Feb 25, 2020
Real Life: Don’t Dance with Crazymakers
Serendipity, boundaries, crazymakers, intentional living, mental health, neuroplasticity, epigenetics, Taoism, Chinese Medicine
So fun! I posted pictures last week while glamping on Salt Spring Island…and turns out the cabin where I was staying belongs to the family of an amazing yogi and paleo chef I know from a past home in Colorado.
Literally, her MOM checked me in!
The entire getaway was truly perfect and much needed on a soul level.
Don’t get me wrong — I love my current home in Victoria. But my whole being craves deep silence, solitude and simplicity. Also reconnection to what feeds me.
I’ll intersperse pics from my Salt Spring meanderings below, amidst tough love + Chinese Medicine talk ;).
Boundaries + crazymakers
I’ve been talking boundaries a lot lately, both in my weekly blog posts and in the newsletter. (If you’re a new subscriber, check the archived emails for extra shares that I don’t include here.)
In last week’s post, I offered a list of boundary-breaking examples. To continue that thread, today I’m talking crazymakers.
Julia Cameron devoted an entire chapter to crazymakers in her phenomenal book The Artist’s Way. Why bring them up here? Because crazymakers are expert boundary breakers. Like real professionals.
Check Camerons’s list of crazymaker characteristics (quoted from The Artist’s Way; additions in brackets are my own):
Crazymakers break deals and destroy schedules.
Crazymakers expect special treatment.
Crazymakers discount your reality.
Crazymakers spend your time and money.
Crazymakers triangulate those they deal with… Because crazymakers thrive on energy (your energy), they set people against one another in order to maintain their own power position dead center.
Crazymakers are expert blamers.
Crazymakers create dramas — but seldom where they belong… Afraid to effectively tap their own creativity [or face and address their own patterns and addictions], they are loathe to allow that same creativity [or change or recovery] in others. It makes them jealous. It makes them threatened. It makes them dramatic — at your expense. Devoted to their own agendas, crazymakers impose these agendas on others.
Crazymakers hate schedules — except their own. In the hands of a crazymaker, time is a primary tool of abuse.
Crazymakers hate order. Chaos serves their purposes. When you begin to establish a place that serves you and your creativity [or change efforts, including recovery], your crazymaker will abruptly invade that space with projects of his/her own.
Crazymakers deny that they are crazymakers.
Sound familiar? Here’s the rub:
If we choose to engage crazymakers and do not uphold boundaries, we are part of the dance. We are choosing it.
We are also, even if we kick and scream and deny, getting something out of it. That in mind…
Who’s a crazymaker in your life? How?
What’s your role in the relationship with that person?
What’s your responsibility in the crazymaking relationship? Are you enabling that person? How? Why?
What do you get in return? In other words, what does keeping this relationship as is give you? Does it enable your unhelpful habits, patterns or addictions?
How are you a crazymaker? To whom? In what ways?
More on this, in Friday’s newsletter.
Shifting Currents, Shaping Mind
A brand new, self-guided, online mini-course just launched at Alchemist Academy: Shifting Currents, Shaping Mind: Neuroplasticity + Taoism.
This one’s a bit geeky and gets at a long-time passion of mine: the merger between neuroplasticity, epigenetics, Taoism, and Chinese Medicine. It weaves a story of synergy between leading-edge neuroscience and long-ago wisdom — both in theory and in practice.
It’s also totally accessible for non-Chinese Medicine folks. AND it’s immediately relevant to anyone working to change habits, patterns or addictions. Get it here.
Work It Like a Wizard
If you’re a Chinese Medicine practitioner looking to rack up CEU/PDA hours, also check the Work It Like a Wizard PDA/CEU Bundle.
It has you covered for 26 NCCAOM-approved PDA units (counts for CTCMA too). And…you’ll get 4 totally self-guided, totally online, totally fun courses + kits.
Content and access are yours forever (so you could even get it now, as a student, then use it for continuing ed later). Works out to a little over $11 per unit, and includes:
- Body as Ally: Recovery Kit
- Seasonal Eating + Living Kit
- Roots + Shoots: An Alchemist Guide to Chinese Herbs
- All The Feels: Chinese Medicine Psychology + the 7 Emotions
Rack up PDAs/CEUs. Save some dough. Learn cool stuff. Work It Like A Wizard, right this way. Meanwhile, some…
Recipes + links
The One about Boundaries. This Rob Bell podcast episode is So. Good. Make sure to listen through to the second half, which overflows with truth bombs.
We Are the Luckiest. One of many interviews I’ve listened to lately with Laura McKowen. I devoured Laura’s book a few weeks back. 1000 stars.
9 types of ANTs. Infested with Automatic Negative Thoughts? Time to exterminate them.
The most beautiful Moroccan salad platter. Paleo, Whole30, vegetarian goodness. (In case you’re here for tasty stuff.)
Don’t give in, from Rev. Lydia:
“[O]nce you decide to clear your life of certain clutter (whether that be material items, relationships (maybe not even a relationship entirely but a certain dynamic within the relationship), leadership commitments, etc.), you will be tempted to return to what was before. You will doubt your decision and rationalize why it wasn’t a good decision to get rid of (fill in the blank) in the first place.
This is all normal. Don’t give in.
While humans are wired for constant growth and change, the irony is that our natural state is always inertia — resistance to change — even good change. Any kind of change shocks and scares us at first and we just need time to recalibrate to a new normal; a new normal which is so much better than what we used to deal with.
I really wanted to convey this phenomenon to you because if you’re not aware of it, you’ll revert to your inertia. Don’t go back. Keep moving forward and know that doubt and discomfort are a part of every metamorphosis.”
Astrology + the Dance of Duality, from Maia Toll:
“There are many kinds of belief. There’s the belief of your mind, a form of believing which wants to be rational and absolute (the brain refuses to remember that it can be faulty or manipulated). The mind wants its truths clear, precise, known.
Then there are the beliefs of the heart, soul, or body, none of which are tied to the mind’s rationality. Dreams, shamanic journeys, intuitions, and our spiritual beliefs fall into this second category.
This dichotomy is the difference between what I think of as your daylight mind, which logically navigates the complexities of the modern world, and your nighttime self, which knows life is softer and that shadows are multi-layered. Neither form of belief is ‘right’ and both are valid.To live wholly we must find balance between the two in the same way we balance light and dark, inhale and exhale.”
Do you have a crazymaker in your life? Are YOU a crazymaker? xo.
LIFE BY DESIGN.
When you’re making changes, caring accountability makes a world of difference. I offer two avenues for customized plans + coaching:
The Foundation and The Deep Dive.
Also check out my Body as Ally Recovery Kit.
In integrity + alchemy, Dana
