Before I share a few words, I wanted to give you all the quick links to my online offerings (click on links to sign up via Eventbrite):

NEW BLOG POST
 

About 4 years ago, I wrote a blog post about life’s difficult experiences being like a giant strainer - if we let it - filtering out that what matters and that what doesn’t. That analogy keeps coming back to me, day after day, week after week during this global pandemic. And I think it’s absolutely as true now as it was then.

In our current reality, and in the very best case scenario, we are experiencing tremendous constraints - we can’t go anywhere, we can’t see or physically be near people we love (or, heck, even those we feel neutrally or negatively about!), we can’t do many of the things we enjoy and depend on for entertainment and fulfillment.

My brother, who is an amazing high school English Teacher, Varsity Soccer Coach, and fellow Truth Seeker, recently explained a soccer coaching technique that he utilizes from the book, Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition, called “Ecological Dynamics.” In Ecological Dynamics, “the environment created in which skills are discovered by the participants, or emerge naturally…. Constraints allow for environments to be limited so specific skills emerge as a result.” 

As he described this to me, I had one of my head-exploding-dot-connecting moments that I love so very much - constraints have the capacity to paralyze us or make us grow (or paralyze us until there’s nothing to do but grow!) Constraints don’t keep us from what we want to achieve/do/be, the constraints force us to figure it out, to pave our own path from a totally different place - a much more initiative and creative place, one that is much more closely aligned with our truest self. Constraints don’t lack potential, they ARE potential. 

We must pay attention NOW, during these times of heavy constraint on many levels. We must deeply understand our experiences now, record them, make sense of them, so that THEN, when the pull to go back to things as they were, we can tether ourselves more securely to our truth, to what feels like an aligned life, a fulfilled and enriched life.

{FINISH READING on my blog...}

, Ellie