conscious entrepreneurship | Shawndra Miller

I’m told there’s a body of research showing that people rise to the occasion when faced with a collective crisis. Rebecca Solnit, in A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, writes about the solidarity, altruism, and improvisation that emerge when humans go through hell together.

Human spirit flowers in a crisis.

I don’t know the science myself, but it feels true in my bones. And I am seeing people support each other in so many marvelous ways, and putting their compassion and creativity to use. Musicians serenade us on Facebook live, feeding our hearts vital nourishment. (As I write this, I’m enjoying a live concert of John Prine songs from my friend Wilma, in honor of Prine, who is dealing with a serious case of COVID-19.)

A local arts center is organizing a “Flower Power Knit Graffiti Project”–sending supplies and instructions to community members to create flower petals for a knitted garden installation.

In the practical arena, I heard of a woman collecting plastic laundry detergent containers and water bottles to make handwashing and sanitizing stations for homeless camps. Meanwhile many of my friends and acquaintances are sewing masks to be used by healthcare facilities at-risk folks. “Sewing Grannies” from a retirement community organized an elastic drive, when they heard supplies were low. (One note said, adorably: “Some of this elastic is really old. I hope it still works. Thank you for doing this important work. If my old pants fall down because I don’t have any elastic to fix them it will be all your fault!”)

Businesses are stepping up too–not just in the mindbody field, where the amount of online support is dazzling, much of it donation-based or free. A maker of leather aprons has designed a hospital mask using special high-filtration HEPA material, and is converting production to meet that need. A local distillery switched from producing gin to WHO recipe hand sanitizer, and offered it for free while supplies lasted, no purchase necessary.

⁣I’m sure there are many more examples of entrepreneurs pivoting to meet the needs of the day, and people in general being the innovative, kind, fabulous beings we are at our best. These are just a few things I know about from my little perch.

Tell me something good! If you know of a good thing to amplify, contact me or put it in the comments.

Gratitude: Can I just give a minute to the technology and Internet availability that is keeping me connected? The Zoom staff meeting where I can see the faces of my team, who I miss awfully. Another Zoom meeting for my weekly writing group, so we can keep supporting each other through this madness. Facebook Messenger to share a guided meditation with two friends, and debrief afterwards, face to face (or next best thing). Countless Zoom yoga/dance/movement classes peppering my days and keeping me in contact with my adored community. Most miraculously of all: just today I used Whatsapp to have a long and refreshing talk with my dear friend Lydia who’s visiting her family in South Africa.

Tip of the Day: Pick up the phone (or Facetime or what-have-you) and connect. Here’s Hank Green talking about this act as an antidote to “the anxious scroll.”

Resource of the Day: I can’t get enough of Cornell Ornithology Lab’s FeederWatch Cam. Sights and sounds from Sapsucker Woods. Birds doing their thing, completely unapprised of any pandemic.

Recently I asked a group of people: “What or how do you want to transform in 2017?” Their answers, so heartfelt and true, got me thinking of my own answer. What emerged as my “thing” was this: A pattern of having “too much to do,” of constantly slipping toward feeling overwhelmed by life.

I thought it might be useful to share how I am beginning to transform that old habit into my chosen reality: a sense of ease and joy with the smorgasbord of life.

Let me attempt to reconstruct some of that inner work. Below is an approximation—I find it hard to exactly translate this type of exploration unless I’m taking notes every step of the way.

I began by examining my feelings. I realized they stem from old programming, dating back to childhood, when I overidentified with school achievements to make myself OK. It makes sense that that would come up now, because I’m working with a business shaman/coach who gives weekly assignments. Homework! I’m a good student; I do my homework.

Even though the program is grounded in ease and bodily wisdom, as we began to set business objectives for the coming year, I found all my old mental gears revving up. Must prove myself, must pile on more and more, create loads of stress just to show I’m really worth something! (“I have a talent for making things difficult,” I told my coach yesterday.)

Of course I ended up crashing. My body rebelled against an overambitious schedule. My mind grew muzzy and obsessive. My emotional state plummeted too. It was hard to imagine finding joy or ease in any of my goals (which had previously seemed so exciting).

I found, when I sat with my overwhelmed-and-down self and asked for guidance, that there is a surfer within me. She artfully rides the waves, finetuning balance in each moment. Balance is not a once-and-done thing, the guidance suggested. Life can be approached with playful skill.

Photo by Daniel D’Auria, via Flickr Commons.

I might just have to let go a tiny bit and find a way to dance with the rolling waves.

I asked to be released from the need to prove myself. That felt huge.

I also realized that I had willfully constructed a reality in which I was not in charge of my to-do list—subliminally I blamed others for what I had to do. I still felt like that child working for a good grade, though no one grades me now.

Curiously, I found that I held onto the payoff of this dynamic—a wiggly sense of not being fully responsible for my choices, because I could always say that these assignments came from an external place. This resonance with “I am powerless” allowed me to stay safely in my comfort zone.

I found, digging deeper, a fear of people disliking me if I didn’t perform at a high level. Beneath that, a fear of disliking myself if I slacked off: because clearly I am not enough if I don’t at least try to “do it all!”

I worked with myself as I would a client, loving these old programs, asking for their release, inviting the newly created space to be filled with light and love.

Then it was time for what ThetaHealing practitioners call “downloads,” which basically means asking for Divine perspective and understanding through specific statements or affirmations. These are some of the things I pulled into my field while resting in an expanded state:

Show me what it feels like to take full conscious responsibility for my choices.

Show me what it feels like to live in joy and ease.

Show me how to ride the waves creating balance moment to moment.

I forget what else I downloaded, because I was in a theta brainwave state where words and images are ephemeral. It’s a bit like trying to remember dream fragments. But you get the idea.

Now I can set business goals with less baggage—and I can align more easily with my mission of holding space for personal and planetary transformation.