TRANSCRIPT
Hey, this is Mazarine Treyz of asking for more Mastermind and the asking for More podcast. Thanks so much for being here in this time of the Corona. It’s really important for us to learn how to ask for more, and I’m so glad you’re here with me. The theme of today is it’s okay if you don’t feel like working.
I want you to think about the season inside your body. What does that mean? Seasonal living is thinking about how there’s a winter inside of you. There’s a spring inside of you, there’s a fall inside of you, and there’s a summer inside of you too. But what we’re not made to do, Is B in [00:01:00] perpetual summer, which is what capitalism often wants us to pretend.
We can’t keep constantly producing at the same rate. We can’t keep constantly grinding and pushing as much work product as we possibly can. That’s not right for the planet. That’s not fair to our bodies or to our people that we love. So in this time of winter, which we’re still in, in mid-February, if you don’t feel like working, you’re not alone, maybe you’re supposed to be dreaming right?
Maybe this is how you can respect seasonal living in yourself by pushing back against work expectations. Let’s say go back to the office or do more and more and more. How can you do less? How can you say, I need time to lay [00:02:00] fallow, to go under the ground, to have the snow cover me and dream? How can you respect your dreaming?
In the beginning, the pandemic, we had more time it seemed like, as people were still getting their bearings. But as we’ve gone on. It feels like capitalism wants us to keep grinding harder and not acknowledging that our bodies still need rest, care, and distance.
You are more than just check marks on a to-do list. You don’t have to have it all figured out right now. You get to rest and feel and breathe and dream, and that is what I wish for you.
So consider this, slow down your slowdown. I got this from the Emergent Strategy Podcast, which is totally worth a listen.
But what does that mean for us? [00:03:00] Often when we’re introduced to people or we’re checking in with people. We are very quick to get onto business or the purpose of the meeting. That’s what capitalism wants us to do. Be as efficient as possible. But what if instead we could pause, take stock, and say, who is here with you today?
Who are your ancestors? Who’s showing up with you as a guardian or a monster that’s with you today?
Let’s take a pause together. Let’s breathe together. Let’s make sure that we fully arrived before we start doing all the other things we think we should be doing.
If we could slow down our slowdown, this could be how we deprogram from a larger culture that wants us to keep consuming, rushing, and not taking time to stop and feel.[00:04:00]
And sometimes we’re rushing because we don’t wanna feel grief.
My friend Natalia has been talking about grief with me lately and how Americans turn away from it. She’s turning towards it as this Ukraine war drags on.
It’s really important that we acknowledge the ongoing grief that we may all be feeling as people continue to get sick. Plans continue to be canceled. We don’t get a job that we want, or we don’t get what we want. In general, if we don’t make space for grief, it can be very difficult to be present for the joy in our lives.
I feel like I turned towards grief for the first time last year. I cried uncontrollably as I started realizing how I couldn’t force willingness. I couldn’t have the relationships I wanted with people in my family, and that was really hard.[00:05:00]
Because we have two kinds of pain.
We have the pain of being ignorant of the truth, and then we have the truth itself, the knowledge that also brings us pain. Once we have that knowledge, we have more.
And I’d rather have the knowledge and the pain of the truth than the pain of ignorance.
I interviewed Kira Taplin about grief, and if you’d like to check that out, I can put the link in the notes for this episode. She is a whole nonprofit called The Healing Footprints Foundation about grief after she lost her child in a miscarriage.
She still lets herself cry even years later, and I love the permission that she brings in that episode to really feel as much as you need to feel.
Here’s something I didn’t realize about feelings. My therapist told me that on average, a feeling lasts [00:06:00] 20 to 30 seconds and then we’re onto the next. So if you’re afraid that you won’t be able to function. If you feel sadness or anger, or any other thing that you’re afraid of feeling and try to tamp down, it won’t last that long, and you can hold space for it and then move on to the next thing.
The trouble starts when we tamp it. Because as we did in that feeling, we did in all other ones. So this made me understand that I could show up for my own feelings as well as hold a container for other people’s feelings and just let them be. It doesn’t take that long to let them move through and just accept and hold space
as Bell Hook says, feeling is the secret, and as her daughter said, You don’t feel your feelings are gonna come out through your throat and punch you through the teeth. So
a lot of the things that are wrong with the world are based around people [00:07:00] not being willing to feel their feelings. Feelings aren’t the problem. How we deal with the feelings is the problem .
A few nights ago, I sat with my friend and I let her cry.
We pointed out our feelings on the feelings wheel. I’ve been making fridge magnets out of these and giving them to people, and people love them. So I encourage you to look up the feelings wheel and put your own version of it up where you can see it. On the other side of grief is joy. What do you need to grief today, whether you’re feeling joy or grief or something else?
I’m here dreaming in the dark too.
And finally, when we acknowledge our feelings, we can truly grow and have more. Truth and of what we want in this life. See if you’d like to explore that. [00:08:00] I’d love to invite you to my asking for more Mastermind. If you go to MazarineTreyz.com, go to asking for more and you can find it.
Thank you so much for listening.
