What We’re Most Longing For Right Now

In my experience of the world these days, both as a human myself and in holding space for clients' unfolding experiences within coaching sessions, one thing feels clearer than ever to me:

That the thing we're most needing and longing for right now is a sense of internal safety.

A sense of inner steadiness.

From the first moment our tiny bodies contact the external realm as newborn babies our organism instinctively scans our surroundings to gather external cues of safety, or lack thereof.

Am I safe? is the most fundamental question we need to know the answer to for the sake of our survival.

As we develop, Am I safe? gets translated through our inner self-identity filtering system into Am I OK?

Our brains travel a short bridge from Am I OK? to Am I acceptable?

And the biggest, scariest questions of all loom just beneath those safety-oriented questions: 

Am I lovable?

Am I enough?

So much of our sense of identity is bound up with whether or not we feel safe in the world.

But the world around us right now is feeling less safe, less predictable, less stable, less certain than many of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes.

When our external systems and leaders don't feel like reliable sources of safety, a part of us starts to tremble with existential fear that we just might not be safe to be walking around the planet.

This is a “bad news, good news” moment. (As always here, we hold space for Both/And.)

We can either shrink into our individual turtle shells to each try to ensure our own safety, but to the detriment of our sense of connection and belonging (I know I've spent quite a lot of time “turtling” these past few years) --

Or we can embrace this cracking-open moment and lean in with more care, intention and devotion than ever to the work of deepening our sense of connection and belonging together out there in the world.

But we have to feel a solid enough ground of safety under our feet in order to be willing to stretch our tender, vulnerable necks back out from beneath that turtle shell.

If our external sources of safety are no longer reliable, then that means it's time to double (or quadruple) down on fortifying our internal sense of steadiness within the core of our own beings.

We can, little by little, nurture a strongly enough anchored sense of steady, secure home base within ourselves that we can become willing to risk extending our neck out from beneath our shells even just a bit more -- enough to make contact with other humans in small, simple, thoughtful, caring ways in our day to day life.

Lots of Love,

Melissa

PS - If you’re curious about exploring these themes in a sweetly personalized way, be in touch about 1:1 coaching possibilities.