Season 2: Episode 003

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Script*

*Note: The script has been edited for readability and will stray from the original audio recording.

Woo No 3

Crystal: Welcome to the Plan for Wonder podcast. I'm Crystal, the Talking Head, founder and creator of myLifePlanners.ca.

In these moments together, I want to explore and understand my struggles to find focus, bring clarity, live with intention, and ultimately how to plan for wonder.

I'm back with Eileen March, founder of My Luminous Life, an intuitive coach and energy healing healer for women.

Today, we're going to explore rituals and how we can integrate them as we all plan for wonder. In the world of productivity, for some reason, it's just been grading on me. Habits. How do you relate to these phrases about habits? Habit stacking. How many habits were inundated with so much information?

It's like, how do you even pick? You're like, once again, you can have it all. So, if I try to do them all, how do these habits even relate to me while living and being authentic to myself? Habits sound like what I should be doing.

Eileen: Interestingly, I don't have the same relationship to that word because, okay, from a neuroscience perspective, right as I mentioned, I did my coaching training at the Center for Applied Neuroscience. So when I think about habits like habitual, everything we do is habitual, and it's these neural pathways in our brains that are the most used.

And that's why when we change a habit, I intentionally avoided the word in the last episode. I said, you know the intentional behaviours you perform daily because I know how you feel about it. But when we decide we want to Implement something new, and even if we're not calling, we don't need to use the word habit, but a new behaviour That we want to become consistent and to do regularly. It's not easy to do. I use the metaphor of a horse and buggy track. We can all bring to mind the pioneers going down the rutted roads and those really narrow wheels that grew when there was no pavement.

So, over time the grooves got deeper and deeper.

Crystal: Okay, I see as it became easier.

Eileen: And easier and easier to walk. Just follow that straight path. And that's what a habit or repeated behaviour is. It's what happens in your brain with a process called myelination.

This sheath of material covering the neuron makes the impulses that travel along that pathway move faster and take less energy, which is what your brain wants. Your brain is always looking for the path of least resistance because it's the part of you that uses the most calories, and to stay alive, we need enough calories to fuel it.

So it behooves you on a biological level to take the path of least resistance. And so when you decide that you want to shift behaviour or create a new one, it's like trying to get those wheels out of that rut. And when you first do it, it takes a lot of effort, and then that new behaviour is like right beside, you're right on edge, and so it's really easy to slip back in, right?

It's easy to clunk back into those old routines, old paths. And so you, the more you bring yourself up and out through, the more you're starting to create a new pathway, a new groove. You start to myelinate this new behaviour pattern, and over time, it becomes easier. But it's really difficult to do initially.

So that's why I don't mind the term habit, and I also recognize what you're saying where when we start to think about creating a life that, fulfills us or lights us up or is filled with wonder and it looks the way we want it to look. It's hard to know where to start because every guru out there will say, You gotta wake up at 5:30 and you gotta do X, Y, Z and then you have to do, A, B, C.

And it's this like list of so many things that are the miracle cure. And then where do you, how do you pick, right? What do you do? How do you decide what's for you and what's not for you?

Crystal: This kind of leads into what I talk about when I think of focus. And the habits associated with that. We tend to think of focus as just doing space, getting something done, but it actually is dependent upon our views. So one is, like they say, the start life view your values, your long-term goals. And I think what is important. We're diving into here is the more clarity you have this daylight focus of what your life is looking what's on your plate and then being aware of what your habits lead you into.

If you have a full view of daylight, you can see the reason to move it over.

And for me, that's where I align more.

I want an internal choice, internal reflection, to be a part of the process, not from the outside, but it's got to come from the inside, or else it's not going to work.

Eileen: A hundred percent. And I think what we get into a lot when we start thinking about changing our lives for the better, for instance, is we start shooting ourselves. Oh, I should be doing something. I should be eating five cups of broccoli a day. Or, I should be doing a juice cleanse. And some of those things might be the path that does work best for you, but some of them might not.

Again, I always come back to midwifery and the things that I learned from supporting women there when it came to breastfeeding. There are 1,000 pieces of advice, and you're not going to know which ones fit for you until you try them.

Eileen: And then it doesn't matter if your cousin Jodi had perfect success with this one way of doing it.

If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. And that's okay. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Your anatomy is different. Your baby is not their baby. The same goes for the supportive behaviours or things that we want to include in our lives. Some of them will fit, and some of them will not.

Crystal: It comes to mind is the idea. I loved connecting with Kristell Court and talking about rituals. And it's just the word, the phrase, it brings up, and it gives me a sense of calm and connection.

So it's, "Oh, I want to create a ritual around something." So that aligns with my internal voice versus habits,

Eileen: And I love that we're going to this place because ritual is our modern society, which is truly bereft of ritual. It used to be—a much more prevalent piece of being alive as a human in a community. Ritual can be alone, but it is often communal, and it's something that we've lost, and it's something that imbues life with meaning.

Crystal: And making connections. When I think of ritual, I think of an altar, and it gives you space to think and to connect with your inner voice.

And I, in a spiritual way, feel my inner voice is connected to others spiritually. So it's not just yourself, but you're getting insight from the world around you and being more aware of the connection that we have with the world.

Eileen: It's that intentional place of tapping in, tuning in, and being calm.

Crystal: And that ties in feeling like magic. And that's when I think of you, right?

So when I think of planning for wonder and creating or participating in rituals is a way. To actually plan and wonder at the same time. So question, what are some important, say, rituals that a person could consider creating their lives to create this space?

Eileen: I think one of the most beautiful kinds of day-to-day rituals that we can engage in is a sacred start. So creating spaces. To start your day with wonder, with intention, with reflection, introspection, all of those pieces, whatever it feels meaningful to you. And it can take five or 10 minutes or it can be like a beautiful long delicious.

I'm a projector. I like to have two hours.

Crystal: And I tell everyone like I don't do work or meetings until 10 AM. Yeah. I need that time to wake up when I wake up, I plan, process, eat, and then dive into my day.

Eileen: And so it can be as simple as, like for me, depending on the morning, some mornings I have lots of time, and I journal and meditate, and I do all of these.

I might pull cards. I might do any number of things. But at its most basic for me is the ritual of making my coffee. And I intentionally tune into gratitude for the farmer that grew the beans, the earth that supported the plant, the number of people who got that coffee to me, like that's, it's miraculous in and of itself.

And then really focusing on savoring and enjoying the process, the smell, the sound of the beans, grinding the taste of the coffee. That's one non negotiable piece of my ritual. And then the other is that, When it's warm enough, there's not snow on the ground, I'll step outside, but in the winter, I will do it inside.

I say a morning prayer, and that word was really triggering for me for a long time. I wasn't raised with any religion, but very much you say prayer, and I'm like, Christian Church, ah! And it's really evolved for me. You could call it a gratitude practice.

Sometimes, I find it difficult to get perspective because it feels like with all the information that we have, the world is a dumpster fire. But I have to rethink and set and actually appreciate the space that I'm in. When I think of home, instead of like forward thinking, being in the moment and being.

I don't know. It is a sense of gratitude and joy of just embracing these moments. And I think we've been tricked to thinking those will come later in life if we get enough done.

Eileen: We're always waiting for, "Oh I'll relax then I'll rest when I'll enjoy, I'll be there when..."

Crystal: Like when I go on a holiday. I'll rest when I get on the beach and then you get on the beach and you're like, What do I get it? I need to be doing something.

Eileen: The goalpost is always moving, right? We get to that next achievement, and it's not to say that striving for achievement isn't valuable, but the more valuable and the more important piece and what I work with clients so deeply to do is to find and cultivate those feelings, the feelings of The feeling states we imagine ourselves getting to in the future.

It's finding and cultivating them in the now because that's how you live a fulfilling and meaningful life. And so often, we're so busy and rushing towards that next thing or trying to get all the things done that we miss life. It's happening now. It's not going to stop happening, whether we're present to it or not.

And so it's practicing coming into the present moment and ritual is very useful for that.

Crystal: Oh that's perfect.

And I think I think that leads us to, I hope those of you who are listening that you take this moment to actually look around and be grateful and be in that moment. So, thank you for spending time with Eileen and me listening to Plan for Wonder.

We are going to be back next week for our fourth and final episode. And if you're keen to connect once again, check out the show notes for details and everything that we talked about today.

And remember that the space you take up in the world matters to me, but even more importantly, you matter the most in your life.