liberation. Returning home, again and again and again.
Let’s be in the practice of rehearsing the worlds we’re building. Yeah?
I can’t wait to see you on Tuesday.
With care,
Ayana