On Expansive Growth and Boundaries

 

Dear Beloved,

I’m learning something that has to do with Expansive Growth and Boundaries:

My boundaries are an old story, a wubby-wide-growth-arc. I was reading a blog post from my college days about spending a weekend cramming on a term paper while my friends all went on a road trip. That weekend, I remember thinking I “lacked discipline” around writing my paper over the whole term, and if I had been more disciplined, I could have gone on that road trip with my friends.

Nearly 10 years later, I can't help but see my “lack of discipline” as a lack of boundaries, and how that shows up in my relationships today. My early boundaries were founded on the swampy ground of a lack of conviction, a lack of belief, a lack of vision, (fear of conflict and fear of being intolerant) all while walking around with a heavy pack laden with a need to be accepted by adults and peers.

Other adults who never knew how to create space for me to cultivate my own vision in the way I now know I need. Other adults who were carrying the visions of their own grandparents without realizing it.

How can I have discipline without conviction and ownership? I’m responsible for choosing what environments I put myself in and when. What I will and will not allow into my awareness. Attention. Intention. Knowing my Needs. Holding my Boundaries to support those needs getting met in easeful, joyful ways.

And that’s just really new for me.

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Expansive growth is in contrast to Adaptive growth.

Adaptive growth is a tree growing around a barbed-wire fence.

Expansive growth is a tree rooting deep into the ground and wide up to the sky. 

It had been two weeks since I arrived in Guatemala when I had these thoughts around intention, discipline, and boundaries as they relate to progress, growth, and mastery:

I’ve been waking up each day and my mind is aware of one big task at a time. Today I’m writing a blog (why? to let people know I've landed and am enriched by this land), the other day I spent a couple hours figuring out how to post my tickets for sale to a concert I can’t make it to back in the states.

Tying up loose ends from a time before this life in Guatemala.

Sleeping a lot, too. Is my sleep a need being met or softness and complacency eroding my disciplined self? Regulating the overwhelm by numbing with my nintendo game Animal Crossing. I can’t help but wonder how I’m doing with my intentions. What are they? Am I following my intentions? Do my intentions have to be conscious to "count"?

Am I holding my boundaries to support my intentions to get my needs met, so I can set new intentions from a really richly-resourced place within myself?

What are my intentions? Where do those intentions come from? Why did I choose to be here? What can I do here that I can’t do anywhere else?

We grow in the direction of the questions we ask. 

What about my current beliefs distract me from realizing I am loved and that my full self is needed in the world?

When I'm feeling formless and lost, I read my gratitudes and intentions from my journal I wrote in Seattle, breathing into some structure, routine, discipline. That became “too rigid” and I relaxed into more nintendo. If I am too disciplined, am I just perpetuating the wounding that I'm trying to distance myself from? 

I decided I wasn't disciplined enough and so I pressed myself into more “desk work”. Produce, without any specific outcome, let producing be its own joy. Share whatever comes.

There’s something comfortable about my nose against a screen, with a couple tasks to put off while I dawdle and muse on a keyboard until I have enough fear to return to action. This is a familiar cycle, I’ve been told it’s a common strategy to get by.

Progress?

—--------------

Progress. Growth. Change. Mastery. Awareness. Transformation. Intention. 

Catching myself looking for something to drive my day around. Noticing I pull away from activities like feeding myself or getting what I need to feed myself. The state I’m in when I’m doing my work is important to me.

Round and round and round.

Leaving my corporate job and venturing out, I feel the expansive sea of things around me. I cling to my raft of Google Docs and joy of sifting and sorting through words and documents to digest, process, distill my stream-of-consciousness to a whiskey-dense syrup of wisdom.

It’s been five months and I’m just coming back to really dedicating myself to this publishing-work. I've been writing in my journal, doodling, now it's time to look back and distill, and share with you my treasured sap!

I feel a need to have enough time to really understand how I operate within a business, AS WELL AS have enough time to do the work based on that understanding. There’s the organism itself and the awareness of what surrounds the organism.

Just following my whimsy today, doing both of those at once. 

Remembering my intentions. 

What are my business intentions? Creation of Connections, Generation of Gratitude, Protection and Reclamation of The Commons.

What is my personal intention? To more skillfully live into the fullness of my relationship with myself and others at once. 

In typing all this, am I just stroking my own whimsical musing without a focal point? Is this getting me closer to where I want to be? Farther from where I was? Or perhaps I’m descending deeper into the formless wilderness.

Noticing also I’m following my old way of working by setting a deadline and letting that bring focus. Focus on ineffable and formless fullness, keep writing, revise, publish what gets written.

What is my ideal outcome? What happens right before that? Is there some kind of milestone that gently emerges into my ideal outcome? 

Focus on fullness and keep writing, let whatever comes be enough. Listen to whatever comes. Set boundaries to maintain a curious, compassionate, slow-and-steady state of being and keep writing. Let a publishing schedule bring your focus to a point. Keep writing, keep revising. 

Next I want a study buddy, a practice ground, a playspace to fuss with all the big pieces and notice emergent patterns together and play with those.

It’s been five months.

I’m learning something.

And it has to do with boundaries.

It has to do with how I get triggered and what to do relationally to navigate that trigger while I stay in connection.

(I seem to want to avoid being triggered to focus on keeping the connection with others, at the cost of my connection with myself. Why am I triggered? Thank you for triggering me.)

Avoiding getting triggered seems to keep happening and I get silently triggered in less conscious ways, looking for ways to

To this point in my life I’ve relied on using shame to change somebody else’s behavior or inhibit my own behavior.

Shame is a clumsy tool. Skillful use of boundaries are the next cool thing. Holding my boundaries so I only get just triggered enough to keep growing. Skillful use of boundaries keeps me in the sweet spot. 

Balance. 

Now I’m asking questions like, what if I’m triggered because I’m choosing to step into situations to break down my rigid edges and re-cast them in the heat. 

Gentleness.

I’m responsible for choosing what environments I put myself in and when and to what end, and something about Boundaries seems to be the solution.

And that’s just really new for me.