I'm inspired by how a tennis coach taught a woman who had never played tennis before. He put the racket in her hand but asked her at first not to even try to hit the ball. He then shot a few balls in her direction and told her just to get used to the feeling of having balls coming at her.
Once she was comfortable with balls flying past her face, he asked her if she could notice which direction the ball was spinning. After a few more shots she could correctly identify whether it was spinning left or right.
Then the most incredible thing happened. Spontaneously, she lifted her racket and hit the ball without even trying. It was an excellent shot.
He had told her nothing about what to do with the racket, only what to do with her eyes. Her body somehow as if by magic knew what to do automatically once her eyes had been calibrated to what to notice.
This is how my partner David and I are going to work with a group of men and non-binary souls for the last 100 days of 2022.
You can't over-commit your way out of over-commitment.
Does it take effort to become effortless? David asked this a few weeks ago and it’s been rattling around in my brain ever since. I wanted to say “yes, of course!” but every time I wanted to lean into the truth of it an angry part of me said, “NO!”
I finally realized that that only was is – you must surrender into effortlessness. It’s a process of dissolving.
Any attempt to clutch effortlessness will leave you with a fist full of sand. It’s like efforting hard to sleep. The harder you try the more it eludes you. So here’s what we’re going to do…
If you say yes to our adventure which we’re calling Dragonfly, we will mail you a candle. If you commit to this, you commit to two simple things. To the angry part of you that screams “NO,” these two things seem like they shouldn't be enough, but they are.
1. Let this work work you instead of you trying to work it. Let the process proceed at its own pace.
2. Burn the candle at the end of the 100 days, which is December 31.
That's it. Burn the candle.
We will be sending out the first sound meditation to start the neural rewiring in three days' time. It's five minutes and can be used daily or a few times a week to start to shift your awareness so that you're no longer saying yes to things you're actually a no to.
If this rings your bell, do get in touch with any questions. Just hit reply to this message. Our goal is to get you saying yes to your real, actual, juicy JUICY yeses so you can feel fully alive as yourself.
Happy Sunday from almost-Fall-but-still-humid Austin, Texas,
Cris and David