Assessment

(The Lay of the Land)

** remember as you’re going through the assessments - there’s no such thing as perfection. But these questions can help us stay oriented towards the lives we’re wanting to live, the way we’re wanting to be, the kind of world we’re wanting to live in as we’re making decisions.

3. These two sections contain ‘Big Picture’ maps and assessments to orient your current patterns and challenges within the framework of this approach:

4. Personal metrics: how do we know it’s actually working?

After checking out the cultural and cosmological maps and assessments, you should have a sense of what we’re navigating (the cosmology/ terrains) and how we’re orienting (the pillars/ compass). But those are both somewhat abstract.

How will we know we’re on our path? How will we know we’re making actual change in our day-to-day lives… and it’s working?

4a. Qualities of Aliveness

Assessment Exercise:

Scale of 1-10 (with 1 being low/ burned out and 10 being high/ alive) rate how you’re generally feeling in each of these qualities right now. Is it different in different areas of your life?

Next: What’s one quality you want to move from burnout towards aliveness right now - one which would make the most impact? And what’s one small shift you can do that, even if it’s just to raise it by one point?

4b. Energetics of Aliveness:

In addition to the qualities, it’s also possible to evaluate or check in with the flow of energy.

In burnout, there are three main ways our energy can get misused, dispersed, drained:

• Misalignment - where we’re sourcing our energy, our life force, from and how we’re applying it; the frequency of the energy we’re tapping into

  • We know we’re misaligned when: everything requires a lot of effort; we feel like our insides and outsides aren’t matching; we’re getting the exact results we don’t want; we feel wrong or broken most or all of the time

  • We’re aligned when: things are in flow; we have access to a relatively steady stream of energy; we feel like our inner and outer match and we’re able to accurately and appropriately respond to life around us; we feel like we’re on the right path and we’re right for our path; there’s general satisfaction in how we’re spending our time and efforts

• Fragmentation - are we a colander or a bowl? can we hold our own energy and access the frequencies of integrity and coherence? how’s our capacity?

  • We know we’re fragmented when: we feel depleted and drained all the time; we’re constantly having to manage our responses and police ourselves (aiming to be “good”); our words and actions/ responses don’t seem to match up; people’s responses to us feel like a mismatch to our own sense of self a lot of the time; trust seems to be a recurring and/ or big issue

  • We’re intact when: our energy feels robust and we can hold that feeling; people remark on our integrity and seem to trust us easily; we trust ourselves and can relax our defenses more readily; vulnerability doesn’t feel so scary; we aren’t spending hours replaying conversations, looking for our mistakes and slip-ups

• Isolation/ Lack of community - what’s nourishing and replenishing us? how abundant are the resources we’re drawing from? is there energy going both in and out in balanced ways?

  • We know we’re isolated when: we feel lonely, we’re spending a lot of energy trying to fit in or carve out our place in a specific group; we’re doing everything ourselves and it’s limiting what we can accomplish; we start to feel bitter about the lives we’ve worked so hard to craft

  • We’re experiencing belonging when: we don’t have to work to feel accepted; we have humans or beyond-human kin who show us when we call and witness us in our fears, tears, and triumphs; we’re giving and receiving with ease

Assessment Exercise:

Set a timer for 15 min (5 min for each energy pattern) and write about how that pattern is showing up in your life. What here are the barriers to more nourishing flow? What can I shift to move from a more depleting pattern to a healthier one? Where are healthier patterns already happening in my life and how can I celebrate/ shore those up further?

Other questions it might be helpful to ask: how are my personal energy reserves? do I have the capacity to tackle [blank] right now? am I digging deep within me to get the energy for this or do Spirit and/or my community have my back? is this the best use of my finite energy reserves right now? am I feeling pulled in too many directions to be able to trust my own coherence and integrity? what are the people in my life mirroring back to me about how I’m being or what I might be needing?

5. Taking into account the seasons

The 4 Seasons of Aliveness

Fall - Create Space: On The Journey - The Departure

endings in preparation for beginnings; paring down to allow for deeper quiet and intimacy; beginning to slow and take stock; moving into the unknown

Winter - Into the Bone Cave: On The Journey - Meeting the Mentor and/ or The Dark Road of Trials

deep rest; dreaming; shadow work; listening deeply; realigning to the seeds you want to plant; a liminal space like death; less capacity for doing and wider social circles; creativity and crafting; honoring the dark; more inwardly focused

Spring - Sparks to Flames: On The Journey - Stewarding the Treasure/ Medicine; The Road Back

rising energy; seeds germinating and bursting forth; play; exploration; explosive; many possibilities (which may or may not need to be whittled down); growth; refining; widening social circles

Summer - Live and Relate: On The Journey: Master of Two Worlds / Resurrection / Freedom to Live

honoring the light; abundant, nourished, and nourishing; reaping rewards of labor; setting aside for the future; endurance; more outwardly focused

Assess: what seasons might it be helpful to consider in your life?

• the actual seasons - what’s happening in the natural world and in the stars and planets? your animal body will be affected.

• life cycle seasons - youth, middle age, elderhood; menstrual cycles or perimenopause/ menopause; etc

• the life cycle seasons of your partners, kids, roommates, etc - we co-regulate with people and both have an affect on and are affected by those around us

• contribution seasons - do they match, are they at odds, etc?

  • what do you have to contribute (are you introverting and integrating? doing? learning? creating? etc)?

  • what do your areas of contribution need from you (ie where are you in your career or professional life, your parenting life, et - whatever you’re contributing to society. does it need a lot from you or is it somewhat sustaining itself? is it quiet and resting right now? etc)

• other?

Assess: are different areas of your life in different seasons?

We can have different areas of our lives be in different seasons, and where we are in our life cycle will affect our capacity within each season. For example: An elder spring may be very different than a youthful spring. A mothering summer may be very different than an empty-nester summer, etc

Some examples of different areas of your life:

• Inner (mental, emotional, etc)

• Body (movement)

• Finances (safety and relaxation)

• Physical spaces (decluttering and freshening)

• Relationships (lightening the load; creating room for possibility)

• Scheduling

Assessment Exercise:

If you know burnout recovery asks you first to create space so you can go into deep rest, inner work, and very discerning wintering period… what can you start to shift to support you being able to move into that space? what resources do you need to call together? (**This is important because external resourcing is one major reason people give up part way through the journey or find it taking significantly longer or feeling much harder than they might wish.)

You may wish to ask yourself:

• Can I prioritize myself a little more for a while in my schedule or my family life? 

• What support do I need to call in to be able to carve out time for sessions, courses, etc (whatever I’m embarking on); plus time for journaling/ reflection, moving my body, or otherwise integrating, tuning into, and caring for myself? 

• Does my financial situation meet my basic needs easily with a little left over; or is there something I’ve been spending money on which isn’t necessary and which would feel good to invest in myself instead?

• Do I need to have a conversation with a partner about this and what level of on-board do I need them to be to feel right about this?

6. Pausing Again, Zooming Back Out

Whew. That was a lot to consider and take in. Is your head spinning? Take some deep breaths.

Hopefully at this point you’re seeing some patterns, maybe even have some insights on some things you can do (or at least some orienting questions to ask yourself when faced with choices) to help you start moving from burnout and disconnect to aliveness. If you’re someone who feels like they’ve been doing all the things but you’re still getting the opposite of what you want, did anything here give you an idea of something new to try? If you were feeling lost, do you feel like you have a perspective that fits now?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to track, that’s totally normal. Especially in the beginning when maybe it all feels newer or less intuitive. Remember, our longer-ago ancestors would’ve been steeped in these learnings and ways of perceiving the world from a younger age. They wouldn’t have had to unlearn “bad” patterns while trying to learn new ones. They wouldn’t have had to grieve all the hurt caused by not living this way from the beginning. They wouldn’t have felt nearly so alone in all this.

So give yourself grace and compassion. Take your time here. And consider reaching out for support. Having someone help hold this framework up for you as a mirror while you’re learning it is immensely helpful. Having someone hold the container so you can go deeper is invaluable. Having someone have your back does wonders for our courage when we need to look our monsters, our shame, or our shadows in the eye. Having someone who might be able to see the patterns you can’t yet will move you forward faster. We all have blind spots. That’s not a design flaw - it’s an invitation to relationship.

If/ when you’re ready to keep going with this kit, there’s one final piece: gathering your gear. In this case, that’s the next section which includes some basic skills and tools you might find helpful (whether you implement what you got here so far yourself, or get some help from me or someone else).