How to Go After What Will Actually Feed You
Do you find it hard to imagine new possibilities or next steps for yourself? Do you have a tendency to feel empty after achieving or receiving something you thought you wanted? In today’s episode, I’m sharing one way to reclaim your imagination and generate rich, nutritious options for your life path.
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Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work, and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, coach, writer, and amateur ecologist living in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today.
Hi friend, and welcome. I'm coming to you from the late spring period. Things are in full swing. The roses are blooming, the irises are at their peak. The first strawberries came in the other day and there is already so much beauty and color and there is more to come, more sustenance and and beauty to come in the near summer season.
Some things have already bloomed and are done. And I'm noticing this year especially just how short some of these windows actually are. You know, the whole of blooming from the early spring into the fall comes in waves. But the lifespan of some of our particular blooms, especially those from the early spring, is actually quite short. You know, the tulips, the daffodils, the crocus, even the cherry blossoms -their life is not over, of course, they're becoming something else, or they're going dormant until next year, but their time of fullness is over. And I think that's just something to keep front of mind, that some things in our lives, some of us even, bloom for only a short amount of time and that is sometimes as it should be, that there's nothing wrong If a dream or a project or a relationship was here for a small window of time and it was beautiful and then it needed to go dormant or become something else.
You know, every spring I learn something new. There's no one season that is the same every year. You're not the same person that you were last spring. And it's really helpful- and I think natural- to orient to and remember that each season is its own particular thing. It has its own particular flow, texture way of being. Certain things do really well in some seasons, and the next season it, you know, may not do as well.
So I don't know, I'm just sort of grounding into the uniqueness of this spring and the ethereal nature of some of these blooms that graced us for a time. And then so quickly go away. So that's for another episode, I think. But there are many plants still yet to flower or to fruit, and there is still time for us to create new beauty and sources of nourishment in this world and in our lives.
You know, we are approaching summer, when many things reach their crescendo, and now is an excellent time to sync up with that and to explore a life skill that is very near and dear to my heart, which, you know, for lack of a, a better term, I'll just call "option generation". I wanna talk today about how you can imagine, create, and choose new futures for yourself, new possibilities this coming late spring into the summer and early fall. How can you clue into the pathways that have the most energy and luck to them right now? How can you feel big? I don't have a lot of answers, I have mostly questions, but I do have some ideas and things that I have seen work for me and for the people that I support, and I'm really excited to share them with you today.
Before we dive in, why don't I give us our opening invocation and you can just take a moment to notice your body and time and space. You may even take a deep breath and feel a little more centered in your being. May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes among many others who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
I wanna start by exploring why this work matters. Why does it matter that you feel like you have options or like you can meet your needs in a deep way? It's important because it's one of the antidotes to the dominant culture/ society that we live in, which is based on an economic system called capitalism. And even further, you know, before that, based on a way of living called civilization. Capitalism, and living in a civilized manner, meaning in a settled manner, where written language is sort of the dominant form of communication, these things can over time make it very difficult for us to imagine anything other than what's already here. It can make it very difficult to imagine new pathways, new ways of living for ourselves, also, for our communities.
It can help us forget how to imagine a healthy, vibrant earth, a healthy, vibrant way of living on this earth. One of my favorite quotes about this is written by Max Haiven, who's a writer and Canadian researcher. He wrote "Capitalism relies not only on the brutal repression of workers and factories and fields, it also relies on conscripting our imaginations. On a basic level, it relies on each of us imagining ourselves as essentially isolated, lonely, competitive economic agents. It relies on us imagining that the system is the natural expression of human nature, or that is too powerful to be changed, or that no other system could ever be desirable. On a broad level, it works by transforming what we imagine is valuable in ways that see us orient our actions towards activities that will reproduce the status quo."
I love that line "activities that will reproduce the status quo." Isn't that what so much of our life is like? I don't know about you, but I often feel like that is where my first mode of focus is on. Like, how do I do the things that will reproduce the status quo, even though intellectually or on a spiritual level, I understand that the status quo is becoming less and less desirable.
So it's no wonder that we just recreate capitalism over and over again, that we do this every day. It's because these are new skills that a lot of us aren't well versed in that we're trying to do in isolation that often need to happen in community. And this is happening on a personal level. When we desire a change, often our minds go first to the ways that we can just create the next version of the same thing that we've always been doing. How do I get into a different job, but that has the same texture or the same vibe as the jobs I've always done, or how can I enter into a new collaboration that may seem different, but that is actually just repeating the same dynamics that I've always been in.
How can we interrupt that? That mode of being and expand our imaginations. When we do that, there can be a lot of new energy available. Something can sort of rise up and meet us. Luck can meet us in new ways, and we can start to see our situation differently. We remind ourselves that we are empowered to exist beyond what has always been to make choices that are different than just reenacting the status quo.
I see this all the time in my own life and also in the work that I do with other people who are in transition. It's very easy and normal to assume that we have to stay in the same line of work that we've been in, or that we can only go to grad school to get certain experience, or we can only work full-time, or we have to live in a nuclear family, in a single home, et cetera. And those can all be very lovely things.
But most of the people who come to me for support are looking for a container in which they can really explore different options. And that takes skill. That takes intention and skill, and the things that may seem sort of like they fit with the status quo, again, can all be lovely. Like, I live in a nuclear family in a single home. I, you know, do work that on its face could be considered like pretty normal and status quo. But those become cages when we believe that they're the only options available when they don't feel freely chosen, when we're not in them with intention and consciousness. So this is an important life skill, generating options for ourselves.
It's important for us individually, but it's also an important life skill as we step into an unknown future. Because as our world changes, we are gonna need to become even more adaptable as the things around us become less stable, including the seasons. You know, including the economy or the jobs that we seek stability from, or the businesses that we're in, we're going to have to learn how to adapt if those things fall away or shift, or we grow out of them. As the climate shifts and natural disasters happen with more frequency, we're going to have to learn how to meet our needs in more creative ways. We're going to need to learn how to find joy in things being different in what is just here.
So this practice is about recognizing the needs that are already met or can be met in really simple, unharmful ways. You know, we may not always be able to fly wherever we wanna go for vacation, or we may not be able to eat citrus all throughout the year. So adaptability is becoming really important and it can be so beautiful and help us come into better harmony with the life forces and forms all around us. So it's gonna help us stay grounded and creative no matter what shifts are taking place.
So, how do we create new options for ourselves?
First, we usually need to recognize that we're at a place where there's some stickiness or sense of not having a lot of options. We might feel bored, uncomfortable. It might be that we feel miserable or burnt out or uninspired or like we're in a rut. It could just be that we feel this urge to kind of grow and like get bigger or different in our space. It's a sense of like needing fresh air. We need to remember that we can move, that we can make moves in our lives. And oftentimes when we've learned how to do this, like, in dominant culture, if we haven't really looked at it, we make moves that are again, reenacting the status quo or perpetuating forms of capitalism.
We might think that we just need a new job, or we need to move, or we need to buy a thing or whatever. It's usually centered around like production or consumption, which are like the two primary engines of capitalism, and that's often where we go. We think, "I need to either do more or produce more or create or act faster," or it's a sense of needing to consume more -that I need to buy this thing or go to this training or, you know, whatever level of consumption it is.
But we can really tremendously help ourselves if we can start by identifying the feeling or the vibe that we're seeking underneath those things.
The writer and teacher and author Danielle LaPorte calls these your "core desired feelings." The feelings state that you are most hungry for in your life at any one given time. It's not about the thing, it's not about the car you wanna buy or the job you think you need to get, or the raise that you're going after.
It's really about the way that you think those things are going to make you feel - that's what we are in search of. And that doesn't mean that like you don't need any material things. Of course, I'm not gonna go tell someone living on the street that "you don't really need a house. You just need, you know, to cultivate the feelings that that house would give you." That is not what I'm implying at all. I'm assuming today that you have a basic level of safety and security, that you have some or most of your basic needs met. What I'm speaking to here is sort of the layer above that when you're starting to explore other ways to make meaning in your life or have meaning or feel joy, and the sort of knee-jerk reaction to do so in a way that is oriented to either productivity or consumption.
So we all know that things aren't enough to give us meaning, but it's really another thing to live that out, to live in a way that honors our needs by making thoughtful and creative choices about how to fulfill them. It's very easy and seductive to think that some new job or new opportunity or new place to live will give us that feeling state that we want, and sometimes they do.
But in my experience, those things, the big things that we sort of yearn for usually only come in or they only give us that sustained sense of contentment after we have already cultivated that feeling state with what we've got right here, right now.
It really doesn't come instantly. It's not like I wake up one morning and decide I wanna feel more freedom, and so I have this idea of like, you know, having a horse farm or something like that. And then the thing just appears. That is so unusual, and there is this sort of undercurrent in new age-y spiritual spaces where we think like really fast manifestations are ideal. But in my experience, those are very rare. I don't know that they are the ideal often. And if we sort of steep ourselves in the wisdom of the natural world, the outgrowth, the blooming that we see, again, is an outgrowth of a slow, steady, constant, consistent process of that plant's growth and the cycles that it's in and its interactions with the environment, the water, the soil, the sunlight.
So, we can start today just cultivating the feeling states that we have and honoring those needs that we have, without this like incessant grasping for these external things that we think are gonna give us those feeling states. Instead, they can become an outgrowth of what we've already started nurturing internally.
So how do we do this? You could start with your daydreams. You could start with the desires that sort of float around in your mind and in your heart, and again, without any judgment, it's okay if you yearn for the big things, if you have this desire for a particular house or type of car or vacation or way of living, you could take one of those desires that you have.
And we're gonna start looking at the underlayers of them. What are the feelings that you think that thing is gonna give you or the the feelings that you have when you imagine having it? So let's pretend that in your imagination you have this kind of flitting desire to work with your hands outside and you see, you can picture yourself like outside working with your hands, and maybe you're overlooking the sea.
And rather than focusing first on how we get you to move to the beach and what you'd be making with your hands, we start by identifying how it is that you want to feel in this scene. What does that desire evoke for you? Is it peacefulness or ease or adventure or some other word that might not make sense to anyone else, but that fits for you?
It's really important that you find the word or the words that feel like they click in your body. So what is this desire I have and what are the feelings underneath that desire, either that the desire is evoking in me as I imagine having it, or the feelings that I want to have in this scene. And identify the words and write them down.
You could also start with something that you want really badly. Even if it's not like a daydream in the distant future, it could just be like front and center, like maybe you really want to find a new place to live. Okay. Set aside the planning for just a moment and identify the feeling that you are after -the feelings you desire in that new place, and write them down.
Maybe you feel totally blocked and can't identify a daydream or a need that you have right now, and that's okay. Again, we can use our imaginations in different ways. We could imagine that in front of you is this beautiful cup with the cleanest, most amazing water in it right now. And you can hold this cup of water and with your hands and your heart, you can imbue this water with the way that you most want to feel right now.
What feelings, what medicine would you put into this water to drink in? See if you can identify some feeling states in that way and write them down. And again, it is okay, it is wonderful even, for these words to not make sense to anyone but you. All that matters is that you feel like they give you that zing, that click of rightness in your body.
And it's okay if it's not like the perfect word or obvious- you can have a couple strings of words. You just need a starting point. Try not to take someone else's words or identify words that you just think you should feel or want to feel. Find the words that really nail it for you at this time. Like, hold your heart and see if you can identify. I wanna feel this way. I want more of this in my life.
It's really important to get to the heart of these desires because they help ensure that our efforts are a lot more effective and sustainable. You know, the pollinators are just, you know, creating our world and all of our food -helping to create all our food right now- and there aren't like bees or hummingbirds out there that are sort of dancing on the outside of the petal hoping that, you know, someone else dropped some nectar or pollen leftover.
These pollinators are going straight for the heart of the flower, as deep as they have to go until they find what they want. And that's how things fruit and flower and that's how we can eat. And life continues. We don't wanna stay just at the petals, kind of hoping something dropped or hoping we can get like a tiny drop of the thing.
We wanna go into the center, to the heart of it. And we wanna really be there and just like drink in as much as we can. I think a lot of us are so used to just like nibbling at the outsides, or thinking that we gave ourselves what we needed because we did one tiny thing. And that one tiny thing is beautiful, but when we can sort of center the feeling state that we wanna have and work from, that it is as if we're going to the heart of that flower and drinking in the sweet nectar that is there for us.
So once you've identified how you would like to feel right now, you can start generating ideas for how to meet that desire, how to feel that way.
And there are hundreds of ways, maybe more, to trigger that feeling state. So your world, your options, the possibilities available to you just got a lot bigger, because rather than fixating on how to buy a house at the beach or what to do, what to make with your hands that could support you and create an income, you can focus on other ways to immediately give yourself a sense of peacefulness or whatever it is that you're after. And maybe living on the beach is part of that eventually, but it doesn't have to be. Now, you can make moves that feel empowering and aligned and not feel like you have to wait for the big thing to arrive.
You can feel satiated in smaller, sweet, quicker, more sustainable ways. And in this work, you are pulling away from the machine that demands us to consume and produce more. And you're choosing instead to invest in regenerative life making.
You know, when I do this work, when the people I work with do this, it becomes obvious very quickly that the big things that they thought they were after that feel inaccessible to them or the things they feel like they have to really work for or that are so far away, we can actually pull them in and make them so much more simple. And they're right here and we can build off of them.
You know, maybe it's rather than feeling like you have to start this immensely successful six figure business tomorrow, maybe you can satiate that desire by having one really lovely conversation today, or writing one blog post. Or instead of feeling like you're far from this calling or like way of being in the world or work that you wanna do, maybe it's one way of serving someone else in that way today. Or it's just making one loaf of bread today. Like we can just bring it in and it can be right here with every choice we make. That gives us the vibe that we're looking for, that feeling that we need.
We create more space and more momentum for the kind of life -holistically- that feels right for us. It's not a life that can be perfect all the time. Some of it may very well be the status quo because we're still in this transition period, I hope, out of capitalism into a new future. But we are creating different momentum where more of our days feel like that click, where they feel that sense of alignment.
So the next thing I would recommend after identifying the way that you wanna feel, is to start generating those options for each feeling state that you identified.
And you could start with just one for now. That's what I would recommend. See if you can identify at least like 25 choices or actions or places or relationships or things that give you that felt sense. And if you're someone who has a very loud internal editor, has a hard time just sort of free flowing, you could set a timer and see if you can do, you know, 25 things in seven minutes or whatever. This is not the time to be editing options. If your internal editor is getting really loud, like, "oh, you could never do that, or, that's silly," or whatever, try to just keep going. Sometimes it helps to do this first thing in the morning when you're fresh or at night when you're a little bit tired and can't be so critical.
Some of the ideas that you come up with should be kind of zany. They could be things that aren't even really possible in this era of history or in your lifetime. They should be things that sort of run the spectrum between things you could do right now or tomorrow, and things that just seem completely outlandish and sort of surprise you.
It helps a lot of people if you can move your body beforehand, if you can walk or run or swim or stretch or dance so that you can sort of get the momentum moving physically before you try to make this list. And if you get stuck, you could ask someone else for help, you could come back to it and add to it throughout your days.
But see if you can try to get to 25. 25 ways that you can give yourself a felt sense of peacefulness or freedom or contentment, any word that you're working with.
So let me give you an example in case it's helpful. My word for the year is Vital. I have a felt sense of that word in my body, and it's the feeling that I most want to cultivate this year.
And there are things about that word that have special meaning and weight to me. So when I feel stuck, I come back to that feeling state and that word, and I ask myself, "what will give me that sense of vitality that I need right now?" And I do that thing. It's also a great way to judge options and make choices based on what feels most vital to me. What feels most alive, most essential, most vibrant. So if I were feeling really stuck and not sure how to move, I would generate a list of things that make me feel vital or that I think could make me feel vital, cuz there's some experimentation to this. So, I'll just like spitball for a minute. Things that could make me feel vital, that give me this felt sense, are solo time, outdoors writing, baking or making like herbs or tonics... I could run or walk. Reading poetry. On a larger scale, going on an ancestral heritage tour, making a list of the work that feels most honest to me right now, being around specific people who are in touch with their vitality, running a retreat outdoors, learning how to forage.
So this becomes like a menu that I can select from when I need to feel empowered and aligned, and some of the things are very small again, that I don't have to wait for, and other things are things that I want to sort of stretch into that can be like little guiding lights up above for me that again, will be natural outgrowths of the vitality that I am cultivating every day.
Another one that comes up for a lot of people is wanting to feel successful or ambitious.
There's this like heat or hunger to feel successful and there's also different words that sort of come off of that. But let's say that you have this desire -that you wanna feel successful. There are many ways to do that without waiting for someone to give you an award or without waiting for some type of promotion or accolade.
You could really appreciate what you have already done. You could compile a list of your successes. You could ask people for kind feedback or look at the kind feedback you have already received. Running, or like intense exercise can feed some of this and create that heat for you. You might watch a video of like wild horses running. You could name the hardest thing that you wanna do in your life. You could do something deeply uncomfortable every day. Maybe you make a list of like seven very uncomfortable things and do them do one a day for a week. You know, just generating options that give you that felt sense of success is gonna get the blood flowing, get the energy flowing in a different way.
These options, even if some of them are really out there or not actually very aligned, they're all like little seeds that you have planted, little reverberations that you have put out into the ether so that what you are seeking, that feeling, can more easily find you. And you can do this exercise with each of the feeling states that you've identified, or keep it really simple and just focus on one word at a time, kind of like I have for this year.
And of course there will be overlap. One activity can trigger different feeling states all at once, and that's fine. This is an intuitive practice. It doesn't need to be a science. It doesn't have to be perfect.
I wanna talk a minute about resistance because you will make a list and it might be hard to make that list in the first place because of internal criticism, but then you will have feelings of resistance to some or many of the items on that list, and that is an excellent place to focus. So let's say that you're working with a desire to feel more stable in your life, and you know that part of that is related to your finances feeling more stable. And maybe one of the options that you have generated on your list is to move back in with your parents to save money.
And you may look at that option and despise that option or have a very strong reaction to it. The brain will say, like, "there's no way I could do that." There will be like a physical and mental stop sign that will be very loud and obvious. That doesn't mean that it's not worth exploring. It's actually the opposite. If you have a strong reaction to it, it is definitely worth exploring and it doesn't mean that you have to do it. But there's important information for you here. Why do you wanna cross that off immediately? What about it feels impossible? Where might there be opportunity to compromise? What about this idea does feel stable? What doesn't feel stable about it? Really give yourself the chance to honor each of the options that you come up with. Try to be naive about it. Bring in your open mind. Try to see things from new angles. Notice how you feel in your body as you imagine it.
Maybe you imagine moving back in with your parents. Okay? There's probably a narrative in your mind about that and what it means, and we're just gonna set that aside for a moment. Maybe you imagine putting extra money into your savings account as a result of not having to pay for rent or a mortgage. How does that feel?
Maybe you imagine it only being for a certain period of time. How does that feel? Maybe you imagine being part of another culture where adult children stay with their parents for much longer than we do in the US. How does that feel if you were in a different cultural context? If you have a lot of resistance to something, it's important to wring it out and really ponder it openly.
Pretend like it's a great idea at first and name why it could work. And then if you decide that it's truly not the right thing right now, you can cross it off knowing that you really gave it a shot. You could come back to it in the future. You're giving yourself permission to explore your needs, the desired feelings that you have, and to explore these new possibilities really thoroughly.
And at some point, you will have to choose and make choices because you're an adult and you make choices in your life, even when you don't think you're making choices. At some point in the growing season, the time for pollination ends.
The flower becomes the raspberry or the rose stops blooming. Even the bees end their work for the winter. Something needs to come from all of this activity. If we want it to feed us, we have to choose where to place our focus and our energy. And I know this can be complicated depending on your neurological makeup, and I really wanna normalize the fact that it's very difficult to practice focus and fidelity and devotion in our culture.
So the practice has to be a balance between generating lots of options to remind us that we have choices, and then getting quiet and discerning where there's the most flow right now. And then wrapping our arms around that thing and just doing the one next thing. You don't have to start with identifying one feeling state and one action at a time to take, but it can be really helpful, because you see yourself making choices and following through with those choices.
You'll want to have your feeling states narrowed down enough, maybe one to three that you're working with, and post it up where you will see them and can focus on them. So if you want to feel more Peacefulness or freedom or success right now, you'll wanna have those words up around you on sticky notes or as reminders on your phone, or as words that you meditate on daily.
If you wanna go down this path with a little more structure or in a different way. I do just wanna recommend Danielle LaPorte's work. The Desire Map - it used to be a book, but when I was looking into it, it looks like now it's only an audio book and she has like a whole class about it. So you might wanna check that out.
But once you've got your feeling states and some options generated, you can sit with them for a day or two and just notice which ones have the most grounded, sustained energy behind them. And it may not be what you think at first, but you can just very gently notice what calls to you, what's a stretch, what feels like it immediately gets into that deep soil and nourishes you.
And see if you can find a balance between actions that are just immediate and deeply nourishing. Like if I want to feel vital, I know that I need to be out moving outdoors. It's just like essential. And it's quick and it's free and I can just do that. But we also wanna have ones that are a stretch, that feel uncomfortable or new and that require a little bit of extra time and energy, but that give us that vibe that we are looking for. So take some different steps and see what happens. Give it time. Be patient. Pay attention. Notice how you feel and what it's like to really immerse yourself in cultivating the feeling States that you most need right now. They can be anchors for right where you are and also guides so that you start living in ways that feel really right to you and that are adaptable so that you remember that no matter what happens around you, you do have this capacity to honor the way that you wanna feel and bring it in and appreciate it and be right with it exactly where you are.
Again, you don't have to wait for any one big thing to arrive and give you what you need. There aren't bees out there waiting for the dahlias to bloom and dahlias alone. You know, "I'm not gonna be fed or happy until the dahlias come." No. The bee's working with what's available now, where there's sustenance. They're enjoying the nectar that they're finding, they're enjoying the honey making process. And when the dahlias do bloom, they'll be ready for them. It will be a natural progression into the next beautiful thing.
And in the same way, you can start exactly where you are today. So maybe instead of waiting to be able to buy a house at the beach or live there, you can cultivate peacefulness with a quiet moment to yourself or with some cut flowers from your garden or a lit candle. If you can keep going in that way, peacefulness just sort of becomes a major part of your path, and that can be true with any feeling state that you're focused on cultivating now.
So I hope that this felt encouraging and clarifying and gives you something to hold onto and work with in this very fertile and beautiful and big time in the cycle of the year.
I hope that you will try it out and really give yourself a sense of new energy and sense of direction on the days when you feel stuck or really far from what it is that you seek, and that by doing so, we can all invest less energy in the modes of production and consumption and just really sink into and settle into the beauty and sweetness that's already here and that we can build off of that.
I wanna remind folks that my summer solstice retreat is coming up on June 21st, the actual solstice. This is an all day gathering outside of Portland at an old growth forest where we will be crossing from the spring to summer really living into these desired states and creating new momentum. Registration closes June 16th and there are still a few spots available.
I hope you take such good care and I will be back with you soon. I'll see you on the other side.