15 Sep, 2023

Are You Working Out With Life?

Hey Purpose Peep!

Are you working out with life, or does it feel as though life is working you out? The difference between the two may seem like a play on words, and yet it is a big deal because the stories we tell ourselves and our perception manifest experiences and create our realities.

When I expressed a sincere ask, an intention, to move with life instead of having what I call “rearview mirror” wisdom, something happened. It was not what I expected. It felt as though life responded by turning up the speed of life events that broke down the perception that I could control or manage this speed.

Think about being on a treadmill that is increasing in speed. Either you pick up your pace and be with the speed, or you will recognize the gap, usually by abruptly recognizing the difference, sometimes on your a**. But with the treadmill, you or someone else can turn down the speed so you can catch up. I discovered through many tries at “turning down the speed” that there was something else that wanted to be revealed, a different way to be with the situation.

One of my favorite purpose peeps and I have a metaphor for this. Imagine being in the “sea of change” with lots of waves, wild currents, and this feeling of being tossed about. You can fight the experience and try all of the swimming techniques you’ve garnered over the years, you know, totally wear yourself out doing all the things. The sea of change is about to overtake you, you start gulping water and feeling all the unknown creatures of change touching your body and amping up a fear response, when an intelligence connects with you. You turn on your back and float. You realize being as a new possibility, being with this unknown pattern that the sea of change knows and is trying to show you. When you look up, you see spaciousness, and possibility returns with the sea of change. Possibility and the sea of change are the contractions needed to birth something new.

Through my experience of floating on my back and trusting the speeding turn-up of events, life birthed a realization and a curiosity. I realized how I am responding to life is not working. Because I feel connected to what I am witnessing and the importance of understanding it from multiple perspectives, the curiosity of how to be present to the experience without trying to control what I do not yet understand opened. One possibility that emerged are reps, a new workout regime that life as the ultimate purpose coach is teaching. The thing is, life does not announce its program. It does not inform you of the format, the formwork, or the promise. Life shows up without an appointment, and sometimes we recognize the appointment. Life was answering my sincere ask with the reps so that I could cultivate the capacity to be with life instead of recognizing life lessons in the rearview mirror.

I believe we are having different experiences learning our way through the reps to be with the high volume of change we are experiencing as the world in change. I worked for a consultancy that specialized in transformational change. One of the identifiers of transformational change is the number of people directly impacted by the change. Purpose Peeps, with a world in change, there is an intersectionality of change that is impacting all life on the planet. How else would you describe humanity evolving and the way our planet is communicating the need for a different way of being with her?

Some of the Purpose Reps that allow me to build the capacity to be with a world in change (both within me and beyond me) are: conditioning (recognizing the many ways we are influenced from birth and before birth through epigenetics), deconditioning (the reckoning with conditioning to determine what stays, what gets composted, and what gets reimagined), life as a purpose partner (trusting that life is for me and us and knows something about how to restore us), awe (being with the vastness and mystery of the sea of change and trusting that there is something new and/or to be remembered that wants to presence, understand, and embody), and gratitude (thankful to be a part of restoration and healing that spans seven generations back, right now, and seven generations forward).

Purpose Reps are expanding and making themselves known through repetition. Notice repetition that you may be resisting and check in to see if it could be Purpose Reps in disguise, practices that are really important to your evolution.

Purpose Reps live in all of the courses that are in the Unlock YOUR keys App. They seem to integrate better as enablers in action rather the an idea. The Purpose Reps come alive and unleash their alchemy in us when they are woven into a practice we are committing our life force energy to.

When life is getting your attention in ways that you will recognize, I invite you to practice a purposeful pause in the liminal space between the world in change and the possibilities that it is alerting you to. You will be supported. There are Purpose Reps for you to practice and learn, enabling you to understand yourself better and unlock your core stability as you embrace the hope that resides within and flows through you.

Dena Wiggins, MBA is the founder of Success By Planning, LLC and co-lead of Soul To Soul Spaces. Dena pours her life force energy into ways of being for the purpose clarity, expression, and contributions of all (whom she intentionally calls Purpose Peeps). She believes the compassion of possibility is achieved through realized purpose, heartivism, and the acknowledgement and ending of harms to ourselves, each other and our planet. Learn more about her books, programs, coaching, and newly-released app, Unlock Your Keys featuring Purpose Reps, enablers and capacity builders for sustainable change at www.denawiggins.com.

The Wonderings/Wanderings Series are snippets to invite the curious soul forward in times that are calling her out to play.

12 Sep, 2023

Event + Response = Initiation To Unimaginal Outcomes

Author, Jack Canfield, shares one of my favorite sayings, Event + Response = Outcome in his book, Success Principles. Oh the many adventures integrating the principle that although we may not be in control of life’s events, we can control our response and therefore the realized outcome. As a Generator energetic type, this principle holds a resonant charge for over 50% of Purpose Peeps on the planet — we are sparked in response to something (that is a wandering/wondering for another day).

What if there is a new invitation emerging? With the huge menu of change we face daily — individually and collectively — what if Event + Response is leading to spillage — journeys to new, unimaginable outcomes?

Author, philosopher and fellow wanderer, Bayo Akomolafe, invites us to consider that the event + response = spillage, otherworld, cracks to explore new ways of being, new stories, and messy curiosities. After particpating in We Will Dance With Mountains Into The Cracks programs and the indescribable experience of Three Black Men last weekend, I wander/wonder out loud if recent really challenging events are initiations into new cracks of curiosity.

In 2020, fellow Purpose Peep, Jovian Zayne, initiated me into the wonder of being with the possibility that this is a time of reckoning. Because this initiation was associated with the notion of time, I accepted the initiation as time-specific, meaning there is a finite beginning and end. Throughout three years of being with this time of reckoning, I have come to realize the time of reckoning is TBD! Woosah, what a big lesson!

Reckoning does not wish to be tamed or put in a nice, neat box and tied with a bow of completion. And, the more I am with reckoning, it reveals its layers. Reckoning has become more of a practice, a strengthening of sorts to be with the time of disruptive initiations to consider new voices and multiple, complex centered perspectives. I hear Resmaa Menekem’s initiation into contextualization as a practice of our time, giving context to the decontextualized and unexplored within and with each other.

Another initiation and ongoing strengthening practice is accepting life as a purpose partner and coach. This practice allows a deepening trust that the new considerations, conditioning-recognition and deconditioning as pathways to authenticity are for me as if I have a custom curricula aligned with helping me to discern who I choose to be and what is mine to do (as offered by Meg Wheatley in the first and second editions of her book, Who Do We Choose To Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity).

Now, it seems what is up for reimagining (as nothing is a sacred cow in reckoning as a practice) is the composting of my revered Event + Response = Outcome to Event + Response = Initiation. Event + Response = Initiation is the invitation from life and the For You Tribe Of Resources to expand the frame of reference, comfort zone, and the conditioned expert-systems in our mainframe, carefully curated for our safety, protection and survival. And, there is no initiation manual or neon sign that signals initiation, instead often it is a faint whisper of a nudge or subtle something that tugs at the senses.

In recent lecture/explorations of Orland Bishop, he invites us to consider that major life events, especially challenging ones, are actually initiations. These events could be initiations or rites of passage into higher-conscious understandings that are pathways for evolving consciousness that becomes available in how we respond to the stimuli. Orland adds to Meg’s juicy questions mentioned above, “how do we need to be to be with what is happening?” Within the response is spaciousness to connect with the quality of what is being cultivated through us at this moment.

What if now is the time to for safety, protection and survival to widen as if it were birthing our next, and making room for our wilding, spilling over into new considerations that burst open new, unimagined, unchecked, newly seen fields of possibility, liminal spaces that we are being initiated into through unimaginable life events?

Dena Wiggins, MBA is the founder of Success By Planning, LLC and co-lead of Soul To Soul Spaces. Dena pours her life force energy into ways of being for the purpose clarity, expression, and contributions of all (whom she intentionally calls Purpose Peeps). She believes the compassion of possibility is achieved through realized purpose, heartivism, and the acknowledgement and ending of harms to ourselves, each other and our planet. Learn more about her books, programs, coaching, and newly-released app, Unlock Your Keys featuring Purpose Reps, enablers and capacity builders for sustainable change at www.denawiggins.com.

The Wonderings/Wanderings Series are snippets to invite the curious soul forward in times that are calling her out to play.