Episode 39 - Lean Into It
Episode 39 - Lean Into It
Hello friends!
Welcome to the Seasons of Joy Podcast.
This is episode 39 - Lean Into It
Before I get started, I would like to invite you to join my Seasons of Joy Community Facebook group. I will be going live this Thursday, December 8th, at 12 pm MST. I am going to be doing a workshop called “Loving Your Body Through the Holidays.” Each month I go live twice. The first call is a workshop on a monthly topic and the second call is a follow up call with open coaching. I would love to have you join me. All you have to do is join and you can watch the calls live or the replays later. The link to join is in my show notes.
I would also love to come and speak to your group. I love sharing the coaching tools that I have learned and how they can help you. I also love teaching others how to create the life they love through living with intention. If you are interested just reach out to me via social media or email. Again, all links are found in the show notes.
Years ago, my husband and I decided to go up into the foothills of the mountains just above our house to take some family pictures. This was at a time when you didn’t really hire a family photographer. We didn’t have cameras on our phones either. We just had a basic point and shoot camera. It did allow for a 5-10 second timer delay before it would snap a picture. So we decided we would set up our camera on a bucket and get the family in the right spot and positioned for the photo without my husband. Then my husband would push the button and run and get in the photo before the timed delay went off. I am sure many of you have done something similar even today and can picture this in your minds. Even still, this process rarely goes as planned the first time.
At the time, we had 4 of our 5 children and they ranged from about 1 to 8 years old. It was fall and there were beautiful autumn leaves all over the ground. Everything was going according to our plan. We all had our coordinating outfits on. We were sitting all together in a little group facing the camera. My husband had the camera set at just the right angle to get us all in the photo perfectly centered with a backdrop of trees behind us. After he pushed the button, he began to hustle over to get in his designated spot but just as we went to go he accidentally kicked the bucket. It didn't knock the camera over but it changed the angle of the shot. I just remember saying, as my husband sat down, “lean right”! So we all leaned to the right and then “click” went the camera. And you know what? This is still one of my very favorite family photos. We are all smiling as we are looking into the camera while falling sideways. My little one year old, who is sitting in my lap, is looking in the direction we are falling with an expression of curious confusion on his little chubby face. It is priceless. It’s candid. It’s real.
We, as humans, try so hard to get things just right.
Just like my husband and I did when we set up our family photo op.
We had a plan of how we wanted our photo taking adventure to go and then life happened.
We do this with our relationships too. We have an idea of how they should look and how others should speak and behave.
We even have beliefs around certain emotions we should or should not feel.
All of this can amplify for us around special occasions and during the holiday season.
We have traditions and expectations of how we want things to look and sometimes even believe how they should be.
John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
When we resist the messiness of this human experience we are living, we miss out.
I am not suggesting that we just throw up our hands and not try for the things we want or desire. What I am talking about is how we choose to respond when things don’t go our way.
There is a popular phrase going around that says, “just lean into it.” I say it all the time but let’s explore what this even means.
I decided to google this phrase for fun and this is what I found.
It says the phrase “lean into it” means:
“To embrace; to experience fully or respond to wholeheartedly. To take on or embrace something difficult or unpleasant, usually through determination or perseverance; to find a way to benefit from, or alleviate the harm of, risk, uncertainty and difficult situations.”
Just as my family “leaned into” the photo taking experience, we can do this within our individual life experiences.
What would your life experience be like if you could “lean into it?”
I teach what is called the 50/50 concept. What this means is that life is meant to be 50% positive and 50% negative. We will face this contrast during our human experience on earth. This opposition creates opportunities to learn, grow, and become more of who we want to be and who we were meant to be if we allow it. I believe that is why we are here. However, when we resist this reality, our experience is no longer 50/50 but rather something like 60/40 or 70/30. Having the belief that we should be happy all of the time or that we should not experience negative emotion, actually creates more negative emotion in our lives. However, by leaning into and embracing this contrast of life, we can actually benefit from it and we can create space for positive emotion.
This reminds me of a funny story from years ago. I was picking up my youngest daughter from preschool. If you know her, you know how full of life and light she is. When she was little she was a bundle of energy. Usually when I would pick her up from school, she would come running to the car smiling and waving, eager to tell me about her day. Well, this particular day she wasn’t running or smiling. She slowly walked to the car with her head hanging down. It was easy to see that she had had a bad day. As she climbed into the car, I asked her how her day was and she replied, “not very good.” I asked her what was wrong. She informed me that she had gotten in trouble that day and had to go stand in the hallway for a time out. She had had trouble following the rules that day. She was devastated. I asked her if there was something we could do to cheer her up. I made a few suggestions and even suggested that maybe we could make some cookies when we got home. She looked up at me with the saddest eyes and said, “Nothing will ever make me feel better.”
When we got home, I carried her in and gave her a hug and then sat her on a stool next to me as I began working in the kitchen making cookies. She sat there so sadly. Some time had passed and she quietly got down off the stool and wandered into her room. Pretty soon I could hear her playing with her dolls. I could hear by the sound of her voice that she was becoming happier. A little while later, she came into the kitchen playing and talking with her little dolls as if nothing bad had even happened. It appeared that she had totally forgotten her sadness. As she came close to me, she stopped right in her tracks and looked up at me with this happy yet surprised look on her face. She said, “Mom, I’m happy!” It was as if it had just donned on her that yes she really could be happy again.
I know this is a simple, silly story but there is a great lessons there. It is this. We are meant to experience all emotions. We will experience things like sadness, disappointment, and grief AND we will also experience peace, love, and happiness. All of this makes up joy. Without the bitter, we would not know the sweet. My little Jenna experienced joy because of the contrast. She had to allow herself to feel sad so she could really feel the happiness.
As we lean into the uncomfortable emotions as they come, we allow ourselves to feel them knowing that they are what move us through our experiences.
This got me thinking about another experience from years ago. My mom gave me a little nativity when I was first married. It isn’t anything fancy and it would be considered cheesy by today's standards. But as a young mother, it was one of the only nativities that I owned and I adored it. It has a little wooden stable and little plastic figurines. Mary, Joseph, a cow, a donkey, shepherds, sheep, wise men, a manger, and a little baby Jesus.
Each Christmas, I would proudly set that little nativity in just the right place in just the right way. The shepherds had to be on a certain side with wise men on the other. The donkey was placed inside the stable behind Mary and Joseph. The cow was in the back behind the wise men and the sheep were alongside the shepherds. And baby Jesus was in the center of it all laying on the little manger. I remember telling my children to not touch the nativity and that it was special. But, as kids will do, my little kids didn’t always listen. So, I would constantly find the nativity in all kinds of configurations. None of the figurines would be in their “right” place. I would get after my kids and then put the scene back to its proper arrangement.
The cycle repeated itself over and over. Until one day, baby Jesus was missing. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was so mad. This was my special nativity and now baby Jesus was lost. I scolded my kids for losing baby Jesus. At this point in my life, to be honest, I probably yelled at them. I was so mad that they had lost baby Jesus. I looked everywhere, under coaches and in their rooms. I couldn’t find baby Jesus anywhere. I was sad and mad and feeling sorry for myself. Then I had a thought like “You are missing Jesus this Christmas.” The irony of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I was so busy reacting to my anger and needing things to be a certain way, I was missing the point of Christmas. It wasn’t about having a perfectly staged nativity scene. I wasn’t treating my children like the Savior would. I wasn’t creating an atmosphere of love and compassion. I had removed Christ from my Christmas.
By leaning into the messiness of life, we can learn and grow from it. It wasn’t the rearranged nativity scene or the missing Jesus that was causing my anger and frustration. It was my belief that it needed to be a certain way. That my little children need to be a certain way. This was keeping me stuck and prevented me from creating more of what I really wanted, which was to feel the spirit of Christmas. I was creating the opposite of what the Savior taught.
Ever since that day, I love to see my nativity played with. I love seeing the different arrangements. I love seeing my grandchildren play with that same nativity. I love telling them about my mom and about baby Jesus. Telling them about the characteristics of Jesus - compassion, forgiveness, charity, grace, and love - and how we can be like Him.
My invitation to you this Christmas season is to “lean into it.” Embrace the holidays for what they are, messy and beautiful. There are going to be amazing moments and stressful moments and that doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. “Lean into” the emotions that may feel uncomfortable knowing that nothing has gone wrong. Emotions are just chemical vibrations in your body that occur because you are thinking sentences in your brain. Your body knows exactly what to do with them and they will help you move through the experiences of your life if you will just “lean into” them. This is all part of the amazing thing called life.
I wish you all the best this holiday season.
Thank you for listening and have a joyful week!
Click on the link below to learn more about Seasons Coaching and the Seasons of Joy Community Facebook Group.
To contact me about speaking to your group or business, email me at jill@season-coaching.com.
