Regenerating from the inside out
It was a cold mid-winter evening in 2015, Angus & I were driving home across the high country between Ebor and Guyra in northern NSW. We were driving through falling snow showers after a weekend biodynamics workshop in Coffs Harbour. We had spent two days immersed in a group conversation led by 3 experienced biodynamic farmers (John Priestly, Hugh Lovell and Shane Joyce). Everything that was shared resonated so much, I had taken pages of notes trying to capture it all. I was energised, inspired and super enthusiastic about the possibilities that expanded through the conversations over these two days.
As we reflected on the weekend driving home, I remember noticing a familiar feeling. It was a feeling I had experienced after attending other inspiring gatherings with farmers who practised biodynamic agriculture. My energy was high, influenced by the enjoyment of being in a room full of like-minded people who are following their passion and singing to the tune of a different drum. Alongside this my mind felt like it had expanded, and it was processing a lot of information. Although we had been practicing biodynamics since 2006 and experiencing the benefits, there was still so much I didn’t know.
My heart had been opened further to new ways of being while my mind was processing and trying to fit this information into old, familiar frameworks. As we drove home, I gradually came to the realisation that I had gathered more than enough information. My next steps were not about knowing more, they were about learning from doing and who I was being. I consciously chose to shift my thinking away from its familiar pattern of collecting, analysing, and categorizing the information to find the right answers towards turning the inspiration from the weekend into practical actions I could take when I got home. This was not an idealistic wish list for one day when I had more time, the conditions were perfect, and I knew enough. It was a simple, practical list of actions I had the resources to implement straight away.
Like you, I was short on time, life was overflowing with tasks related to raising our young family, stewarding land, and working. I did not want to continue falling into the familiar pattern of investing time learning and expanding possibilities to then return home to the busy-ness and fall straight back into old, familiar ways of being, letting these learnings fade into a distant memory. It was time to make the learning count for more.
I decided to stop dabbling and commit to embrace more fully using what I had, starting where I was and doing what I can. Something shifted internally for me after this workshop where I could see how I was consuming lots of information and not using enough of it. I decided not to procrastinate until I knew enough, I chose instead to trust that taking the next step would be enough.
Looking back, I can now see how over time my perspective had been gradually shifting away from looking for the answers outside of myself to looking for them within. Our culture educates us from an early age to look for the right answers outside of ourselves in all areas, training us to ignore our own intelligence and give our power away to “experts” is many capacities from our health to our farm input decisions. It can become addictive travelling miles to attend all the workshops with the regenerative rockstars, following all the social media accounts, listening to all the podcasts, reading all the books. The endless search for all the answers keeping us stuck in a pattern of looking for more and more workshops, events, podcasts, books. It's exhausting looking for all our answers outside of ourselves. Eventually we reach a point where we realise it would be good to see some practical results from the time, energy, and resources we have been investing in the learning journey.
Realising the answers are not all outside of ourselves opens the door to the path less travelled, the journey inward. We often start this journey from a fixing perspective, bring our beliefs of not enough-ness along for the ride. Self-improvement can become our new project, the addiction turning into one of fixing ourselves. The searching continues. This constant searching is a sure sign that there is a limiting belief at play, reflecting the deep conditioning of not enough-ness we all grapple with.
The journey inward is where we learn to slow down to get present and listen to ourselves. We learn to trust ourselves to take action and trust that we can figure it out as we go along. Trust is a decision. Trust does not mean we don’t experience fear, it’s that we find the courage to move forwards even in the presence of fear.
The journey inward is also where we come face to face with our limiting beliefs that fuel our resistance and self-doubt. This can be uncomfortable enough for us to retreat back into the familiar path of looking for answers, permission and validation outside of ourselves. It takes courage and commitment to move through the discomfort and do the inner work of transformation instead of waiting for things outside of us to miraculously change.
This path is made by walking it and in my experience when it’s the path less travelled it can become more effective to walk with a guide than to walk it alone and end up going around in circles. Since choosing to navigate the journey inward I have been fortunate to have the support of my partner Angus and some like-minded friends and colleagues along the way. I have also invested in coaching and personal development opportunities when I came up against internal resistance and self-limiting beliefs where another perspective was valuable.
Seeking support from a coach didn’t come naturally, I love learning and I am fiercely independent. I had a commonly held self-limiting belief that asking for or accepting help implied weakness, and that I was not capable of doing things for myself. I also needed to work through resistance to believe I was worthy of investing time, money, and energy in my own personal development. Moving through these barriers, asking for support, and investing in my own personal growth has always been a positive decision, the only regrets are always that I didn’t do this sooner!
We go further together than we can go alone. Asking for, investing in, and receiving support has uplevelled my commitment to do the work to make things happen. Being coached feels like being on an individually tailored learning journey which extends me faster than any course I have done. Having someone to shine a light on my blind spots and self-limiting beliefs so my actions become more effective is invaluable.
Every time we make a change, whether it’s forced on us, or of our own choosing we are going to come up against our internal resistance. The paradox is that while its internal, it can be difficult to break through on our own, and the most effective path can be found through accepting support from someone who can help us see ourselves from another perspective. What I love about coaching is how it’s not about imposing someone else’s answers on us from outside, coaching is about empowering us to find our answers from within. Coaching gets to the root cause of our challenges so we can be the change we wish to see from the inside out.
“Our challenge is not to get lost in objects outside of ourselves, but to use them as reminders to explore and expand our knowledge of what spirit gave us that we may not yet have developed.” – Brooke Medicine Eagle