I have a pond right outside my window.  It’s small, manmade by the guy who built the house.  We inherited the pond and the fish.  We tried to add our two goldfish that we brought with us, but the existing fish pushed one of them out of the water and killed it, so we rescued the other one who lived out its life in a tank. 

This pond is an on-going metaphor for me.  What pond am I swimming in that I can’t see.  How big is it really?  What have I killed to keep new ideas from being introduced.  Who have I button-holed in a tank somewhere because it’s safer for me to see them that way?  Can I wake up enough to become one of those walk on land fish…or maybe even a flying fish?

How can you tell?

These are some of my measures:

1.  Am I doing new things?  Are they scarey?  Am I doing them anyways?

2.  Is my world expanding?  Am I adding new ideas and new people with whom to explore those ideas?

3.  Am I grateful for everything that comes my way, even the stuff that makes me uncomfortable, or sad?

4.  Do I stand in my own power?  Do I pull that power from within rather than from what others think/say/do?  If I’m the only one, do I stand up anyways?

5.  Am I reaching out to those coming behind me?  Am I walking with at least one someone beside me?  Better, have I created a community from which I can draw strength and courage and to which I can contribute the same?   Have I developed strategies for and a practice of distilling the wisdom of those who have gone before me?

6.  In my profession, can I acknowledge – and feel good about – those who reject my work, seeing it as my work and not me?  Do I know with certainty that my work is not for everyone and that’s okay?

7.  Do I acknowledge and understand how my minute to minute choices create the life I am living? 

8.  Am I familiar with all the stories I tell myself, the roles I play in them and how to change them?

9.  Can I let go of trying to control anything and everything in my life and go with the flow?  (No try, just do.  Yoda)  Do I acknowledge that there is no such thing as control or security – so I might as well just name everything an adventure and get on with it?

10.  Am I okay that there’s no one right answer for whatever is offering and opening itself to me?  Am I happy to live in the question?

Just so you know, I can answer yes to most of these but rarely all at the same time (every now and then I get 15 minutes or so of amazing clarity).  Sometimes only 1 at a time.  I don’t use these questions as a test that I can fail, I use them as a sounding board against which I can measure growing wings.

How do you know you’re awake?  I’d love to hear from you! (which helps me along with #2 and #5 above!)

And on that note, check out this great post from my cohort Anastasia Valentine:  10 Rules for Brilliant Women

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

The experiences of childhood – learning to work on goals others decide upon, developing work habits not natural to our own process and rhythm, being evaluated according to the expectations of authority figures – do not prepare us for a self-trusting healthy adulthood.  A Diaz.

May your insurrection and your resurrection be the same.  Robin Morgan

Reality is a cipher with many solutions, all of them the right ones.  Iris Murdoch