What does it mean to “re-choose?”
Not choose. Re-choose.
When I meditate on the word, here’s what comes up for me from the past week’s conversations with coaching partners, my sister, myself, and my business coach:
Vibe higher
Choose a new perspective …again and again.
Am I enough? Is this enough? What is enough? Have I ever been not enough?
Re-break free
Re-commit
Re-let go
Re-engage
Re-mind and Re-member
In moments of deep disruption and transition in your life, change your narrative: What else can I see about myself? What else can I learn about myself?
In my current life: what am I not seeing? How might the opposite be true of x, y, or z?
In no particular order these words came to me: persistence, ability, flow, life hunger, new energy
What has worked well recently? Why am I not letting this in more often? What makes me so critical towards my own success?
These bullet points happen to be common themes in my work with leaders and high performers all around the world as well. It’s because they relate to human tendencies, social conditions, personal biases, findings we all make in the pursuit of ambition and meaning.
And still…many of the bullets that so easily bubbled up in my mind above didn’t make sense to me when the concepts first entered my life.
And it wasn’t even until Sunday that I fully internalized the importance of re-choosing, when I attended a beautiful Yoga Nidra ceremony with my sister. (Here is a great explanation and scientific backing on the many benefits of Yoga Nidra for high performers).
As I was drifting in and out of consciousness during yesterday’s ceremony, feelings and thoughts of all the things I didn’t do last week came up, all the things I feel a deep sense of commitment towards but that also feel tiresome at the moment, all the presence I didn’t have for my kids in the past week due to a heavy workload, and many new ambitious plans. What felt like guilt, shame, inadequacy, and inability at the beginning of the 90 minutes turned into a deep sense of: “ This is my life. This is me going through growing pains. I don’t need to make myself small in the process of owning and realizing big dreams. I just own them and let them tell me what I need” (paraphrased…I wish clarity would come in fully coherent sentences though :D)
The visualization that came to me in this moment was my 14-year old self that made a lot of big decisions one night in front of my mom’s bedroom mirror. Isn’t it wild what the mind and body brings back to us when we just dare to listen and not manipulate? For the past 20 years this picture was a girl of incredible willpower while carrying a lot of pain and sacrifice, and so much weight. Every time I thought back on it I felt pain, not willpower.
On Sunday, my 34-year old self stood in front of my teenage self and showed her all the badassery, all the persistence, incredible deep power, and self-love I carried in that moment 20 years ago. I never had anyone telling me that I had this love and power when I was younger. It took 20 years for me to fix my current feelings of inadequacy as a founder and mother by fixing my narrative back when I was 14 years old.
Why am I telling you this?
There are moments in our life when we get the chance to re-choose. We get to re-choose who we want to be moving forward. Yes. And in many ways the “not looking back“-idea is liberating.
But as with everything in life: Sometimes it feels even more important to look back and choose how we want to look back at our decisions, our persona, our leadership, our relationship with other and find peace with it, or just closure. If we let physically and mentally go of who we always believed we were (and thus still are most of the time) we have the chance to re-choose a different story. When we choose to be enough and are open to making mistakes (cause we’re human), we also get the chance to feel a sense of deep renewal that feels like coming home again; like we’ve never left. We’ve always been that person but we never looked at ourselves this compassionately. We never allowed ourselves to be perfectly ok and strong in our mistakes. THIS is flow. This is when the idea of “growing through life“ becomes a whole new personal sensation.
It feels like letting go of all the the things we thought we should have done back then, but allow ourselves to human decency to say:
I really tried.
I gave my best.
I still had to learn a lot about this or that.
I am letting go of him/her.
He/She didn’t know better.
I see what happened. And it’s ok.
I am releasing myself (and potentially others) from the pain of the decisions that were made.
The power to re-choose is to learn that we’ve always had everything inside of us, we just didn’t know. We weren’t there yet. We weren’t ready for it.
But we are now.
You got here because you committed to the flow of learning more about ourselves. Sometimes this means we have to look back in oder to move forward. Not in a therapeutic kind of way (even though it may feel like it), but simply because it will support you in how you renew moving forward. What a lot of leaders I work with experience is a new sense of inspiration, a new lightness, new clarity, a heightened awareness of their next steps or life’s purpose, the urge to have important conversations at work or at home (or both), a new definition of personal freedom and personal peace that comes with better boundary setting and honoring personal non-negotiables.
For anyone who is interested in the deeper work of re-choosing old narratives in a new way, can read more about EMDR here. This work can be done in person and virtually with an experienced practitioner. I personally recommend in-person sessions.
Wrapping up:
So much of how we move forward, is how good it feels what we leave behind. So spend some time re-choosing this week. Let me know what comes up for you when you reflect on the word “Re-Choose.
All the love, all the power,
Franzi.
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Weekly Deepfit Discoveries:
Somatic Practice:
Where does your past sit in your body?
Take a deep breath in, hold for 3, and then exhale slooowly. Let a beautiful and challenging memory from the past come alive. Tune it up by about 30%.
Can you locate it in your body? How does it feel? Hot? Cold? Tingly? Numb? Do you feel your whole body or nothing at all?
Stay with it for 2-3 minutes and then ask yourself: What’s my next thought?
This practice helps us to develop personal somatic/self-awareness by connecting it to our thoughts and gives us gradually access to the wisdom our body holds for us. Like I said above: Everything you need (to know) is already inside of us.
PS: The same applies for gut-based decision-making btw. More on that soon.
The new bravespace community event calendar is out:
Sept 19th: DeepFit Dad
Ted, my husband, will be hosting a very exclusive journaling and community event for new, and expecting dads to talk about personal and physical growth, modern parenthood and the role of relatable masculinity for our children. Email Ted at tedgonder(at)gmail.com if you want to be considered for the event. It has a limited number of participants…but I am don’t how where this is at right now. :)
Oct. 17th: Financial self-worth with Khe Hy.
I am so incredibly excited about this one! We’ll be going deep into our relationship with money and debunking the idea of retiring early as a measure of financial freedom. Khe is incredible. We’re grateful and excited to be talking about such an incredibly important topic. You want to check him out.
Nov 21st: Thanksgiving: The role of breaking intergenerational trauma at the thanksgiving table and showing up as your damn best self
Big title. Deep talk. So much love, healing, and growth.
Dec 26th: New Years Reflection and celebrating **ONE YEAR** of bravespace and this incredible new community
We’ll be inviting folks to bring their families, friends, and loved ones to gift each other
the time of reflection, stillness, community, and ecstatic growth for 2022.
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You can always send me an email at franzi(at)venturesome(dot)co if you’ve never attended one of our events and would like to be reminded once the sign-up is live.