Find Your Breath
A post on advocacy and what it means as a treatment provider, as coach, as a mentor, a friend, and a colleague.
It’s important for me to understand the ways people live in, work in, and learn from dysfunctional systems haven’t been taught about their intrinsic value and worth. In Western culture, we teach each other to stay in dysfunctional systems, right? Because really, when an environment is dysfunctional, it’s chocked full of justifications, reasons, explanations, and finger pointing. The dysfunctional systems thrive in, “this is the way it’s always been done. This is the rule. This is the expectation.”
What I have just described is called the top-down system and somehow, we continue to believe that people sitting in board road rooms eating catered lunches (and taking home six-figure salaries) make the best decisions for what happens in our school systems and in our health care systems. The top-down system teaches the individual must be micro-managed to do the right thing. The top-down system instills the values that people are not capable of thinking for themselves, and these systems teach that people are not capable of managing their own time, not capable of following directions, not capable of doing their jobs, and not capable of taking appropriate breaks and certainly not capable to manage their own workflows.
Let’s change it up. Let’s go the other way. Everyone gets a seat in the circle. Let’s create new from the ancient.
“What would love do?” seems to be the most important question facing me, our communities, and humanity. Living and learning from a love-founded system is what humanity needs.
Our human needs for attachment and nervous system attunement are so needed.
In our conquest for conquering, we culturally shame and abandon with micro-aggressive actions and words that often remain unseen and unsaid. These microaggressions carve out canyons of emotional woundedness, loneliness, and historical trauma. The individual has learned that attempting to get basic needs met will ostracize them from the tribe and leave them to fend for themselves.
The current systems are crumbling. People (showing up to work with me) learn how to advocate for themselves, how to identify their own needs, how to explore personal value systems, how to speak their strengths, and how to trust their inner wisdom. They are thirsty for change.
As he coaches people into cold plunges, a friend of mine says, “find your breath.” This is where we can begin again. We can find each other in the breath. To advocate for clients, ourselves, and each other means highlighting strengths and teaching there is nothing outside of us more valuable than what we have inside of us. Find your breath.
We have unlimited, unconditional love. Our most important assets are those within – love, hope, trust, and on and on. We arrived here perfectly complete. There is nothing to do that is more important or more valuable than to remember our truth and connect with each other. That, my friends, is how I advocate for myself and in turn advocate for my clients.
Just for a moment, I invite you to take a pause. Find your breath. Find your pulse. Enjoy the ecstasy and abundance in the breath and in the pulse. In. Out.
We are abundantly wealthy resources for each other, for our Earth, and for our future generations. I feel certain that I don’t know anyone who has ever been on their deathbed asking for a few more hours at work or one more project to accomplish or looking at the stock market on their phone.
A goal of mine is to teach people their intrinsic values so they don’t have to look outside themselves. In acting as an advocate, I guide clients to find their autonomy. In acting as an advocate, I model loving self and encourage others to do the same. How exciting it is to get to see what’s coming next!
As we transition out of this Earthly world, I believe we return into pure, abundant of love. Moving forward, I advocate for me, for you, for all of us. I commit to living in the opportunity of abundant love and trust and connection now.
If you would like to come with me, let’s go! I find my breath. I find my pulse. Can you find yours?