Practices

Incomplete Power: Keeping Your Wisdom Online

This morning, I was halfway through my meditation when it finally clicked. Not in a big, ah-ha way. More like a little sigh.

Yup. I’m scared.

I didn’t know that’s what it was at first. I thought it was just the news, the state of the world, other people’s incompetence making me feel so off. (Yup it’s such a judgy thought! Stay with me…)

But as I tracked my breath, I tuned into my personal signals that I’m overtired, overexposed, and under-resourced.

Why am I talking about fear when this season is supposed to be about hope and imagination? Because I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling scared too. 

But here’s the thing. Hope doesn’t ask us to feel better first. It asks us to stay engaged. Hands-dirty hope is what happens when we refuse to give up our imagination — even when the world feels fractured, even when fear is loud.
Fear is tricky. When we’re in crisis and overwhelmed, it wears a lot of disguises. Today, I want to bring you in close to look at one way that fear frequently rears its head: the need for control.

Because in 25 years of coaching and teaching, I have never met a single human who doesn’t reach for this at least some of the time when they are feeling overwhelmed. 

So let’s talk about how overwhelm cascades into fear and seeking control, how to turn to our fear with compassion before taking action, and finally, I’ll share a simple exercise that has been enormously helpful in redirecting the chaotic energy that gets kicked up when we are in a fear response.

If you’ve been looking for a hand in the dark, I hope you’ll keep listening.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

  • How too many inputs cause a chain reaction from chaos to fear to trying to exert control on something, anything

  • Why compassion and care for the part of us that is scared has to come before action

  • A simple exercise for parsing out where you can bring your energy to actually effect change

  • Why tending to your fear is necessary to maintain our capacity for nuanced thinking, empathy, and creative problem-solving

Reclaiming Intuition as a Valid Way of Knowing

Intuition can manifest as a sudden, sharp knowing or as a slowly dawning certainty. 

Regardless of its speed, intuition carries a powerful sense of knowing, signaling us on a deep level, "Hey, pay attention. I have something to say."

Intuition is a powerful force rarely spoken about openly. And when it is talked about, intuition is often seen as a vague, almost mystical whisper rather than a credible guide.

What if embracing your intuition could lead you to tap into more of your power? What if, instead of dismissing odd symptoms or vivid dreams as mere quirks, you recognized them as valuable messages from your inner self and learned how to decode them? 

What if you could refine your intuition so it becomes a helpful guide when you need it most?

Today, we’ll explore how we can reclaim this essential part of ourselves and recognize intuition not as a mystical or unreliable force, but as a skill that integrates our most profound wisdom into our everyday lives.

We’ll debunk two harmful myths about intuition and then I’ll guide you through an exercise to help you reclaim your wise, intuitive self.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

  • How our cultural emphasis on rationality and logic disconnects us from our intuition from a young age

  • Why intuition acts as a complement to, not a competitor of, data and logic

  • How intuition reflects our experience and ability to recognize patterns in the world around us

  • How we can compensate for implicit bias in our intuitive thinking

  • How intuition helps our “emotional radar” and supports our relationships with others and ourselves

  • A practice of listening to your yes and no to help you tune into your intuition

Learn more about Valerie Black:

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Rupture, Repair, and Resilience: A New Take on Perfectionism

After a recent bout of contending with my own perfectionism, I had a profound realization. 

Perhaps calling myself a recovering perfectionist is incorrect. 

Maybe my perfectionism isn’t something that I need to fix about myself. Perhaps the work is more about recognizing when I’m disconnected from my wise self and deploying the right tools to get back on track.

What if we’re all just perfectly imperfect works in progress? And what would it take for us to cultivate deep self-compassion when perfectionism shows up in our lives?

Today, I invite you to join me in this investigation of your perfectionism with a heart full of compassion for yourself and the messy, imperfect process we all go through.

Through mental rehearsal, or cognitive priming, I’ll lead you on a thought experiment designed to help you loosen your grip on perfectionism and move closer to right-sizing your effort.

This journey is about understanding and supporting yourself through the messy, imperfect process we all go through. (And how we can still get great results along the way!)

Listen to the full episode to hear:

  • Defining the spectrums of perfectionism and perfectionism’s  underlying “promise”

  • Differentiating between beneficial high standards and stress-inducing patterns and behaviors

  • The benefits of mentally rehearsing a potential scenario

  • A thought experiment to help you lower your internal bar and half-ass it

Learn more about Valerie Black:

Resources:

Pleasure & Rest: Creating a Menu of Refuge

There’s a lot of talk out there about self-care and rest. 

We all experience stress and dysregulation in this world, and rest is essential for our emotional and physical well-being.

Yet sometimes, when we’re stressed and agitated, it can be challenging to realize that we desperately need a break and even harder to figure out how to do that.

This is where one of my favorite tools comes in: the Menu of Refuge.

Today, I want to share what refuge is, why you need and deserve it, and how to empower yourself by creating your own personal Menu of Refuge.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

  • Defining refuge, literally and metaphorically, and why it’s more than simply retreating from the world

  • How a Menu of Refuge helps us take positive steps to resolve stress and dysregulation

  • How refuge addresses our fundamental biological need for emotional and physical safety

  • Why refuge also needs a sense of growth, wonder, or expansion

  • How refuge restores our sense of dignity and self-worth

  • How to craft your own list of activities and places that serve as refuge for you

Learn more about Valerie Black:

Building Self-Trust

Picture this: you’ve just completed a big project. All the work (and stress) is over, and you can breathe a sigh of relief. Right?

So, how quickly do you start itching to know how others think it went?

Perhaps you’re a student constantly refreshing your email for your professor’s thoughts. Or maybe you’re in the workplace, compulsively checking Slack for comments from your boss. Do you ever find yourself anticipating criticism, trying to get ahead by guessing what flaws others will pick out?

This begs the question, did you ever stop to ask yourself how you thought it went?

How we assess our performance on things that matter to us can strongly impact our mental health and self-esteem, not to mention the progress of our work.

Today, I want to pull back the power from the process of self-evaluations and building self-trust. Even if you’re not in an environment where you get formal feedback or have to complete self-evaluations, the method I will share has something for you, too. This method helps you create space for self-reflection that serves the impact you want to make in the world without losing yourself in self-doubt and other people’s opinions.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

  • Why developing the ability to discern your own performance is a critical skill set

  • How self-assessment became so embedded in our work lives, and how the process has lost its meaning

  • Two simple tools to help you center your own voice when considering your performance


Learn more about Valerie Black:

I look forward to hearing from you