Several weekends ago, I was at a meditation retreat at Kripalu with one of my teachers, David Harshada Wagner. Something continued to come up for me that I couldn’t resolve. It’s not overwhelm. It’s not busy-ness. It’s not too much. It’s more like – YES – I love all this good stuff coming my way – but I also need an extra me to ENJOY it. Besides meditation, I asked, how do I gain more agility? More stamina? More bandwidth? More everything?!?!

Many of you are in the same boat…especially if you’re living an Ensemble Life (see last week’s post.)

His answer was hilarious – he even laughed out loud saying it.

“You have a capacity issue. And while there are many ways to change that, an easy one is through your spirit animal.”

After fully enjoying how very West Coast that wisdom really is, we got serious. I’ve been operating as a gazelle – a light, bounding, quick-footed animal leaping through the prairie. And that was great for my 20’s and part of my 30’s, but now I”m a mother, an author, a grown daughter, a wife. Now I need the power, strength, foresight and leadership of…a lioness. Boom.

I have a feeling you’ve traveled a similar path.

As funny as it sounds, your energetic source material – the thing you channel in your day to day essence – really informs your ability to find capacity. What’s even more interesting, is it doesn’t look that different on the outside, but on the inside, the architecture shifts and expands.

What you may need is to slow down, to do more in less time, to get smaller, to get much, much bigger. Whatever it is, an animal makes it embodied.

Thanks for not thinking I’ve gone down a mystical rabbit hole today. Once in a while the woo-woo magic is pretty practical.

When you feel like a badass, life is good. Typically you’ve nailed a project, done something heroic, completed a marathon, landed a gig – whatever. You know it when you feel it. But what if we could badassify our lives a little more? Here’s my rationale: the more you feel like the best version of yourself you can be, the more you exceed your own expectations, and the more you choose yourself when the world would have you another way. When you choose yourself, a positive domino effect ensues. In short, more good sh$t happens.

Here is what helps me channel that feeling on a day to day basis – whether I’ve done anything memorable, exceptional or newsworthy, or not:

1. Surround yourself with teams and people who make you feel like you’ve achieved something – just by being in their company. They don’t have to blow smoke up your….skirt…or do anything other than share air and space and even better, a shared passion or project with you. Just being with people you respect and admire – like a lot – brings out the badass in us.

2. Revisit moments from your life that made you feel limitless and amazing. You can see a couple of mine referenced in the photo. So many of us forget that we’ve blown our own minds!!! It’s worth a trip down memory lane to remember.

3. Disrupt your day to day conversation with people by telling them the good things you see in them. You can start off with, “You know what’s incredible about you?” and then SEE them in the way that only you see them, and tell them about it. “You give the clearest, most actionable feedback anyone could ever hope to get,” or, “You can take the most awkward moment and make it hilarious,” or, “you have the body of Jessica Alba, the intellect of Madeline Albright, the presence of Michelle Obama and the wit of Chelsea Handler.” (If you know anyone like that please introduce us.)

Here’s to being a badass, and not waiting for moments in the sun to feel it. #everydaybadass.
PS. Props to my old friend Jen Sincero who wrote a book on this subject titled, “You are a Badass.” Perhaps you’ve seen it at the airport as it is nowhewwwwge (another Jen-ism.)