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Do you know what finna, on fleek, stan, and W mean? If I didn’t have a teenager I probably wouldn’t either. (I’ll provide definitions below.) The older (and possibly lamer) I get, the more picky I am with my words, and the less attracted I am to jargon and slang.
But I’m guilty of overusing certain words in my work and putting my own spin on them – mostly because they describe a significant aspect of what I do and I haven’t found anything better. Case in point: the words expand and expansion.
I use the word expand all the time to describe the process of transcending your ego, getting outside your comfort zone, and going beyond your human conditioning. Expansion means recognizing that these limitations aren’t real, and even discovering that who you really are goes beyond your personality and even beyond your body.
I use the term often because I think this is generally a really good thing and I believe it represents a form of personal evolution.
Sign up now for Sacred Expansion – an 8 week course devoted to your healing and evolution!
When we don’t challenge our conditioning, we operate according to deep mental programs that define who we can be, what we think, the range of emotions available to us, etc. This “unexpanded” state restricts our freedom and tends to limit our depth of engagement with life – our body awareness, how deep we’re willing to go in relationships with others (and ourselves), our connection to the natural world, our openness to spiritual experiences, etc.
Expanded versus unexpanded isn’t a black-and-white situation. Expansion is relative, always changing, and there’s no end to it. To be open to expanding beyond our limitations wherever, whenever, and however we can is a way of life.
To be clear, “expanded” isn’t the same as happy. There are plenty of people who are happy the way they are, even if there isn’t much (or any) Spirit or growth in their lives. If you’re happy, you’re happy, and I don’t want to try to convince you otherwise!
But once you have an inkling of recognition that there’s more to life than what’s on the surface, it awakens your inner seeker, which has an insatiable appetite for the truth and perpetual inclination toward expansion.
Where do we start? There are countless ways to promote your expansion. In my opinion, two of the most vital and powerful are these:
- Cultivate an inner YES. When life is uncomfortable, we’re pressing against our limitations. When we resist and say “no” to what’s arising, we stay small and confined. When we say yes, the experience changes. When we say, “I’m open to this,” or, “How can I make this an opportunity?” or “How can I grow through this?” or “What is this showing me?” or “How does this support my highest good?” these are all ways of saying YES and promoting expansion.
- Be innocent and curious. One of the biggest hindrances to expansion is all of the shoulds we’re imposing on ourselves and the rest of the world. Some examples: People should let me into the lane when I have my turn signal on! I should be more successful at this point in my life. He should appreciate everything I do around the house! I shouldn’t be sick. Taxes shouldn’t be so high! We all do it. Just watch your mind and you’ll see. There’s a certain arrogance to “should,” as it implies that you know how the world is supposed to be and it’s wrong. Instead, what happens when you release your “shoulds” and your grievances? What happens when you just become innocent and curious?
The third way that I recommend you support your expansion is through our upcoming course, Sacred Expansion. It starts April 1st.
It’s an 8 week journey led by my wife, Briana. She’ll guide you through a nature-based framework for recognizing where you’re limited and discovering who you could be without those limitations; releasing baggage; deepening your connection to Spirit; and building the resilience and courage to continue the process on your own.
Initially, Sacred Expansion was the preliminary phase of our Dragontree Life Coaching training program. We felt this process of “cleaning house” and opening oneself to growth and change was an essential prerequisite before guiding others.
But the response in the first couple years was that the Sacred Expansion portion of the training was, for many students, the most transformative part. So, we decided to make it available to people as a stand-alone course.
Here’s what one of our graduates had to say about it:
Sacred expansion is like a crash course in being a better human. So often, we stop examining what we do and what we say in a meaningful way – we get so steeped in assumptions and learned behaviors, and patterned thinking, that we forget there are other ways to look at things. This is challenging self-work, but at the same time, Sacred Expansion is so gentle, so loving, it’s almost as though the lessons and questions are hugged into you, they are absorbed so sweetly, so completely without judgment or blame or shame. – Heather Wells
I highly encourage you to sign up!
Click here to learn more about it.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. for those who are out of the Gen Z slang loop. . .
Finna: like a contraction of “fixing to,” as in “going to” – “I’m finna go to the store”
Fleek / On Fleek: flawlessly styled, groomed, perfect, etc. “That outfit is on fleek! That song is fleek!”
Stan: a very zealous or enthusiastic fan
W: abbreviation for “win.” Used to congratulate someone or express a victory or success.
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Seven years ago, Briana and I started working on a book for people who are ready to transform their lives. It’s called Rituals for Transformation. It features 108 lessons to be done over 108 days, and it takes the reader on a journey of healing and awakening. Of all our courses and books, it’s the thing I’m most proud of. I can go through the book myself, year after year, and get something new out of it each time.
Today I’d like to share lesson number 83: Every hardship is an opportunity to let go. The following is excerpted from the book.
What parts of life are hard for you? Take a look at your hardship today, and ask yourself these questions. First, what’s wrong with hard? We understand that you may prefer easy, but is it possible to see hard as just hard, and not wrong? Like a workout should be. Like a day of farm work. Hard, but manageable.
Second, what is my role in the perception of this situation as hard? While there are certain circumstances that nearly anyone would perceive as objectively hard – like carrying boulders – others are only subjectively hard because of your personal viewpoint. Hardship is a state of mind that can be difficult to relinquish. Perhaps you were taught that hard work is noble, or that it’s the only way to achieve anything, or that easy equals lazy. Such notions could lead you to believe you get extra credit for leading a hard life.
Third, could I let go of my feelings about this situation? Hold a hard situation in mind and feel what comes up in your body. Feel willingly. Invite the feeling. Welcome it. Breathe into it. And let it go.
Fourth, what’s possible when I let go? What’s beneath that hardship? When you view your hardship as an opportunity to let go, a tremendous array of additional opportunities arise. Thus, every hardship becomes an opportunity…
… to wake up
… to forgive
… to practice changing perspective
… to find new ways to play
… to put what you’ve been learning to the test
… to practice flexibility
… to reunite with a fragmented part of yourself
… to level up
… to reaffirm your values
… to practice going with the flow
… to discover your needs
… to use your gifts
… to connect to Spirit
… to grow
… to own your power
… to access intuition
… to live your purpose
… to ask for help
… to open your heart
… to relinquish control
… to be supported
… to choose lightness
… to experience trust
… to love yourself
… and to become who you really are.
Holding this hardship in mind, scan that list, and see if one of these many opportunities jumps out at you. Make a choice to change your story. Now, what’s one thing you can do right now to move yourself in the direction of this choice?
Be well,
Peter
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I bet that if I said, “Let’s start the process of dealing with your psychological baggage,” most people would tense up a bit and expect that they’re in for a “heavy” experience. It’s funny, because if we’re carrying around this baggage all the time, it already represents a certain “weight” that we’ve gotten used to, and the “dealing with it” part should amount to feeling lighter and freer.
While writing our book, The Well Life, we felt it simply wasn’t possible to guide people to the wellest of lives without encouraging them to resolve and/or release the stuff from the past that may be undermining their best efforts to be healthy and successful today. But we anticipated that some readers might react to this agenda about as well as if we offered to give them an amateur root canal.
I don’t have enough space in an article to explain our whole methodology – not to mention the approaches we use before and after to prepare for and stabilize this work. But I’d like to share an except on how we introduce this process, which I hope will help you feel ready to liberate yourself:
“Now, before you think, “Oh boy, this is going to be heavy,” we want to tell you that this doesn’t have to be a heavy experience. In fact, it’s an opportunity to feel lighter. It’s just that, between the heaviness and the lightness, there’s often something that one of our former teachers calls a “veil of discomfort.” The discomfort is only a veil because it’s really quite insubstantial. As soon as we become willing to experience it, we readily pass through it. And on the other side is lightness and opportunity!
Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you. One thing that may happen when you prepare to go for something big (whether it be a new relationship, a career change, or a cross-country move) is that your mind quickly runs through all your baggage—unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses—and tells you this is a bad idea.
Rather than hating your mind for this, it’s important to remember that you programmed this mind. You started out as a baby with a clean mental slate, and little by little you trained your mind to look out for things that might threaten your survival or happiness. That’s how your mind is built to work. It just happens that most minds are overly eager to do this job (especially if it means that your mind gets to monopolize your attention).
The more intense the bad experiences of your past, the deeper the groove they cut in your mental record. The mind looks for anything in your present that even remotely resembles these past experiences so that it can steer you clear from repeating them. It produces warning thoughts and initiates intense emotions to grab your attention.
So what can you do? Thank your mind for its efforts to protect you, but inform it that it’s working from outdated beliefs and overly generalized data. There’s no purpose in blaming yourself for how your mind functions. You’ve done your best with the resources that were available to you in each moment. But if you want the freedom to show up to each moment without being restrained by your past, it’s imperative to recognize that your baggage impedes this. Limiting beliefs and the echoes of past emotions are an intrusion on your space and the peace that lies within.
The key to identifying past incidents that get priority cleanup status is that when you bring them to mind and then check in with your body, you don’t feel altogether light and clean. Instead, you might feel heavy, tight, agitated, or constricted. Or a negative emotion might come up, such as guilt, fear, shame, anger, regret, sadness, or grief.
It’s possible that something you did that was objectively bad, like stealing the Statue of Liberty and burying it in your backyard, doesn’t actually provoke an especially strong physical or emotional response when you focus on it. In such cases, it’s important to remember that the objective “sin rating” of an event is less significant than how much of a hook it has in you. On the other hand, you might have accidentally thrown away your child’s first finger-painting and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt when you think about it—this would be something worth addressing.
Think of this process like cleaning your living space. When your house is filthy, there are piles of documents, dishes, laundry, and areas needing repair. It can feel so daunting you don’t know where to begin. You don’t even want to begin. But once you start, and then you have one room that’s clutter-free, it feels more manageable. Eventually, the whole house is pretty well in order, and then it’s fairly easy to stay on top of it. In the same way, as you clean up your life, you’ll find it both easier and more appealing to continue to clean, and to nip any new messes in the bud so they don’t impede your future.”
If this sounds good to you, I encourage you to let go of something right now. If you feel into your body, are you totally at ease? If not, is the unease associated with something that’s unresolved? Something you want to be different? Something you’re holding onto? Why not let it go – even if just for this moment? First try feeling it without any resistance, welcoming the feeling completely. Then take a breath into the feeling and as you exhale, let it go.
If you’re intrigued by where we’re headed, check out our book.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Do you know what finna, on fleek, stan, and W mean? If I didn’t have a teenager I probably wouldn’t either. (I’ll provide definitions below.) The older (and possibly lamer) I get, the more picky I am with my words, and the less attracted I am to jargon and slang.
But I’m guilty of overusing certain words in my work and putting my own spin on them – mostly because they describe a significant aspect of what I do and I haven’t found anything better. Case in point: the words expand and expansion.
I use the word expand all the time to describe the process of transcending your ego, getting outside your comfort zone, and going beyond your human conditioning. Expansion means recognizing that these limitations aren’t real, and even discovering that who you really are goes beyond your personality and even beyond your body.
I use the term often because I think this is generally a really good thing and I believe it represents a form of personal evolution.
Sign up now for Sacred Expansion – an 8 week course devoted to your healing and evolution!
When we don’t challenge our conditioning, we operate according to deep mental programs that define who we can be, what we think, the range of emotions available to us, etc. This “unexpanded” state restricts our freedom and tends to limit our depth of engagement with life – our body awareness, how deep we’re willing to go in relationships with others (and ourselves), our connection to the natural world, our openness to spiritual experiences, etc.
Expanded versus unexpanded isn’t a black-and-white situation. Expansion is relative, always changing, and there’s no end to it. To be open to expanding beyond our limitations wherever, whenever, and however we can is a way of life.
To be clear, “expanded” isn’t the same as happy. There are plenty of people who are happy the way they are, even if there isn’t much (or any) Spirit or growth in their lives. If you’re happy, you’re happy, and I don’t want to try to convince you otherwise!
But once you have an inkling of recognition that there’s more to life than what’s on the surface, it awakens your inner seeker, which has an insatiable appetite for the truth and perpetual inclination toward expansion.
Where do we start? There are countless ways to promote your expansion. In my opinion, two of the most vital and powerful are these:
- Cultivate an inner YES. When life is uncomfortable, we’re pressing against our limitations. When we resist and say “no” to what’s arising, we stay small and confined. When we say yes, the experience changes. When we say, “I’m open to this,” or, “How can I make this an opportunity?” or “How can I grow through this?” or “What is this showing me?” or “How does this support my highest good?” these are all ways of saying YES and promoting expansion.
- Be innocent and curious. One of the biggest hindrances to expansion is all of the shoulds we’re imposing on ourselves and the rest of the world. Some examples: People should let me into the lane when I have my turn signal on! I should be more successful at this point in my life. He should appreciate everything I do around the house! I shouldn’t be sick. Taxes shouldn’t be so high! We all do it. Just watch your mind and you’ll see. There’s a certain arrogance to “should,” as it implies that you know how the world is supposed to be and it’s wrong. Instead, what happens when you release your “shoulds” and your grievances? What happens when you just become innocent and curious?
The third way that I recommend you support your expansion is through our upcoming course, Sacred Expansion. It starts April 1st.
It’s an 8 week journey led by my wife, Briana. She’ll guide you through a nature-based framework for recognizing where you’re limited and discovering who you could be without those limitations; releasing baggage; deepening your connection to Spirit; and building the resilience and courage to continue the process on your own.
Initially, Sacred Expansion was the preliminary phase of our Dragontree Life Coaching training program. We felt this process of “cleaning house” and opening oneself to growth and change was an essential prerequisite before guiding others.
But the response in the first couple years was that the Sacred Expansion portion of the training was, for many students, the most transformative part. So, we decided to make it available to people as a stand-alone course.
Here’s what one of our graduates had to say about it:
Sacred expansion is like a crash course in being a better human. So often, we stop examining what we do and what we say in a meaningful way – we get so steeped in assumptions and learned behaviors, and patterned thinking, that we forget there are other ways to look at things. This is challenging self-work, but at the same time, Sacred Expansion is so gentle, so loving, it’s almost as though the lessons and questions are hugged into you, they are absorbed so sweetly, so completely without judgment or blame or shame. – Heather Wells
I highly encourage you to sign up!
Click here to learn more about it.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. for those who are out of the Gen Z slang loop. . .
Finna: like a contraction of “fixing to,” as in “going to” – “I’m finna go to the store”
Fleek / On Fleek: flawlessly styled, groomed, perfect, etc. “That outfit is on fleek! That song is fleek!”
Stan: a very zealous or enthusiastic fan
W: abbreviation for “win.” Used to congratulate someone or express a victory or success.
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I like what you said: “You can control only your own experience.” This is key to resolving conflict. I cannot control the other person’s behavior. You also mentioned “being curious” about the other’s perception and goals. The key to this is to try to state the other’s point of view in a way that he or she says, “Yes, that’s right.” You don’t have to agree with it, you just have to understand it. And encourage the other person to express the same about your perception and goals. Mutually doing this slows down confrontation and speeds up conversation. Thanks for posting this.
Thank you for being so wonderful.
Great thoughtful processes to consider. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your kind words
Great advice. Brilliant and simply put -direct. Thank you. I will definitely take your suggestions forward.
Thank you so much.
Really helpful Brianna. Thanks so much for sharing.