Posted on by Grace

When Future Plans Shift, Dance The Shuffle

My hands are clapping because last night was the first evening of retreat with the Year of Inquiry group. We just started our year together this month. I love everyone in the group so much!

Even the people who can’t travel to Seattle for a weekend because they live far away or had other plans.

Just yesterday, last minute shuffles started happening.

Someone emailed with the news “my mother is not feeling good, and her job was taking care of my kids this weekend…I can’t make it.”

A few hours later, another inquirer sent me her email “My ride fell through”. Another inquirer said “can I come last minute?” even though she’s flying from Nevada.

Yes to everything. Yes.

(By the way, there will be an opening starting next month for one person in Year of Inquiry. We mostly meet on the phone, and there is one optional retreat next spring for everyone who’s ever been in YOI–current participants and alumni–May 15-17, 2015. Write me by hitting reply to this email if you’re interested).

Have you ever had a party, planned a vacation, led a retreat, given a talk, performed on stage, organized a family event….

….and noticed your thoughts along the way are sometimes….

….a little like getting a piece of dust in your eye?

Kind of hurts, but if you just blink enough, it will go away? Sort of irritating and concerning but you just keep going? A little anxiety arising? Perhaps a wave of anxiety grows bigger as the date approaches?

You might know its going the way its going, and its all OK….but if you inquire, you may not even experience that little piece of dust, or any stress whatsoever.

Let’s look at the kinds of thoughts that can be agonizing sometimes about plans to gather people together for anything:

  • not enough people can make it
  • there should be more people
  • there should be fewer people
  • I need to know who is coming
  • if someone cancels, it means it’s not important enough
  • if someone comes last minute, it means they don’t have anything better to do
  • I need everyone to have a fabulous time
  • everything needs to go as I planned…perfectly
I’ve facilitated inquirers through wedding plans, friends frequently canceling for dates, people not showing up, worries about workshops not filling or going wrong.

How do you react when you believe you need to know what will happen? When you believe it needs to look like “x” in order to be really good?

When you think everyone needs to have a perfect, amazing, fantabulous time? When you think people should do everything they can to attend barring natural disasters?

I get up thinking about what I’ll do in the morning. I make lists. I picture what it will look like. I think, with some anxiety, about what I could be missing or what I haven’t included or if I’ve remembered everything, bought everything, printed out everything…THOUGHT of EVERYTHING?

Worry, worry, worry.

Who would you be without the belief that you have to know anything about what your upcoming plans will really look like? Without that thought that you have to do anything MORE than you want to do? Without the belief that you could miss something, or that everyone has to have an amazing time?
Oooooh it’s so much fun!!
Absolutely thrilling really!
No idea what it will look like, but very open, ready, happy, anticipating with joy.
I get on the airplane with my suitcase (and maybe not even that!), I park my car and gather my things and walk into the hall, I prepare food in my kitchen and put out chairs and set out name tags and tea, I send emails to relatives across the country, I click “buy” on the retreat page.
When even one knock comes at the door, I know something wonderful is about to happen.
  • the perfect number of people can make it
  • there should be the exact number of people present
  • I do not need to know who is coming
  • if someone cancels, it means they are supposed to cancel
  • if someone comes last minute, it means they are supposed to come last minute
  • I need only me to have a fabulous time
  • everything needs to go as it goes, and whatever I think or anything thinks, it is just right for this moment, even this moment right now

“The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.” ~ Eckhart Tolle 

In this moment now…I notice there is a most beautiful space in the air around me.
There are voices and smiling people everywhere, people reading, relaxing, looking at their phones. I am sitting in a Starbucks. I just counted 24 people in this room here with me, and I didn’t invite anyone or expect to see any of these people this morning.
A gorgeous song is playing with a guitar through the speakers overhead. The room is bursting with light from floor-to-ceiling windows. The trees outside wave happily in the overcast breeze.
What a spectacular world. I am almost moved to tears with the beauty of it all.
Can you see it?
There is really nothing else to do now, except dance my favorite last-minute shuffle dance.  With people coming and going, people moving in and out and to the left and to the right.
A shuffle to the grocery store and a shuffle to the office depot and a shuffle to make copies and a shuffle to the gym and a shuffle to my kitchen and a shuffle to all the people who show up tonight to do The Work together all weekend.
Click this link now and get up and dance, in your living room, wherever you are. Dance right now.

Much love,

Grace

P.S. For another Grace Note on planning events, click here to read.