Written by Louise Marra, Programme Director – The NZ Leadership Programme
How we act now makes a huge difference to whether humanity can use this time to evolve. I passionately believe this is an opportunity for humanity to evolve together and create a connective tissue that enables us to collaborate and grow a collective body for our challenges to ground and create a new future we can hear wants to emerge.
Below are some steps to work at some depth with yourself during this time so as you evolve and release more of your potential, vitality and purpose into the world.
1. Become contemplative – this age old art is an amazing way of living, and leading and loving your life into its full expression. It is a life of inquiry where we have a layer in our life of asking the deeper questions, and of tracking our life, harvesting the learnings and expanding into our wholeness. There are some vital keys for becoming a contemplative:
a. Gentleness and self-compassion – you will never evolve into your fullness if you are trying to hunt yourself down, fix yourself or prove yourself. Parts of us will always hide if this is our approach. We need to treat ourselves with such care that all our past hurts and wounds can arrive for integration – it is these that get in the way of our full potential if they stay stored in our nervous system.
b. See everything as life trying to grow you – this attitude allows are friend making quality to come into our lives with all its small and big events, rather than seeing everything as an enemy – which distances ourselves from our experience. It enables us to learn what we need to grow.
c. Harvesting pauses – we need to harvest pauses in our life. They are especially important when we are full and busy. Learn to stop in the middle of the stress. As we learn to pause and let natural pauses find us a spaciousness opens up. Pausing is a dedication and an art.
d. Embrace the art of questions – some questions you need to walk with for some time, some times it is a day, sometimes a year. Write down your questions for you and keep updating them.
2. Build your immune system – get outside, start to observe and relate to nature, ground your body; rest, sleep and meditate. Exercise but not in excess, get out in the sunshine to increase your vitamin D. Eat healthy fresh foods and nourishing warm foods to support your body and consider supplements like vitamin C, probiotics and minerals such as magnesium for the nervous system. Practice relaxation – it really supports the immune system. There are many sites offering information on immune system, take a look.
3. Grow your connection to others – physical distance does not mean emotional distance. We have been physically close and emotionally distant, see if you can reverse this as we are physically isolating. See if you can practice emotional connection and vulnerability more in this. Set up online times with friends and whanau to share and feel together the shock, fear, potential anger and frustration, uncertainty and also the silver linings together. So we all build the relatedness we need to as humanity. Set up a regular circle of support for those you know and love to mutually support each other. It is important to be aware of when you also need to reach out to trusted peers or whanau for support, share own vulnerabilities and give peers and whanau the opportunity to do the same. This is a vulnerable time for all, reciprocity is important as then we are in it together.
4. Grow your connection to your soul and the essential – this is a time of slow down, a pause, see if you can use it as a time to enrich your connection with yourself. Our soul has needs also and wants to connect with us more deeply. Write, journal, draw, dance, inquire and contemplate your deeper nature and how it wants to live its full potential in your life. Dream and imagine. Find what is joyful for you, what brings you joy, research and give some things a go you wouldn’t normally. Connect with nature, a tree, a rock, a place and let yourself feel your natural connection with the environment, it nourishes you. Meditate and practice presencing yourself often, so that you come into congruence with yourself and keep digesting moment by moment.
5. Connect to your body and notice your nervous system – Pay attention to what you’re feeling in your body and how you’re reacting to things. Notice your body and the space around it – allow your body to move or shake off physical sensations. Keep bringing yourself back into the moment and see how you feel in your body, and what is around you – it helps us ground where we are and realise in this moment and in this place we are safe right now.
6. Integrate your regressive patterns – much of what comes up in us in these times, when much of the unconscious is being made conscious, is from the past. Our fears are often from our past lack of safety and our retractions from our lack of true love and connection. See if you can use this time to revisit your past and its hurts and wounds and the adaptations you intelligently made but can be healed and integrated now. So much is about feeling what couldn’t be felt and became overwhelm. Also consider supporting yourself in this, many therapists and coaches are doing online and we have access to many to help including us in The NZ Leadership Programme team and also throughout the country. Healing allows so much more vitality and radiance into our system. Healing is feeling, and you can do that feeling in small doses, coming into your essential and then back into the feeling – titrating your experience so it doesn’t overwhelm. Inner selfies have so many layers and are so vital for this.
7. Help your wider community – we all have something to bring, something to offer, something to ground for the whole. Think of the small things you can do that are in line with your gifts and purpose. Don’t do this to fill your own gap and fear of stopping. Do it to bring yourself more fully into your purpose.
8. Evolve – what is it our finest moment for - this such a unique time and as such we can all evolve into our highest potential and not stay in patterns that keep us from our full vitality – as individuals and as humanity. Humanity needs to evolve and this time is an amazing opportunity to relook at our relationships to each other, other beings, and the living planet. Let’s not create the future from the past or fear, let’s reimagine collectively what now can change. We would not have foreseen that this much could change this quickly. What is it our finest moment for? In Aotearoa let’s look back to the treaty partnership and partner with tangata whenua as tangata tiriti under the principles of partnership, protection and participation. Also working with the deep values of whanaungatanga – a relationship to the human and non-human world and kaitiakitanga – guardianship. How does NZ take a leap and co-create a different future based on the treaty – an awesome challenge for us. Consider your own, your organisation and your community potential in evolving right now – dream what is possible as when everything is uncertain, leadership can ground a new future far more easily .
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE Louise’s: HEALING COLLECTIVELY TO BUILD A NEW WORLD