Your body tells the truth

As part of my heartplay quest, I’ve begun looking into all sorts of oddities to stock my hobby pantry. Last weekend I learned how to walk on walls! It was difficult, it produced bruises, and I loved it! While I won’t be joining Cirque du Soleil anytime soon, thanks to Alex and the crew at the AirCraft Circus, I had a blast.

What made it to my Heartplay list after my fly on the wall experience? Newness – check. Exhilaration – check. Heartrate up – check. Backing tracks – check  (great music at The AirCraft Circus!) I’m trying to decipher my responses to the multitude of hobbies that I pursue. A serial hobbiest, I used to get frustrated with my seeming lack of committment to any one thing – but what I’m finding is that there is a pattern running through all of my activities.  I love change. I love risk. I like to try the new. I love the future. I like tying together the pieces of seemingly disparate things. Each new thing I bring to the table opens my mind to the thread between it and my previous hobbies.

Martha Beck, who is one of my long-time role models and who I recently went to see in person, calls this process of deciphering your passions, the “Yuck to Yes” scale. By checking in with your body during the things you do, your body gives you definitive clues as to what it is that you truly love, and what you’re merely going through the motions on. Are you having a physically nauseous reaction to the politics going on at your weekly staff meeting? That’s a yuck. Did you get tingles on your arms, or a warm sensation in your belly when you were arranging an event for your friends? That’s a Yes. If you check in with your body at times when you already know the answer – then you can levelset your physical reactions, and your body can become a reliable compass, as Beck calls it, pointing your way to your own North Star.

So, I’m currently trying to find my YES responses from the sea of activities that I have done, and plan to do. This process makes such intuitive, common sense to me, that I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before. The body doesn’t lie, and it’s always been right there right with me, ready to offer a clue that I am now actively looking for.