Ep. 138 - Accessing Onramps, Playing w Pilots, and Allowing Shift

Summary
In this episode, Kohenet April Nichole Baskin discusses the concept of on-ramps and piloting in relation to personal growth and transitions.

She explores the idea of using the new year as an opportunity for reflection and experimentation, emphasizing the importance of spacious on-ramps and the value of piloting different practices as needed.

April shares her personal experiences with navigating difficult circumstances and the lessons she has learned from floating and pivoting. She encourages you to embrace or experiments with on-ramps and piloting as tools for personal growth, and creating an ecosystem for success.

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?

Key Takeaways

• Take the time to reflect on your life and identify areas where you can create spacious on-ramps for personal growth and transition.
• Experiment with piloting different practices and approaches to see what works best for you.
• Embrace the new year as an opportunity for reflection and setting intentions, but remember that you can choose your own target date for personal goals.
• Create an ecosystem for success by identifying the path of greatest ease and leveraging your strengths and resources.
  
  

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Transcript

April: 0:01

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 back, friend. I'm so glad you're here, or if you're here for the first time, welcome. I'm Kohenet April Nichole Baskin, and I have many things I want to talk about. In this episode, I want to talk about onramps and piloting and the ways we think about pacing and transition or perhaps more frequently how we don't consider this and this episode is a call an invitation to Notice places in our lives where we have experienced some spacious, nourishing transition, or maybe not spacious, but just Generative and helpful transition, and also had a room to pilot and experiment and mess up and try again because on ramps and pilots. I really love them. Let's dive in. So 2024 is approaching a new calendar year. I know, I know, various people have different thoughts about the new year and the Lack of value of New Year's resolutions. I am so not into group think that is defeated or defeatist and disempowered as the descendant of multiple peoples who couldn't accept negative circumstances and had to imagine new possibilities and continue to iterate and pilot new strategies. As I've talked about before with Kohenet on the podcast, I really love Milestone moments, mindful moments, uh, mindfulness bell, periods in time, whether it's birthdays, new years. the beginning of a month, the beginning of a week, all these different opportunities that in one way you could view as opportunities of stress and pressure, or moments where there's some kind of mindfulness bell or another, whether it's the dropping of the ball for the Gregorian New Year, or eating apples and honey at Rosh Hashanah, or blowing out birthday candles. I love these pattern interrupt moments, these moments. That give us an opportunity. Should we have the awareness and the interest in taking it to pause and drop into reflective intention. And so I really like the New Year in that way. I don't like cultural dynamics and systemic oppression and the ways that those things get internalized within us. Chronic capitalism and overdrive as it gets internalized within us and our organizations and collective consciousness. But I love to contradict that and live on a different and operate on a different wavelength as much as possible and in the places where it continues to show up, have immense compassion and continue to do different practices that help me uproot those things and water the seeds and nourish the roots of Perspectives that are in service of my highest dreams of living in deep alignment with nature, with my ancestry, with the things that matter to me. And I see these holidays, places of pause the new year as a really great opportunity to do that. Have most of my New Year's resolutions come. To the full fruition and the way that I envisioned them. No, not necessarily, but has. Have multiple New Year's resolutions in different ways, helped me to jumpstart different practices that helped me learn new strategies and for several weeks or a few months, start to live into a new reality? Hell yeah! You betcha they did! And that has value to me. I'm here for it. You don't have to be and that's okay, but I want to make a case....particularly if you're not or wherever you are on the spectrum for on ramps. So I like spacious on ramps. So I've been talking about this with the participants in my Grounded and Growing program for a couple weeks now, at the beginning of December, and perhaps maybe next year, I'll start it around November. So good. To begin thinking about and anticipating the forthcoming new year, not from a place of pressure, but from a place of spaciousness. And it's a couple months away or now by the time you're listening to this episode. If you're listening to it when it comes out, The new year is two weeks away and I have time and space to reflect. To think about what I want and not necessarily have all the answers, but to continue to chew on them if things aren't clear. And if I am clear about certain things I want, to start to pilot them and play some internal mental games with myself or with others. Let's pretend it's the new year and try on this sugar free diet, or this low sugar diet, or Which I'll come back to in a moment. That's an anecdote that I wanted to share or this weekly planning process. I've started to re institute. I was slacking, not really not doing it. I have it on my calendar, a recurring weekly meeting to do weekly planning. And oh, my goodness. Oh, this year was tough. The past two Jewish years were very hard for me in a lot of ways. The Shemitah year was meaningful, but was rough. And the year after that was incredibly fruitful. And I've profoundly deepened my relationship with the Divine, with the Divine Beloved, with creator, with great spirit. And also, I reached the limit of my full being's capacity and it wasn't enough for a few months in this year. And that was hard and dark and difficult. And I took some minor comfort in knowing that. If and when I feel like that momentarily or for a period of time, that means that I'm on the precipice of growth, that I have done the best that I could with all of the knowledge and understanding I have, because I'm intense and really into life and super dedicated like that. I know not everybody's that way. And my desires, my life, certain circumstances needed more of me in particular ways and exceeded my capacity. And so when I feel that tension it's quite painful and scary and lonely. It was rough. It was rough. So I forget exactly where I was going. Hashtag ADHD, but where it's guiding me now is to say, so all the more special is it that, oh, that's what I was saying that I'm on the other side of a lot of learning, that I was given opportunities. That did align with my ultimate goals, but didn't align with what my brain and my being was ready for at that moment. But I've grown into it and I'm now in a much stronger place where I really was given a lot of opportunities to deepen my relationship with trust in the divine and even if I was navigating circumstances that for me were extremely hard for me. And I stayed with it and I continued my different practices. And I also, in a number of ways, noticed that some of those things in the moment wasn't serving me and I let go and I floated. It's like a whole separate episode and I began to kind of float. I didn't really feel like I was floating, or I guess I didn't feel like I was in a boat. I felt boatless, but I was on the surface of the proverbial ocean waters. Oh yeah, I talked about this before. I already talked about this on an episode. Oh, and it was so hard. I could start crying remembering the pain of that. And there was very little wind and very little wind in my life. And All I could really do was float. And from my perspective and my thinking about this may continue to evolve, but my understanding of that now on the other side of it, really glad to be on the other side of it, is that part of that was deeply by design. I was put into a position. I felt like my guides and my divine spiritual entourage. Hashem, I have various words I use for the Divine Shekhinah, the great source of all life and love, and the different manifestation that divinity comes in the form of various other members of my spiritual entourage, ancestors, angels, guides others. It seems to me like a specific journey was crafted for me. Because I would continue to iterate and work on things and I was in a period where I just needed to float. So I guess that's another dimension of it that I've being guided and or my subconscious mind is guiding me to also mention so on ramps, pilots and floating and shift happening. That's not from our direct efforting, but that comes from an attunement that can come when we release and allow. Spirit to move and work within us and other parts of our being to move within us that isn't necessarily part of our conscious waking consciousness. And that energy, that experience really wanted to happen through me over this past year. And I'm on the other side of a lot of it, which doesn't mean it might not happen again and or that it stopped. It's still ongoing, but it's not as significant as it was. Which is why I'm able to come back on and record more podcasts. Because all of that was very hard for me to access during those months and conveniently there weren't a lot of, there were some, but not many demands on my time anyway. So it was like I was really being guided to just face certain fears that were guiding me in ways so that I could dissolve some of it and not have that even subtly in the background running. My stream of consciousness took me to a really intense place. I'm just going to take a few breaths. Maybe you can take them with me as I recenter. So New Year's for me personally I don't know about for you. I'm excited for a new year now. When years are great, I'm excited to continue to build and grow. And when years have been trying, I appreciate, even if it's just a construct, but an opportunity for a restart. And or a recommitment to the things that matter to me and I love having on ramps to Try out new things to try different things on I mentioned the low sugar free program or Diet that is something that is a practice that has been hard for me to maintain in different ways because of the context in which I live but What I learned from doing this class, and I'll talk about it in a moment, but when I do substantially reduce my sugar, life is better for me. I don't have brain fog, my blood sugar levels are even, my health overall is better. So I, a few years ago, saw an ad from an Aussie woman, a white Aussie Australian woman, who was doing a program. She's since stopped doing it. I'm blanking on her name right now, but I'm saying that because maybe some of you did her program or are aware of it, or maybe at some point she'll hear this. Hi, thank you so much. You were so very helpful to me. And she ran a program. I can't even remember what it's called now. I don't know if it was like quit sugar for 60 days or something like that. And in her marketing materials for it, what she wrote really spoke to me. She talked about things like sugar at times can really can control or demand. People move in particular ways and she likes being able to be in the driver's seat and decide when she does and doesn't want to eat sugar and that it cleared up her brain fog and and that she likes not constantly wondering when she would get her next hit of sugar. And I think she said other things. I can't remember it now. It was almost 10 years ago and that just really spoke to me. I remembered when I was a little kid and at times I would eat lots of chocolate or which is fine at times. It's fine. But I would, I don't know. It just, it resonated with me or throughout my younger professional years, often in the afternoon, I would crave sugar. And I think I did this program. I was doing this sugar free. For 60 days program after I'd already learned an insight about that, which was that my when I increased my intake of raw and or just like my whole food diet when I moved to a much more whole food diet, which had pretty much been raised on but began juicing and eating lots of salads in the form of green soups and doing different things that My cravings for sugar went away and it was cool for me to notice from my own lived experience like, Oh, I think my sugar cravings are actually vitamin cravings that I'm misunderstanding because of corporate involvement in our food systems and their desire to make money at all costs. So adding lots of sugar to keep things addictive, keep people buying more and more. I signed up for this program and I was very excited about it and it was, and I was a little disappointed when I signed up because the start time was like three or four weeks out from when I registered, like she did a good job of creating like a good amount of urgency. So I signed up. And then I saw that it wasn't starting for four weeks, and I was initially a little crestfallen. But then I thought I'm inspired by what she's saying, and this is going to be a huge transition for me, so I'm just going to start doing it. I did it for a few days, and then on the weekend, I was really craving French toast. I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the time, so I went to my, one of my favorite jaunts, and had some delicious French toast, and was bummed that I didn't honor my new agreement with myself. But it was during the on ramp, so it was okay. So I got to do a reset and try again, and then try again, and I had a few different slip ups. But by the time I got to the start of the class, I felt more ready. I'd been paying more attention. And I hadn't like particularly overly fixated on all the specifics. I was just generally trying to do as best I could and do different things such that when I actually did start in this case, her course, and she had different recommendations. And she said for the first week, I think it was that we would reduce all artificial sugar, but you could still eat fruit. And then after that week, she also wanted us for six weeks of the program to also not eat sweet fruits. Right. Oh, and and I was ready for it because I'd had this on ramp, the space beforehand, where I had space to mess up and I wasn't out of the loop because it was just extra space and free time anyway. So I just I really like these on ramp periods of being able to try on something and not make it too hard, but set a goal and really like a kavannah, an intention and really try to be in alignment with that thing. And also just notice and pay attention almost as though you were like time tracking or food tracking, or just kind of keep track, do a pilot, an observational pilot. Where you have this on ramp and you start piloting things and notice, okay, when did you fall off and what was happening during that time? And because it's not as focused on a specific, like you have to do these things, it's more about, well, I actually don't have to do this. I could not do any of this and I could just wait till the start time, but I'm choosing to. So it just, to me, when I do that and I'd be happy to hear from you at some point. If you have other things that are kind of like this, but it takes a different form for you. Because what I'm talking about here. It has a little bit of principle, but a lot of just practice, right? For me, there's some principle or some enduring insights about the value of piloting and the value of transitions and transitional on ramps that are incremental and help us build up to where we want to be, right? So I guess that's another way of thinking about it, right? If there's a gap of what we want to do, if we have a goal of something that we want to achieve or start working toward I think often people don't account for the fact that they need an on ramp just to get even into get even get on the path on the right road toward that goal. Like they're on a different road. They need like the metaphor of a highway on ramp. They need an on ramp to get on to the highway. That they want. They can't, it's hard to just go through the brush, go off road all of a sudden. So don't go off road. And instead experiment, either find an on ramp or create an on ramp. And one of the ways that I like, one of the things I like to do during that time is to pilot, right? Which on ramp do I want? What's feeling good? What doesn't feel good? How can I identify, as I move toward this, the path of greatest ease? Or if I'm really going for something that's a little bit difficult, how can I water seeds that deeply affirm various values and or attributes that I have within me that I maybe have or haven't been paying attention to? But by cultivating my awareness in those, it helps to bring my strengths appreciatively to the forefront so that I can leverage them and. And begin to move in the direction that I want, right? And are there other ways that I could take some time to look for helpful resources, which at times people do in the form of programs, and that can be really great, but but it's worthwhile to take some time in the time that you will be taking in the future to actually do that thing to almost intellectually or spiritually luxuriate. And do some exploring and take some time with different materials and then try it on and move out of the fear of, am I going to be able to do it or not? But let's see, let's try it. And if it doesn't work, rather than shaming ourselves, this is a huge part, notice, this isn't working for me in this moment, or perhaps or are there ways that I can tweak it first and reflect and fix it? Figure out how I can rejigger it to get it to work for me, or perhaps actually this isn't speaking to my needs right now because I'm not able, it's, there's not enough of an on ramp with this resource, or this tool, or this book, or it's not interesting enough to help me bridge that difference, to help me scale up to the level that I want to be, right, oh, I just, oh, I just love this so much, there's so much to talk about here around I'm really into identifying the path of greatest ease, especially for bigger things that we want, of often we've been conditioned to take the harder route. But I like to set our aspirations to the highest levels that we can and then leverage what's around us. Leverage deep appreciative practices. Leverage. Things that we might not be appreciating, or we might take for granted, or might annoy us a little bit, but if we leveraged that thing that we can do that has some ease involved for us, it's not a permanent thing, but that can help us move to the next place, right? And that's I'm getting so excited. And that's a whole other thing, just about the path of greatest ease. I should just dedicate a whole episode and class. I could do like a whole mini class on that. Would you like that? If you'd like that, write that in the comments of the, if you're watching the YouTube video or send me a message at info at joyousjustice. Anyway, so on ramps. So I just, I really love the idea and love when I can do on ramps and I would, I want to invite myself and my consciousness and my spirit guides. I just want to put this out into the ether. Because I love when I find myself doing an on ramp, like, oh, yes and adding in some piloting into that on ramping of trying on things and seeing how it feels and seeing what I like and seeing things that I kind of like, but I don't exactly like and how can I tweak it or how can I tweak it. Self coach myself. How can I manage my mind? How can I make friends with my mind about it? How can I do some emotional processing to identify? What's at the root? What's old? That's coming up and what's old emotion that I need to process to clear the path and perhaps in doing all that I may find actually the very nature of what I'm going for. I actually need to shift the goal entirely and how great to realize that Days and or weeks before we start in this effort and just the whole setup of the effort in general around New Year's and also other things is I gotta get it right. And just oh, just stop that like Christian hegemonized concept of these binary concepts of good, bad, of success, failure, like it's so not life. It's just not even. I just see like mud or flowers that are messy and crooked at times and other times beautiful and it's all a process, just that holistic nature. Ah. Yeah, so I really, I would like to personally find more times. Oh, that was another thing I was going to say. And if you're like, the thing that you want to do, there's no way you can really on ramp it or pilot it in the next. Two weeks. I would invite you to reconsider that and breathe into that and try to look at that from other angles. And perhaps like you have this really big goal and perhaps you could just micro on ramp it, which may actually be all you need to start to move your way into an easier way into moving intentionally toward that which you desire and being in greater alignment with what you want and embodiment and deeper embodiment of it. Oh, yes. And so that reminded me too. So if January, seems too close, like it's just two weeks away, then I invite you to pick a different target and use, have an on ramp for an on ramp and decide that your day is actually going to be February 1st that January has so many different things and people are hustling and moving around and there's so much stuff and you want to be able to navigate that Get certain things taken care of with taxes if you have W 2s or whatever those, whichever those ones are called that you need to issue like I do as a business owner, different to different consultants, that like you have that space and that it's going to be, and also you don't like, which I would agree with a lot of the messaging around this is so tied to capitalism and puritanical values and good bad binaries and all of this. stuff and all this pressure, right? So you might just be like, I want that to clear. I want that noise to clear and I want this to be on my terms. So actually my day is going to be February. or if you want to move into something bigger and you have a body of work that you need to do, and if you're looking for support around that body of work, Grounded and Growing is a great place for that. oUr program, my program Grounded and Growing you could choose for those who are Jewish or those who are Christian or those who are Muslim, you could pick like Passover, Easter, or Ramadan, and decide that you're going to do several months and taking on various pieces or even just one thing where you're really going to explore and go in deep around that piece and engage in spiritual exploration, nourishment, purification, whatever thatification, verbation you are seeking is, or it might be like sinking into being present with nothingness and silence. There's so many different things. Then you can use. This period for nothing and or just to start to think about what are some of the contours that you want for your on ramp? What are ways that you want to water the seeds to set yourself up for success to create an ecosystem for success to help support you and position you well, oh, how radical is this? What if you were like, really? I want to launch. Whatever, just personally or within your org or something like that in 2025, in 2024 is going to be all about positioning myself, creating an ecosystem of success, which is something I learned from a coach whose material I used to follow years ago when I was in college, Phil Humbert. I hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. And nourishing myself and creating playlists and engaging in different practices that help me embody and start to live into and create this reality or this experience that I want to actually actualize or step into in 2025, in 2024. Ooh, I like thinking about this for me. That's exciting. Ooh! My business and my life and my family and my fitness. What do I want to be doing in 2025 that's going to be like so fun and exciting and stretch zone? And what can I be doing over the coming year? What are different practices that I can deepen, that I can identify? to start to weave into my life so that the ground is laid for inevitable or highly likely high high predictability of 2025 being An absolutely outstanding year, right? Ooh, like what have I dedicated my whole year in different ways? Some of the core things that matter to me around energetic and mental agility and being in a very joyful place as often as I can be. And also continuing to maintain my various trauma healing practices and various pivoting and resiliency practices that holds me. When I'm navigating various circumstances and. Temporarily lose touch with that agility, but really work on cultivating that in a deep and profound way and thinking about that rather than, am I achieving it now? Am I not? Of perhaps finding some way of measuring it and tracking and testing different things and seeing what really helps me build the shocks of my emotional and energetic car really builds them up so I can hit almost any road bump and I'm absorbing it, but it's not hitting my car. There's space. There's some space and absorbency. How am I keeping that energetic cup empty? Yeah, I'm excited to think about that. So I'm here for on ramps and piloting and then piloting different things and not needing it to be perfect, but actually just doing it purely for the purpose of, well, wouldn't this be fun if this is successful? And also it may or may not be, but what can I learn from this? I'm excited about it. So cheers to this two week on ramp into 2024. May yours be sweet, whether you're doing specific activities or just taking time to journal occasionally, or reflect as you're going on walks. This can look like a lot of different things, and then if it's not going well, also think okay how about I move it to, especially since we're in the dead of winter, to, to set the new goal of springtime. Because that also is one of the Jewish New Year's, Passover is one of the Jewish New Year's. And also for other traditions, find something around like a few months out. I'm excited about this. Are you excited about this? Feel free to let me know. So I think that's it for today what else did I want to say here? Oh, I wanted to let you know that I set a personal goal for myself a couple weeks ago to come up with some additional podcast ideas, and I basically came up with a year's worth of content over the course of the week, like all these ideas kept flooding through, which again is that's a sign to me that floating period has ended and I'm now in a place where I'm back in the ship and Starting to direct it and the sail is starting to pick up some winds. And I'm able to chart out a detailed plan and also adjust as the plan changes constantly. But things are moving and shaking and and I'm ready to talk about a number of things that I've wanted to talk about for years. And in some ways that I danced around, like I was listening to one of those Hanukkah episodes, the one that T'ruah. Shared so thoughtfully and I noticed at one point that I talked about a concept, but I didn't fully name it because I was afraid to name it the concept being that I don't believe that there is inherently a source of evil in our universe. And so I basically spoke around that, but I didn't directly name it and whether it's that or topics relating to Israel Palestine, there are a number of issues that I spent four years doing a lot of identity reclamation work and also processing of deeply internalized terror. That I now feel ready to talk about these different things in the ways and on the terms that I want to talk about them. All of that to say please keep tuning in. Please share these episodes as they resonate with friends and colleagues and family. and let's continue to be in community together because we have lots of interesting conversations to be had and I'm excited to be in those discussions and in this ongoing work of collective liberation with you, collective liberation, healing and love with you from in terms of the macro level, all the way down to sacred precious, You, who is both a singular being and very much a part of all that is. And divine oneness and interconnected with communities and yeah, I'm just excited to play in that multiplicity and identify various insights and lessons and challenge ourselves and dream big, beautiful, unapologetic, visionary dreams of what we would love to see. Much love. Until next time. 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 joyousjustice.com 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.