Ep. 127: Shifting the focus to what we want

In this episode, we're sharing segments from a live Grounded & Growing class on some key foundational elements of the Success System version of the S.H.E.M.A. Process. April discusses the foundational power of shifting our focus toward what we truly want. And for those of us who may have a hard time knowing what we want, she shares a tool (a Wheel of Well-being. You can make yourself a copy from the link below) and some key questions to help guide you.

Make your own copy of an interactive Wheel of Well-being here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11v7y1pvHKs8BG2DDyiZ2wfpFS5lt9P57rAzLx0KeJzI/edit?usp=sharing

When thinking about what you want (next) in one aspect of your life, consider these questions:

1. What's going well? What do I appreciate about this area?
2. What would I love to embody or accomplish next in this area?
3. How can I weave more joy, fun or justice into this area?
4. What are resources or how can I get support/help to enhance this area?
5. What's one thing that I could start or stop doing that would make everything in this area easier?

Discussion and reflection questions:

1. What in this episode is new for you? What have you learned and how does it land?
2. What is resonating? What is sticking with you and why?
3. What feels hard? What is challenging or on the edge for you?
4. What feelings and sensations are arising and where in your body do you feel them?

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Transcript

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Today, you'll be a fly on the wall and one of our live classes from our program, Grounded and Growing You're listening to the joyous justice podcast a weekly show hosted by April Baskin with Tracie Guy-Decker. In a complex world in which systemic oppression conditions us to deny others and our own humanity, let's dedicate ourselves to the pursuit and embodiment of wholeness, love and thriving in the world. And in our own lives, it's time to heal and flourish our way to a more joyously just future. Welcome to part one, I'm starting to review some of the success the Success System version of the S.H.E.M.A process today. So I'm a little tired. And I'm also nervous a little bit, because I'm like, in an ongoing process of emergence, and coming out of the spiritual closet about different things. And I both feel, in part ways totally ready to teach all this. And I'm also like, I'm teaching this stuff now. Like this is happening. So, so part of me I feel like my ancestors a part of me is like, supposed to be secret. I think part of it's like the classic because at times, people who talk about things related to like magic and mysticism have been targeted for like death and destruction. And also its ways in times of like when I'm teaching in part, which hopefully will land today. And also like the percolation, we set the lesson up so that it's beginning the percolation and weaving in sacred pacing throughout this is also that it's ways of all throughout this program, of navigating and circumventing and healing from oppression like it's, it's tools that help us advance liberation, that often isn't framed that way that at times is phrased and superficial or super white and contexts, but it has indigenous and African origins. And I'm reclaiming that stuff. So, and we are now reclaiming how to engage in practical mysticism. So something that's active for me, so I'm both excited. And in my body, I'm having a little bit of like internal tear. And so what I like about this, as I was thinking about this, thinking about this this morning, as I was preparing, is noticing the ways in which this is very meta for me. And that is, these are things that I've been learning over the years. And because I'm a student and a practitioner of my own process, I'm also at my leading edge of becoming around these things, in part in real time as I teach this to you. So it's an ongoing cycle. I often like to think and I think I mentioned it on these calls before, and you'll hear me say it again. And maybe you've heard it from other teachers or people out in the world that I think we learn and grow and evolve and spirals both upwards and downwards. And often a number of soul lessons are similar, but they get repeated deeper and higher levels in different ways. So we're going to cover some of the elements of the S and the success version of the S.H.E.M.A process. As I've said a couple times before, the core version we learn is like what I would refer to as the sturdy or strife or, or pardon my French but shit version of transmuting transforming shit into fuel or fertilizer toward the toward what you want. And being able to navigate most challenges and understand what's happening and redirect and shift from default to intention. And though at times, particularly in general. And also, once we start to really master that which you all are still just getting your bearings around it. And some of these things can happen simultaneously. And there may still be parts in your life where you're like, where you have a dream and I want you to be able to start moving in the direction of that and offer joyous justice and fused insight around those efforts. So that's the intro. And so in terms of what we're going to be covering today, I want to start with an overview of the s segment and then dive into around setting up your system of success and shifting towards shifting your focus toward what you want. And covering some of those different pieces. And and then I want to start to shift into the second lecture at around seed watering and belief work and elements, some of the foundational elements of practical mysticism and moving in the direction of what we want. And what I want to say here is that everything I'm teaching today that we're teaching and I'm teaching the idea here throughout throughout all A lot of what we teach, although not always, is that it's from a very both and framework. So this is not necessarily to replace certain time management tools or things like that. But this is moving in the direction of how do we start to have quantum leaps? And how do we start to engage in co creation where we get clear about what we want. And then we find aligned collaborative elements to support us toward what we want and take us faster than we could go. If we were just working. Taking it a step at a time, we want to think about this S and the success version is securing success through shifting your focus to what you want. And setting up your success, your custom individualized Success System that edits foundation and throughout the process prioritizes seed watering or nourishment of your desires and your becoming, this is a phrase I like to use, I use it often for myself around like I am where I am, and I'm in an active state of evolution, which I'm really down for. And I'll just make an even that alone. There's so much that's countercultural about this in different ways. Even the idea of becoming as adults, it's really pretty conventional to like, hit our 30s have family and then like be static Ajoy stresses me and about that life, like if you want to do that fine. But this whole grounded and growing program is about deepening our roots, and then figuring out how we want to grow. And it's very much a both and I see lots of things in the world being about hustle culture, which we are not, and then also about like the soft life. And for me what joy joy is justice is balancing elements of the soft life and ease and also like warrior vibes and at times massive action that is aligned with what we want. Right? Like, at times, I feel like I just want the soft light. I'm glad this is landing and I'm like, Okay, I'm actually I've been really into ease and different things too. But in my living and from my sense of the world, we also need rigor and strength to and it's actually about that balance and wise discernment. And how do we cultivate those different attributes. And so that's what this is endeavoring to speak to, in different ways are also other elements of s but like I'm focusing mostly on the success version, but the other elements that are part of the proactive foundation. Self Care is woven throughout this too, as you'll see in a moment, radical what I love to think of as compassionate radical self responsibility, which is contextualized within inter communal connection to and the world within which we live, which we will cover in a moment. The ideas of shalom and shalem and I love how similar they are in Hebrew Shalom meaning peace, Shalem meaning wholeness. Silla means wholeness, and I love someone who is a multiracial person with a lot of multi dimensional elements of my life. I've consistently loved and the fragmentation I see in there, I love this idea of wholeness. And that that is a part of what peace and justice is, is about, and spaciousness, self determination, sovereignty, we're diving deep into that today around what are the things we want, as well as solidarity, which can deeply help us. So with that, the first part of the S.H.E.M.A of this process is saying what you can stop sharing screen is our ticket shifting our focus toward what we want. And knowing what we want. And what we want to do, what I want to say is, is that you may already have a sense. So this could be around everything in your life, or I think in general, it's good to pick like one or two things and like zero in on this is what's most important right now. And we'll talk about this a bit more later. This is where some of the wisdom around the one thing I don't know, if you've read that book, it's a great, it's a great book, depending upon where the conversation goes. And the core central prompt from that book is, what's one thing that I can do or achieve or stop doing such that by doing that everything else will be easier or unnecessary. It's basically Pareto principle to an extreme. So Pareto principle is that, you know, the 8020 rule that 20% of effort produces 80% of results and most fields across most situations. And the one thing principle is a distillation of the Pareto principle that it's also true within that 20% That there's 20% of that 20% That accounts for 80% of that 20% And that at any one time, there is typically one thing that we can do such that or achieve, such that by achieving it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary. Now, I will tell you, when I first heard this, it took me like two or three months to get this and I was like, Okay, how about 12 things? I think a bigger person start with well, and then I was able to winnow it down to like six and then I got it down to like, four. And then a few years ago, I was able to get it eventually down to one that I was eventually able Got to be like, actually, all of these things are dependent on my health, my health is out of whack right now. And actually, me getting my health in shape will help with the business will help with my relationships. And my capacity will help with all of these, this has an outsized, like me focusing on this actually is something that is essential here. So that being said, part of this is around and noticing for yourself where you are in general with this thing. And I feel like different people have really different relationships with this in terms of where are you in terms of being able to articulate, which is I mean, just for you, it was a whole separate thing that we could get into about how much we share with other people and when and with whom, and what influence they had all there's like all kinds of things that are part of this too. But I'm right now I'm saying, can you speak your truth to yourself around what you want? And perhaps also noticing, are there certain areas where you can do that in certain areas where that's harder, right. And so the first piece here is to start with what you want. And I'm the links showing the slide, which is, which provides a framework for helping you think about that first, because I just want to acknowledge for each of you either in this moment or later, you don't have to use the next segment that we're going to get into. If right now you're real clear on what you want. Okay, so I want what let's get into the tool. And so I'm, before we start. So we did we were further refine this. So I shared the idea with Tracie, I talked about some of the limitations, Tracie produced something and then I further refined it today. So this is the freshly updated wellness wheel that I wanted to share with y'all. And I want to share it with a lot of mindfulness in different ways. So so this is something that you don't need to if you're pretty clear about what you want. You don't necessarily need to use this at all right now. Okay, I want to be really clear about that. So welcome to the wellness wheel, which you might have seen something like this before, in some way. And I think this can be a helpful frame for folks who are trying to think about like weird, like, what do I want, so basically this to me that but I like the pie, and I love how it is similar to the indigenous medicine wheel. And most life a lot of life wheels are different than this. But this is a wellness or like a well being a wheel of well being. And the darker circle around this I didn't have time to write it is meant to be like society and community is to note that our wheel of wellness is contextualized. Within what's happening more broadly. And this can be a prompt to help you think about the following things. And we have other questions we can ask too. But this is since this is the success version of this. Keep in mind, so if there's like big dissonance coming up around this, you can start to use you can revert back to the core S.H.E.M.A process and work the shamanic process through some of those other pieces, right, is to look over these different areas. What's going well, what do I appreciate about what's happening for me in this area? What would I love to embody or accomplish in this area? How can I read more joy, fun or justice into this area? Well, that's something else I forgot to mention that we haven't yet visually depicted, is that in that wheel of wellness, my thinking is I need to find some way to visualize it is that ideally, joy, fun and justice in time are woven throughout all of the different facets of of the wheel in different ways. Right so some of us have like a specific piece for contribution and in my mind, actually we're deeply interconnected. And justice and social justice in ways as appropriate can actually be a part of all of these different facets including at times actually just really caring for our individual wellness and well being can be is a part of is one element of being in service of positioning ourselves for powerful social change work overtime. In the joys justice frame, we can get into it more but I think joy as I define it, which really means like holistic well being and emotional agility and wellness is in deep service of justice and social justice and collective liberation work. Additional questions what our resources are, how can I get support or help or to enhance my experience in this area? What's one thing I could start or stop doing that would make everything else in this area easier? or unnecessary? Is the fool so the fool the one thing statement is one that what's one thing that I can do or stop doing such By doing or stopping doing that, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. If there's some stuff that's coming up around this, I think, right, so if there's some stuff coming up around all of them, or some of them, what we would encourage you to do is perhaps do a composting process around the area. Some of you know the composting process, I think some of you may not yet or most folks tracking. So basically, it's a simple writing exercise, where you do a brain dump, where you do a free write around, like, whatever is coming up. Like I'm scared, I'm feeling scared, or like this is upsetting, or I'm really frustrated about, I feel conflicted about my finances, like, I'm making this much, but I want to be giving it away, like whatever, like whatever the mess in your mind is that's happening that's causing you stress, you write it down bluntly, directly. And do that. And then once you feel like you've exhausted that feeling, or the thoughts or the confusion, and you've articulated it on paper, then you can take a breath, take a moment and then respond to the prompt, I would love. And I find that normally takes me a little moment or two to get momentum around this. But after I've articulated these different things, I can usually start to with a little bit of time, and at times, it helps me to think about because of course I'll often say something like, like, I'll say, like, I would love for somebody that like maybe I maybe it could actually but it involves like other people in circumstances like I would love for this not to be a thing or like, I would love for this person to shut the fuck up or like, like, that's normally where it starts. And I'm like, okay, so that that's not really, um, and then I often go to a struggle. And then I usually find it's helpful for me, although maybe it's different for you to think about how I would love to feel I would love to feel confident around this, I would love to have clarity, I would love to feel joy about the situation, I would love for there to be repair. And then normally, once I start my feelings, once I start accessing the feeling, I would love I find that other ideas start to flow. And I'm actually usually pretty surprised every time of what comes through. And at times when I do this process around a specific challenge at times, that actually largely resolves the issue for me, but I needed to actually fully speak the truth of what was happening. And then I get more clarity. And then I get clarity around precisely what I need to do. And or I find either it resolves an issue entirely, or it further clarifies immediate next steps. And also lets me know that I want deeper healing or support around something that further clarifies for me like that didn't do it. Like at one time I did about a moment of racism at a job. And I was like, actually just didn't do it for me. And that actually helps me further clarify, this isn't some I actually need to take this to the team. And I actually want to ask for repair around like, it's not enough for me to do my own work around this, like I actually think and I was able to get real clear about that from the composting process. And so we're recommending this potentially, if there's like a certain like, I don't you could do it holistically who has a lot composting or you could just like if there's a certain area where you're like, there's stuff here or there's some some dissonance coming up. And what this can do for you, when you do this process is you can notice like I can just say I can stay in the success mode of this. Or like oops, there's something deeper here and I want to sink back into the What did you just use before like the strike or that what was the word I used? Like the solid, the core core, you said century you said sturdy? Drop into the sturdy, more earth based, like more grounded version of Shimano start moving through moving through the dissonance? Like how do I slow down? How do I pause? How do I notice how to buy myself some space? Like how to take some space now? What's old, like what's early about what's what's old about this for me and my peoples? Like we move through that? Is their emotions is their emotional stuff here Do I need to do embodied work but like right and then so then this so the composting process is one way around a given area, if there's some confusion that you can further clarify either what you would love and if you feel like yeah, like there's some stuff here, but like actually, this feels great, I can roll with it. Or you might be like, um, it's you know, either it's limiting beliefs or trauma or different things that are surfacing and then we want to work through a trauma informed model of of the S.H.E.M.A. Thanks for tuning in. To learn more about joyous justice LLC, our team and how you can get involved with our community. Check out the info in our show notes, or find us at joyous justice.com If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love. Subscribe wherever you're listening. Tell your people share what you're learning and how your leadership is evolving. Stay humble, but not too humble. And keep going because the future is ours to co create