Turns out there's another way to be

About values and paradigm shifts.

CARE.CHECK*: What is your definition of Ease?

What does that word mean to you?

Try to say it a few times and see how it feels.

Does it fit? Does it sound inviting or incomprehensible?

Is it a priority of yours or is it a word you had completely forgotten about?

I promise you it is a worthy idea to sit with…

And I hope this week’s letter will feel like a different kind of call to action.

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 In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)

IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, you can use Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by a Care.robot.friend :)

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Hi Care.Friend,

How have you been? 

Are you studying something at the moment? 

What is one pattern that you’d like to bring more light and clarity towards this month? 

What is one pattern you already uncovered—and how much has it changed your life’s experience to become acquainted with it?

I moved this weekend, and as I shared in my previous letter, I honored this moment by starting a deep process of reimagination. And the more I do this, the more I witness that imagination is indeed the way into reality.

It’s so funny, isn’t it, that we would need the ability to imagine all that can be, in order to realize all that we actually are not.

But that also makes sense, doesn’t it? 

Because if you only know one way, it can be hard to even realize that it is a way.

It is one of the things I love most about immigration. It is so precious to get to witness a new way of doing the most simple things and to thereby realize that no way is THE way. That each way is just a decision. We have different cleaning products. We use different kinds of locks on doors. We don’t write addresses the same way. All those things that I would never have questioned or identified as “choices” if I had not moved to a new country! 

Until you know that something is a choice, it’s really hard to give yourself permission to do things differently (e.g. not reading your work emails while on vacation—I had NO IDEA it was an option, until I realized that doing it was a mix of compulsion and learned expectations).

And I would even argue that it’s close to impossible to even fathom that another way exists.

And such a paradigm shift happened to me this week.

I read Rachel Cargle’s beautiful memoir and manifesto to support me through my week of refocused self-creation: A Renaissance Of Our Own.

In this book, she shares her own experience revisiting what tends to be prescribed concepts, such as family life, feminism, education or work. With each word you can connect with her courage and inner strength, as she realized that we have full ownership of—and responsibility over— our life, and that we GET to define how it will look and feel like.

And of course, she shared her values as a foundation to build her renaissance upon. 

This is something I deeply believe in too.

Homing in on our values gives us a ground to walk on, pillars to hold on to, and maybe even more importantly a compass, so that we can always know where OUR true North lies. Feeling them, relying on them, embodying them makes it so easy for us to know what’s in alignment or not with our core. 

I connected with this deeply healing truth at first thanks to Brene Brown. It was one of my first posts on this platform, because I know that our values are our guides and mentors on our way to our sacred dream.

We NEED to start there. 

* We need the ability to imagine all that can be,

in order to realize all that we actually are not.*

And Brene Brown invites us to select two (I know: 2!).

All values build on each other, and of course everyone holds more than two—but I deeply resonate with the idea of knowing what are the most important values our heart currently holds. The values that feel like they’re an immovable part of us at the moment and that they define most of our journey so far.

Mine were Kindness and Truth at the time:

I loved picturing them as two pillars I could put each my feet on and/or two anchors, one grounding each of my legs, keeping me sturdy and intentional through any storm. 

Kindness has always felt to me like the most treasured priority of my heart… and I was mocked for my reverence to kindness during my entire childhood. I was mocked in Academia too. An old boyfriend even told me that there was something wrong with how kind I was, that it was unnatural and therefore problematic (I mean… we broke up). But who cares? Because when it’s a core value, it shields you from the most unconscious forces of Nature! And I believe it saved me. Because that was the first breach in the blind trust I had put in those who surrounded me as I was growing up…

Indeed, as a child we trade authenticity for connection out of survival (I wrote about those two core needs here, here and here), but when there’s such a value mismatch, it keeps a warning sign alive that those connections might not feel authentic to our guts and hearts... And I could make everything that was happening my fault or responsibility—to gain back some false sense of control on my surroundings—but I could never reconcile how the beauty of kindness could be overlooked, shamed… or even resented !?! 

Regarding truth, that value did lead me into troubles more than once. It’s not often celebrated in Academia (which is painfully ironic…), and long before that, I just couldn’t let my mother say things about me that were not true. Of course, it would have been more harmonious to just apologize for doing what I did not do, but I was not having it. And in many ways, I love that I proved to myself what I'm willing to undertake in the name of my truth and integrity. She used her precious words (and hands) to destroy, I used mine to remain whole. 

Because that’s another feature of our core values. They’re the guardians of our integrity. When we’re aligned with our values, we can face almost anything. We have our why. We know why we’re doing what we’re doing. We can sit with the discomfort of our “NOs”. We can thoroughly enjoy the beauty of our “YESs”. We know who we are and we let ourselves be who we are. [What a gift…]

My second life altering experience with values came this time through Tony Robbins.

I had been very resistant to reading one of his books, because I didn’t feel resonant with his energy. However, I have to say I do not regret caving in. It made sense as someone who was studying coaching, and as a devotee and advocate of self-creation, to at least get familiar with his message—and his teachings are indeed very impactful.

He understands the power of a human mind, and he understands that our gut and hearts are not only our mind’s best friends, but also invaluable guides on our way to turn our mind into an instrument of good and wonder, and to unroot the programming that traps the mind into the role of an unskilled disembodied leader.

“Awakening the giant within” turned out to be a very powerful read. (One more humbling experience showing that we should never decide what we believe about someone from afar.)

And I’m sharing this because, in that book, he introduces the idea that we can CHOOSE our core values.

That was such an epiphany…

I had no idea you “could do that.” I had looked for my values within who I already was, within whom I had been up to that point. Thanks to him, I suddenly realized I could choose them from the point of view of the woman I felt I was meant to be! 

And that’s when I realized that Truth is indeed incredibly important to me, but not as much as my optimism. My sense of optimism was not as defined as my quest for truth had been at the time, but the more I become who I truly am, the more optimistic I get—and the more I unlearn that truth is even a thing. Because everything is a perspective… and even if I believe that there are some foundational truths regarding our essence and the path we’re meant to walk on, I also notice that those truths can only be felt and touched, but never defined or put into words! The second we write them down we turn them into concepts—and concepts imply limitation, if not separation. 

* A core value shields you

from the most unconscious forces of Nature.*

So I changed the pillars of my life from kindness and truth, to kindness and optimism. 

And so much within and AROUND me changed!

I had new guideposts, a rewired inner compass, and I could reclaim another part of me that had been tamed until that day—even though my optimism had been my best ally on my way from a bleak past into a colorful future. 

When I enter a conversation grounded in kindness and optimism, I can honor the connection I’m creating (when it feels like love) or know without a doubt, that this connection is temporary and only here to teach me something (when I experience lovelessness or fear). 

Freed from my reverence to Truth, I’m learning how to let people be wrong about me. And I’m also releasing the responsibility I had cursed myself with, to help people acknowledge the truth they’re refusing to see.

I’m still committed to feeling my truth and letting my truth guide me, wholeheartedly, but I won’t spend my energy decorating someone else's side of the street any longer.

It’s also much easier to be kind when you’re not holding on to Truth as tightly. And it allowed me to witness how my allegiance to Truth could sometimes lead me to be unkind to others (and there’s nothing more toxic than an inner value conflict!) or hinder my sense of safety.

And all of this leads me back to Rachel’s book and the epiphany SHE brought me about values. 

Because hers are Abundance, Opportunity and… Ease.  

Ease! 

EASE!!!!

My heart stopped for a few seconds. That’s how startling reading those words felt within me. Ease? I kept on repeating, “Ease?”… 

You can do that? You can choose EASE as a VALUE? Like it’s allowed? It’s a thing? It’s something that can be seen as so sacred and important that it can be a value?

I couldn’t stop thinking about this for the next 48 hours…. That felt like such a foreign concept to me! Ease… I wasn’t even sure I understood what it meant. I’m still not completely sure this is something I’ve ever experienced…

And yet that word has become as agitating and enchanting to me as New York or Singing would be a decade ago. So I know there’s something here my heart really wants me to pay attention to.

I could never choose it as a value right now, it’s too much of a stretch—and I could not honor what I don’t understand yet. But curiosity regarding what it would mean has been awakened in every cell of my body. 

What would a life grounded in Ease be like? 

What would look different? 

How would it feel?  

[And how resonant the word Ease sounds with a devotion to kindness and a dedication to optimism…]

Ease.

What a sweet, tender, inviting and charming word.

And what a different world we would have if we all held Ease as a treasured value? 

In many ways, this was one of the greatest gifts that Steve Jobs offered us. Everything he created was meant to bring service and EASE into our surroundings. That’s why Apple products never come with a manual. We don’t need them. Things have been designed to feel instinctual and pleasing. Things have been designed for ease.

And the more I explore the magic of our intuition, the power of our hearts and the potential of our minds, the more I understand that the way we feel while creating is the most impactful part of our creations. So what if ease infused everything we put into form and into the world?

What a world we would be living in…

So here is my new pledge: I will study Ease. 

I am committed to learning how Ease is created, nurtured, channeled, shared and experienced. 

I wish to slowly learn how to embody this word and get intimate with how it feels and where it leads me. And I’m excited to witness how Ease can be the path to making our dreams come true, in an even more beautiful and impactful way.

Because that’s what Rachel Cargle did.

And because that makes so much sense to me that a Universe created by, through, for, and FROM Love would be inherently designed so that all beings experience and bring forward Ease.

Now, as someone who just packed, moved out, thoroughly cleaned two apartments, moved in and fully unpacked in 72 hours, I have a LONG journey in front of me.

I slept less than six hours each night (I just couldn’t). I skipped most of my meals (it honestly completely eluded me that eating was a thing). I got hypnotized by the voice telling me that I had to keep going, doing, going, doing, going, doing, because otherwise ALL would fall apart, and the entire world would be mad at me. I let my Fear take over and convince me that I would DIE (quite literally) if I had to live around any clutter for more than a day in each apartment.

I also followed my vibrant, kind and optimistic heart that wanted to honor every minute left in my previous apartment (and make sure the next tenant would love it as much as I did), and who relished the idea of building the most charming, heartwarming and inviting nest for my inner singer and artist. 

I wanted a perfect goodbye and a perfect new beginning… And I achieved both! but I did it without ANY ease.

Allowing Ease is so hard for most of us. Ease is not rewarded by culture and is vilified by capitalism. Ease was antonymic to everything my upbringers believed in. Ease is modeled virtually nowhere, and so Ease is just a very foreign concept in our society. 

But that doesn't have to be that way.

We have a choice to make here. We can unlearn what we’ve been taught and experiment with any way of being we believe would serve most our inner alignment and our fellow beings.

We’re meant to be the change we want to see in the world & to remember that our life is our message. Those were two of the most potent teachings of Gandhi… 

And if there’s one change I want to see, it’s the culture of self-torture and self-abandonment we’ve all been trained to unconsciously worship. I want to see self-connection become our utmost priority and self-creation our sacred responsibility! 

Because who we are, we offer to others… And I’ve witnessed the magic of an open heart! I want to see a world of open hearts! And Ease softens and opens us up... I don’t need to have tried it out to know that. 

And if there’s one thing I want you to know more than anything else, it is that you deserve ease, that you’re worthy of ease, that you’re meant to live in ease and that Ease is the secret ingredient for your sacred dream to come into the world.

I believe that for you, which means it has to mean to be true for me too.

So let’s experiment with Ease dear Care.friend, if you will… 

Let’s change the rules of the game and see if the game’s aftermath can finally switch from ache to AWE!

Let’s choose ease and witness what shifts, what heals, what BLOOMS.

We’ve seen what fighting ease does to our minds, our bodies and our world. Let’s discover what choosing ease will do for our dreams, our hearts and Nature.

Let’s choose Ease… and watch everything change.

With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.

Always,

leo