The New Year is well underway and we thought, a couple of weeks into 2021, the theme of restoration and renewal might be a beautiful topic to explore, recorded on the Winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere). The Winter Solstice is a time to pause and look up, away from our day to day concerns and allow hope and optimism to bubble up. The human spirit is a remarkable thing. We can admire what's possible and get curious about what renewal and restoration could mean. What are the seeds? What is possible? This year could take us into despair or numbing ourselves, tuning out, feeling overwhelmed by the bigness of the challenges we face collectively.

This was such a fun exploration! We both laughed at the topic, as the idea that our feelings don't matter, would have been met with outrage by both of us in our younger days. "WHAT, you cannot be serious!?!?!??! We both confess to having drama queen tendencies and would have been affronted if anyone suggested our feelings didn't matter. We both believed our emotions were telling us very important information about how we were doing (or the world, or others, our work, relationships, lifestyle or whatever) and that low or bad feelings definitely looked like they had to be dealt with.

Limbo can feel like being in suspended animation and often feels uncomfortable which those of us who have control freakery tendencies can find particularly challenging. It is experiencing and acknowledging the unknown. We like to buy into the illusion of certainty and that has been disrupted for many at this time. It can lead to a roller coaster of emotions as that illusion gets shattered. It's interesting to notice how, at times, we are absolutely okay with uncertainty and other times we want to figure it all out.

Carla and Juliet show up in this episode feeling some tenderness but they get curious about what they know helps and what doesn't when things feel difficult. We recognise that when we get insights or breakthroughs - they rarely come from trying to figure things out. We see how anxiety about the future isn't helpful. We explore what we see that does help: shifts in consciousness.

We are interested in riffing on simple, practical wisdom that can help us navigate this human condition which can feel heavy at times. Both Juliet and Carla have experienced depression through their lives. We explore what else is possible other than either collapsing into our emotions or denying them completely. We are curious about how we have seen our experience of depression change, how our relationship to the experience can change. We explore how our experience has changed and what might account for that.

Carla came on our call and shared how distracted she's feeling after being intensely focused on creating a course. When this episode was recorded the US election was set for the following evening. Carla dreamed of the election. Though Carla often advises her clients not to focus on the past or the future there are times it can feel hard to stay present. Here is the only moment we ever have. So today we explore what more we can discover around focus on distraction. Juliet shares when she feels very distracted, she finds it helpful if someone nudges her and kind of gives her permission to drop out of that busy mind. We both enjoy showing up as we are on these calls. We have no attachment to what happens in these episodes nor how people may or may not receive the shows. That gives us great freedom.

Last week, when we explored radical joy, seriousness came up quite a bit. We get curious about the tendency to be a tad too serious about life. Around the US election, there seems to be a lot of seriousness. How helpful is getting serious? Why is it we think we should get serious about serious topics because otherwise, we're not taking them seriously?

Carla and Juliet get curious about radical joy and seriousness. Juliet notices how she gets serious around so-called 'serious' issues like food poverty. She questions whether seriousness is helpful and whether there is more on offer from a space of radical joy. It feels counter-intuitive. This episode was recorded prior to the US election.

Recorded 6 days after the US election, Carla shows up vulnerable and raw, sharing her experience of the election week, consciously going down the rabbit hole and the stress she's felt. Her recognition of what the stress has done to her body and curiosity to explore the emotional reactions including sadness, anger, and grief around her perception of the huge divisiveness going on in the US at this time.

This episode was recorded prior to the US election and yet the topic feels apt as tensions run high in the wake of the aftermath of Tuesday's election day. In this era of 24/7 global news and social media, how on earth can we stay out of all the drama? When we're overly dramatic we lose some of our clarity and clear access to our resourcefulness, resilience and wellbeing. As two recovering drama lovers we, Carla and Juliet loved riffing on this topic