Sometimes the people who elicit trust most are teddy bears: soft, predictable, comfy.
But sometimes they’re Dyana Valentine.
Dyana is a lion-lamb. She’s fierce, energetic, and untamed, but just as capably gentle when her lion-sized heart directs her to be. My first introduction to her was this video – an excellent example of her character and worth the 2.5-minute watch.
I worked with Dyana last summer as a coaching client and a client of Woke Up Knowing, and have since come to know her as friend. I’ve been struck the whole way through by her fierce love of people, her willingness to risk for the sake of saying YES! to the universe, and her uncanny gift to see and call out people’s power.
Trust gets grown in SO many ways, and I love the break-the-mold ways that Dyana does it (and has done it for me).
Dyana joins us today for a 20-minute interview about where the rabbit trails of her calling are taking her (“calling” is the theme here this week). My favorite segment begins at the 12-minute mark.
Check out Woke Up Knowinghere (in the sidebar you can listen to a podcast of a Woke Up Knowing Experience if you want to get a feel for how they sometimes go), Dyana’s coaching businesshere, and the live, immersion experience of Woke Up Knowinghere.
Whether or not you’re religious, chances are you’ve been exposed to the idea of calling – this notion that someone or something or some myriad of circumstances have singled you out for a purpose: a lifestyle, a job, a relationship, a vocation.
Sometimes this idea sparks joy or curiosity and is a source of great strength through the rough and tumble that every life, no matter what our conscious sense of calling, contains.
But more often than not, and particularly when it’s experienced unconsciously, “calling” becomes a deadening force at the roots of our trust.
Because if I believe I’m called to something but I don’t know what that is, or if I have a sense of it, but continue month after month, year after year, to see mostly only fog in its regard, I can begin to feel like I’m failing. Like I’m missing my own boat. Like there’s this thing I’m supposed to know and do already, and everyone else who so beamingly figures theirs out has passed me up.
Even when we aren’t thinking about calling, though, or when we actively eschew the idea, human nature itself comes into play, with the hopes and expectations of parents or other respected adults (or society itself!) getting deep inside our bones, shaping how we feel about ourselves by how well (or how poorly) we’re measuring up to our internalized views of their wishes for us.
“Being called” comes in many forms, and often discourages us greatly.
Shifting “Calling” Trustward
But what if we set aside our deadening views of calling, consciously, and sought out some alternative?
What if instead of seeing calling as a riddle to decode, or a treasure to hunt, or a train to try to catch, we understand it as a conversation we’re uniquely positioned and feeling drawn to join?
Conversations – at least like the ones I have in mind – are less about getting something “right” than about being present, participating. Shaping.
And WOW! – can we shape them! Individual people are changing the conversational landscape on so many fronts! – truly, are changing our world.
Conversations can be with institutions. They can be with industries. They can be with cultural norms or nature itself. They can be private, or part of the public domain.
And they can and do take us (as individuals, as groups, as a planet) to new and never-known-before places.
Wherever your thoughts, your impressions, your feelings, your knowledge, your stories intersect and have “dialogue” with another’s, you’re in conversation. Conversations might be literal, but might just as well involve other forms of action (writing, making art, coaching, organizing, falconing…).
What sets “regular” conversation apart from the kind that’s a calling?
I’m still parsing the answer to this one, but “called” conversation seems to be what emerges when we listen to our lives deeply, and over a length of time.
It emerges when we listen past the surfaces to what we wouldn’t necessarily put on a resume: to the questions we ask ourselves in the night; to the ecstasies and heartaches we know in love; to the longings and scratchiness we experience and the satisfactions that we’ve known.
It emerges when we listen to what our lived experience of our resume (rather than the resume itself) says to us about what we value, what we despise, what we know, deep down, we want.
When we listen to our lives like this, we begin collecting impressions that form around ideas. From these impressions, we begin to recognize patterns of deep and deepening conviction. And we begin to see holes in “conversations” (e.g. the world of art; the justice system; power structures; the lives of the kids in our care) that only we, with our particular perspective, can fill, and that we’re drawn to fill.
These holes are our invitation to step up and in. These, I suggest, are the beckoning, enlivening voice of our call.
And they are as varied as there are people.
But I don’t see any holes!
Some people seem conscious of a calling from early on. But the majority of us come to our callings over time. The epiphanies we occasionally experience and the “writings in the sky” come not in vacuums, from out of no where, but after periods (months, years, decades…lifetimes…?) of built-up impressions.
They come when the time for them is ripe.
So if you haven’t felt one – if there isn’t a conversation you feel uniquely positioned and drawn to join – maybe you’re somewhere in the midst of a listening season.
Maybe you haven’t been listening, and your boldest, most courageous move right now would be to stop, as often as you can, to do so.
And maybe you have seen such a hole. Maybe it’s been in your line of sight for some time but you haven’t been ready to…see it.
Because with all my heart, I sense that the more that we listen to our lives (<--this poem is fantastic), and the more that we cultivate the trust required to see and step into our called conversations, the more all of us will thrive.
What conversation, if any, do you feel called to join? What’s freeing you to do it, or, conversely, what obstacles feel in your way? I’d love to hear your answers!
College was a fan for every idealistic flame in my body. I loved it. I left there eager to roll up my sleeves and take my theories to the streets. My husband felt this, too (we married at 20).
With great delight we took jobs at a small non-profit after graduation, doing community development in low-income areas of Fresno. We lived in one of the neighborhoods where we worked, and voluntarily ate beans and rice for most meals, shared a car between us, and netted 14K combined. To our hearts and minds, life couldn’t get more romantic.
I loved some aspects of that season. Topmost was the chance (I’m an adult! I’m out of school!) to go whole-hog on putting my values to action.
What I didn’t love, however, was the wistfulness I felt sometimes about living more comfortably, and the twinges of condescension and jealousy, both, that I felt around friends whose values and lifestyles were different from mine. These feelings became a weight that I carried, goading me to keep working at my all-out life for fear of a) losing sight of my ideals and b) being judged by others in my field (i.e. people trying to live simply and do social good) in the same way I judged those outside of it.
That was 1998, and since then American culture – at least huge swaths of it – has shifted dramatically toward more sustainable living. “Living simply” has become much more mainstream, and the notion of spending less on “things” and giving values-based thought to the stuff we DO buy a given in many subcultures.
The nature of human egos hasn’t changed, though. And I’d venture to say that the same ego-weight I carried as a young adult is weight many of us carry to this day.
Whether you live in poverty or material wealth, chances are that your efforts at living well in a values-based way – whether that means giving time or money to those in need, eating raw or meatless, riding bikes instead of cars, maintaining a spiritual practice, shopping used rather than new – whatever values-based living means to you, you probably know its joys as well as its shadows.
And as I think on this, I want to call out an entire system that our egos bolster every time they turn our joys to weights – a system that’s all about rights and wrongs and grades when it comes to living well – or even just when it comes to defining what living well means (we all have our ideals, even if we don’t live them out, and are that skilled as to turn the mere existence of them heavy).
That system is a zero sum game. It rests on the fact that there will always be people “failing”, always people “failing more than me” and always people doing far better. It’s inherently stressful, and fills us with shame when it isn’t loading us up with the weight of pride and condescension or, conversely, the fear-based drive to do better.
In short, it’s a fear-based game. I’m far more interested in what it means to trust. When it comes to fuel efficiency, trust burns FAR more cleanly.
So I propose the following. These apply to those trying to live sustainably, but just as well to any values-based life:
I propose we shift our sights entirely from a good/bad spectrum, stepping off of that tightrope as often and as nimbly as we can. Falling on our butts as we dismount (e.g. disappointing or scandalizing people; losing status among the elite in a given group, etc.) is entirely acceptable.
I propose we step onto a wide open plain of being human together, growing at different rates, learning lessons that aren’t always the same. A plain where we live out and intentionally share what’s important to us without assuming everyone else needs or wants to or even should become more like us. Others’ roles in The Big Scheme of growth, or even just their own path of it, may be shockingly different than what you or I might script for them. Humility is absolutely called for.
I propose we call out fear every time it drives us to do anything – from recycling to meditating to social action to anything at all that’s values-based – and do the (sometimes challenging, sometimes exhilarating) work of learning what trust would do instead.
I propose that as we seek to live more sustainably, we simultaneously find ways to unburden our inner selves, again and again (and again!), from the weight of our egos – and the jealousies, judgments, shame, and condescension involved with that weight. I propose that we ask what it means, again and again (and again!), to live, in all ways, from places of trust.
My hunch is that, if we learn to do these things – replacing our ego weight with a lighter and more sustainable state of trust – we’ll create internal sustainability for the external sustainability we’re working so hard to create.
Have you experienced ego-weight in your efforts to live well? Have you discovered helpful ways to unburden yourself from it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Join me here on Wednesday for the launch of Deep Listening, an ancient healing art with a Trust Tending twist. I look so forward to connecting with many of you this way!
Hi again! I’m so happy to be here! Reopening these doors feels like fresh, oxygenated air after weeks cooped up with html. :)
If you’re reading via email or rss feed, I hope you’ll click over to see the new design! I’ve worked to make it crisp, clean, and artful, as well as user-friendly. I’m hoping that the resources (posts, pages, videos, etc.) that previously got buried and unfindable as new posts accumulated will be navigable now. Check the Free Stuff page for all of that.
And with time, I hope to shift my shop from Etsy to be housed here. But one thing at a time!
Since this site is Trust Tending, I figure why not tend some trust on this reopening day?
Specifically, I feel aware of my tendency to react to site redesigns with a mix of feelings.
I feel mild discomfort with what I was used to changing – like a friend unexpectedly became more of stranger.
I feel mildly afraid that increased slickness or professionalism in a site’s appearance will be harbinger of the author becoming less and less like me – more cool or unreachable.
I feel worried that there’s a Progress Train that everyone else is on (hyberbolic language starts to ring so true!), and I’m somehow stuck miles away from the track. Or worse yet, standing close by, but locked behind a gate that I don’t know how to open.
Ultimately, I wind up smelling a big bouquet of Resentment, Discouragement, and It’s-Time-To-Buy-More-Chocolate.
Hopefully you’re having none of these reactions to what’s happened here. My guess is many of you aren’t.
But for those of you who are, I wonder whether it might be helpful to hear a few things.
Like:
Hi! I’m still very much me! And my personal practice of tending trust is as important to me as ever. So far the trajectory of that practice has been an opening of my heart and a quieting of my ego, and I have every reason to believe that trajectory won’t change.
There isn’t one Progress Train that everyone is on. Or even a handful of them. There’s only our perception that there is. In reality, we are all moving, always – all accumulating experiences, learning and unlearning patterns, stepping forward, shrinking back. All we can do is be in our lives, in all of their particulars, and seek to trust that there’s no where else we can be. That in fact, there’s no where else better to be.
Once we move in the direction of that trust, the sweetness and the beauty that’s inherent in every life and every story is freed to our awareness. We become more and more able to see it.
I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad for your company on this sometimes smooth, sometimes rocky road of being human together. And I can’t wait to tend more trust alongside of you!
With love,
P.S. I’m hoping to launch Deep Listening sessions next week (you’ll see the link in the navigation bar and a sign if you click there that says “Coming Soon”). Essentially those sessions will be phone calls with me, during which I listen deeply to your places of fear or growing trust, and after which I create downloadable pieces of art for you in response to what I’ve heard. I’m looking so forward to connecting with some of you this way!
I have yet to catch my stride in this new year, and after weeks, now, of feeling off-kilter, I’m finally chuckling at the fact that I continue to be caught off guard by…life. By the shiftiness of it. The movement. By how I can, repeatedly, have such clear, and what feel to me to be realistic, expectations that so clearly don’t get met. Or don’t get met in the ways I (clearly) expected them to be.
I could list so many examples, from job offers that were rescinded to schools that seemed perfect for my kids and then turned out not to be to friendships unexpectedly shifting or souring to holidays filled with hospital visits rather than play. The list goes on and on. And on. Surely your list is long, too.
My most current list item has been having way less time to work than I anticipated and the realization that the schedule I kept through 2011′s entirety isn’t one I’m capable of repeating: staying up late, getting up early, rinsing, repeating. I feel my body digging in at the thought of trying and my psyche shaking her head slowly. “Don’t do that this year. You can’t.”
Which is so disappointing from a certain point of view.
But see, I’m chuckling right now. Because this is so life. This. All of it. The longing, the disappointment, the wonder, the joy. The hurts and the heartaches. Missed expectations. The shifts where we thought we stood on solid ground.
And I’m noticing that even though I can’t be peaceful and content in all things, and even though I can’t always feel the hope or the goodness of this next thought: in ALL things, in every last one of them, there is the possibility of learning to trust.
And trust is what’s changing me in all the ways I want. Trust is what’s taking the roughest edges off my life’s game. Trust is what’s helping me recover so much faster from hurts and disappointments and punches in the gut than I ever could a year or five or twenty ago. Trust is opening me up to love, softening my cynical heart, helping me exhale more deeply and breathe in more fully and shift fear out of my driver’s seat so much more of the time.
So if trust can get grown and strengthened and fed and learned in all things… Well then.
Life? Dear shifting, untamed and untameable Life?
Bring it on!
I don’t even feel ready most of the time, but in this moment of what feels like lucidity, I say it with all my heart.
Bring it on.
Bring on the chances to learn how to trust.
______________________________
P.S. I just put the image above in my shop. If you’re interested, you can find it here.
P.P.S. I’m hard at work this month on a redesign of my site. I can’t wait to show it to you, likely early next week…if Life and I aren’t dancing some other direction. :)
I’ve been tripping on a secret, over and over, for the last many years. And it’s so profound that I shake as I try to put words to it. I’m that moved.
It’s all about our egos, and how they’re like the Wizard of Oz. Only instead of a powerless guy behind the scary facade, there’s something vast and spacious. Something that feels like floating on clouds and being utterly safe and fearing nothing at all. Dropping the facade terrifies the facade itself, and that terror drives all of us to do everything in our power to keep it up at all times.
But those glimpses beyond it? Those unexpected moments when we step to the side of it and feel our whole chest open up and the knots that are ALWAYS in our guts release and that cloud of chatter and worry and questioning quiet in a strength that feels more spacious and profound than anything we could ever hope to shore up or protect? Oh dear lord. Please, give me more.
I’m thinking a lot about spirituality these days, and about life paths (whether they be spiritual, relational, vocational, etc) that have turned out so differently from how we might have wished or expected that they would. And about how hard it can be to admit to ourselves that we aren’t on that path we used to be…or expected to be…walking, but are instead on the one that we’re on. That’s such a huge move, truly, to admit where we actually are.
But then there’s the move to admit that to other people, which can be hard enough on it’s own, depending on the audience. But all the more difficult when doing so has implications for choices and commitments we’ve already made. What if you’re a pastor and you admit that your concept of God cannot be integrously molded into anything your church could warm to? What if you’re engaged and you know deep down this person isn’t who you want to marry? What if you jumped through more hoops than you can count to reach a dream – sacrificed lots and gave years of your life to the work – and you realize once you’ve reached it that the dream was actually empty, or at least is empty for you?
The Wizard of each of our Oz’s shakes. It quakes. And tries to scare us into doing WHATEVER it takes to avoid the truth that we deep down know. To avoid the awful, awkward conversations required by it. The gut-wrenching choices that’ll have to be made. The fissures in relationships and chasms that’ll surely form in some of them.
“Doom and Gloom!!” our Wizards say. “Every last bit of it!!!”
But here’s where *I* quake and with something other than fear. I quake with the force of conviction.
You are not your Wizard.
Your ego is only a mask. It’s only a scary, boisterous story. And the actions and words you know you need to do or say are only dangerous and foolish and awful in the constricting world of that story.
Outside of that story, such things are LIFE – with enormous, capital letters. They’re freedom and flight. They’re you honoring what’s deep and beautiful and true, and connecting yourself with the growth and the learning that such honoring inevitably opens for you.
There are details that will have to be tended to. There are tough decisions that will have to be made. Relationships may break or need to be arduously mended. I don’t want to belittle any of that.
But I want to say with all the spacious, potent power within me that when it comes to listening to your soul and honoring the truth you hear it whispering, being a fool in your ego’s eyes is ultimately the safest, most hopeful, life-improving, trust-inducing move you could possibly make.
I’m cheering you on, with my pom-poms out for me, too, and all the ways all of us fear feeling foolish and try, with faltering steps sometimes, to dive into LIFE anyway.
With so much love,
P.S. This song might be something you need to hear (lyrics below).
Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all of your so called problems
Better put ‘em in quotations
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to saaaay…
Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you’d be better off instead
If you could only
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to saaay…
Have no fear
For giving in
Have no fear
For giving over
You better know that in the end
It’s better to say too much
Then never to say what you need to say again
Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open… wide…
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to
Say what you need to
Say what you need to say…
I can hardly believe it, but one year ago today, with great hope and not a little trepidation, Trust Tending began. And what a tremendous year it’s been!! I’m grateful, tired, humbled, energized (yes, tired and energized, both!), satisfied, and filled with a sense that this – my work in this space – has only just begun.
I hope Trust Tending has been even a fraction as life-giving for you as it’s been for me, and that in coming weeks and months you find the offerings here even more reflective of the places you most hope your trust can grow.
As part of today’s celebration, I wonder whether you might consider taking a short, seven-question survey to help me get a better pulse on what people are liking, wanting, or wanting more of here? I’d be so grateful if you would! To me (and really to everyone who reads here in weeks and months to come), that’d be the best birthday present ever. :)
Whether you take this survey or not, I’m so grateful for your presence here. I’m grateful for your company on this bumpy, trust-growing path, and for the wonderful challenge your presence is to me to continue on it with as much heart and…trust as I have to offer. There is so much more to come!! I cannot wait to share and experience it with you…
With all my heart,
Kristin
P.S. If you’re not a survey person, I’d still love to hear from you! I’d love to know who you are and what it is you come here for. What speaks to you here? What would you like to see more of? Comments or personal emails are equally welcome!
P.P.S. For those of you who wondered where my year-end reflections went last week, the answer is no where. :) They remain in my dear head, wishing for time to get put on a page.
While I watch for that, here are my favorite posts from 2011:
Happy New Year to you, even if what FEELS new to you is only your next breath. May this year (and this breath…and the next) hold riches for you, of the deepest, most trust-nourishing kind!
Please feel free to copy, send, or otherwise distribute content from this site, but please don't charge for it, and kindly include author attribution (Kristin Noelle, kristinnoelle.com).
Everything Belongs
Seasons are universal. Treat yours uniquely.
