Open Hours

When I try to make sense of these times, I don’t get very far.

How about you?

A study conducted in my state of 9,500 people, including parents, teachers, and community members, showed high anxiety: 73 percent of parents said their child is as anxious or more anxious than the year before.

Think about that—three out of every four parents are saying their children are more stressed than they were last year.

Are you more anxious than you were a year ago?

I think I am.

How can one not be?

It is as if we are stirring in some giant pot that is bubbling—boiling even. The economic climate. The political climate. The social climate. The global climate.

And it’s not apparent how to turn down the heat.

It’s easy in these moments to shut down. As Brene Brown says, to “armor up.”

To put a protective wall around ourselves, and close up shop.

Boundaries do help us keep ourselves safe. But it’s one thing to install a wooden-rail fence around ourselves. It’s another thing erect a 15-foot concrete noise wall like you see on the highway.

You know how you can Google any business and their business listing states its hours? It might state that it’s open from 8:00-6:00 today. Or that they are closed at the moment. Or that it’s permanently closed.

If someone could Google you, how would you show up today?

Are your doors open?

Or are you numbly moving through your life and this crazy world, essentially closed off for new energy to come in?

Perhaps you are moving so fast from one thing to the next just so the anxiety can’t catch up to you.

Our own physicality offers helpful signals of where we are in these crazy times. When we feel anxiety in our body—a tight throat, a pit in our stomach, tension in our shoulders—it’s a signal from our body to pay attention. There’s something here that we need to attend to.

Emotions are important signals that something different wants to happen. Something new wants to emerge.

So, we don’t want to numb ourselves too much to the anxiety. We don’t want to buffer ourselves against it too often. It’s helpful to feel it. To turn toward the thing. And if we can, step into it.

Going to meet whatever it is that we are afraid of—naming it and being with it—enables integration to take place.

This can give our bodies and ourselves greater range. 

To find that greater range, we likely need to tap into stillness. To find stillness wherever we can in our lives. I just heard this week from another coach that stillness is the soil for emergence. 

Isn't that beautiful? Stillness is the soil for emergence.

Perhaps we can't easily change the temperature in this stirring pot we are in, but we can change our relationship to it. Change our relationship to the craziness. Change our relationship to anxiety. Change our relationship to worry. 

We can aim to keep our doors open. 

Aim to connect with the stillness that one might find when sitting in a field of wildflowers. 

It's worth it to aim high. 

Aim for peace. Aim for joy. Aim to keep your field open.

And consider, What would people find if they could Google your soul in this moment? If they could connect with the true you? What would it say about where you are?

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