Deep Heartfelt Success

Good Chaos, Bad Chaos

• Heidi Marke, The Gentle Rebel Coach • Season 1 • Episode 11

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We explore the difference between predictable end‑of‑year chaos and the transformational chaos of big life events, guided by an unexpected encounter with grief after a peaceful death in the family. 

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode of the Deep Heartfelt Success Podcast, where we delve into ways to shift from that boring old, exhausting, tedious model of success where you sacrifice yourself and your ability to feel joy and switch off and laugh easily, and instead we want all of it. We want the achievement, the fulfilment of work success, of home success, and we want to retain our sanity and laugh easily. So this week I'm thinking a lot about chaos. The reason for that is, well, it's the end of year, and traditionally it's pretty chaotic, right? Everything collides. Work deadlines, end year reporting, and then there's the whole personal life stuff of trying to make sure that everybody's happy and everybody feels loved and you attend all of the events, and oh my goodness, it's it's just why is it always so chaotic? Well, that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is is there a difference between predictable chaos, which is caused by a collision of demands, so that's the end of year chaos, and the more transformative chaos, which is thrown upon us in times of big life stuff. I'm thinking of the birth of a baby, grief, the end of a job role, moving house, these big things that shake up. It's like every cell in our body is in a snow globe and shaken up, and then it resettles, and we become somebody else, or we can become somebody else. So this is like this is more Wizard of Oz light. It's like the winds of change chaos as opposed to the traditional predictable chaos of the end of the year, which can feel like that because it's really discombobulating, but actually nothing changes because here we are again, here we are again, exhausted, pushing ourselves to the limit, pushing ourselves to the point of tears and frustration and anger, and inability to switch off, inability to be present with those we love at the time of year that is supposed to be the special time of year, which just adds to the demands because you're supposed to feel more present with those you love. Ta-da! So, one of the reasons I'm well, there's many reasons I'm thinking about this. Firstly, because the chaos is there to see, and so why not use it for transformation, part of the self-discovery path, into how can I feel more joy, how can I feel more deep heartfelt success. Also, at the moment, I'm midway through teaching from chaos to contentment, which is an a course we're doing live together. So obviously, chaos is on my mind, on my heart, thinking, thinking, thinking about it. And then lastly, my uncle died. Now he was very old, I wasn't that close to him, but it has had an effect on me, an unexpected effect actually, which sounds like I'm being naive. I'm not, I've experienced a fair few bereavements in my life, mainly in my early 30s and altogether, like five years of them, and that that changed me, fundamentally changed me. Um I wasn't expecting to feel grief at the death of a very old and actually a very sad and unfortunately wicked man who caused a lot of damage. But I was very fond of him, and he was my last of my father's brothers, so last uncle on that side of the family. He was very old, he was very frail, but it was a good death. It was a good death. I was really grateful to be able to accompany my cousin, his son, and make sure there was just space for saying anything that needed to be said, allowing for peace, checking he was comfortable. It was it was a good last visit, and he got his wish, and he died peacefully. So it was a good death, and I really really felt grateful to be able to be there for my aunts, my uncle, my cousin, different people, and to to be able to contribute to making this time easier. And then I was suddenly struck by this awful thing. I thought I was ill, I thought it came down with some sort of well, probably grandchild-induced illness. You know, it's like grandchildren come over and bring snot and viruses with them. And then I realised I wasn't ill, it was grief that I had been here before, but it was very physical, there were no tears, didn't actually feel that sad. I just felt the physical sensations of grief, a state that I recognised once I paused and listened to what was going on. And I realised I've been here before. This is grief, this is grief in my body, and then I got curious about it. What's going on? I felt terrible, really heavy, like concrete. Couldn't it's interesting, I was gonna say I couldn't think straight, but I could think straight. I just couldn't process things that weren't important, and that I find really interesting. Because the thing with traditional chaos, when we're just trying to do too much all at once, all the demands of the world clash, particularly obvious at the end of each year, is it tends to push us into that tunnel vision of survival mode when our fear reaction is activated and we can only see the thing that needs to be got done that's right in front of us, and our peripheral vision disappears. Everything else that we'd already decided was important to us, like looking after ourselves, goes out the window. We go into survival mode, but this is a different kind of tunnel vision because there's something nice about that tunnel vision, isn't it? We were talking about this in the course that there's something really powerful and energizing about having permission to only focus on getting this one thing done of that I'm busy and important, I'm working, leave me alone. All the demand, all the other demands go because I have to get this done. This is absolutely vital, I have to get this done. Very addictive, and it's very nice in many ways, even though it can be sheer hell, so you can be pushing your body through hell, but there's something good because the the clarity of purpose is so obvious. I have to get this done, I have no choice. So, therefore, you can give yourself permission to just focus on that and to ignore everybody else's, and even your body's demands, it's just easier, it's not so overwhelming in some sense, even though you are actually completely overwhelmed to the point of being driven to do one thing at the detriment to everything else that you've already identified is important to you. So, what's interesting to me about this winds of change, which is what this grief felt like, something was shifting in terms of generations leaving us, and and you know, me getting older and family ties and memories and all sorts of things, and then unprocessed grief that was still in my body that I've been able to gratefully examine, pause and examine. I felt like I was forced to. It's like this is important, Heidi. You there's there's a reason that you feel like this. So look at it. Is there anything left? Are there any more gifts? Is there any more freedom to be gained from looking at past hurt, past grief? So I'm not just talking about bereavements as in death, which I would include all the people I've loved who have died, but also dogs, dogs, grief, god, that just throws me. But also things like the ending of my career, there was so much grief involved in that, so much grief and shame, and other things, like the end of my marriage in my twenties. There's grief there for me in the in the family at Christmas. The family isn't all together, even though arguably it was a good decision. I was far too young, it was a terrible marriage. You know, there's I can rationalise it, I can forgive, but there's still more, it felt like there was more to let go of, more to be grateful for, more freedom, more ease. And it didn't actually take that much processing once I started to notice it in the body. Now, this is a definitely a hijacking of my attention, which usually I would say, well, that's very similar to overwhelm. That is that survival mode, but it wasn't survival mode, it was just incredibly calm. I was able to see with absolute clarity, I am exhausted, I need to look after myself. However, there are things that are important to me this week. So, top of the list would be into I'm talking about in calendar list, top of the list is to look after myself, but in in terms of calendar and and how to manage my energy better, talking to clients stayed, coaching clients stayed. It was okay. That that's fine, that works for me, that made sense to me, that nourished me, that's purposeful, that's joyful, that's energizing. But other things that I could let go of, I let go of, and I'm okay with that. We just rearranged goals, so there was no disaster. Whereas previously, when I haven't felt like I had the energy, or when I've been grieving previously, I've just like felt quite panicked, like I'm losing control, like I'm letting people down, like I'm not holding it all together. I didn't feel the need to hold it together, although I did feel the need to hold it together, but I had really clear clarity of purpose. I knew what mattered to me, and the things that mattered to me stayed, and the things that could be rearranged, they still mattered, but rearranging them was not a problem. I didn't mean that I wanted to rearrange them, because actually, all the people I rearranged, I was really looking forward to talking to. It's that I wasn't in a position to give them my best, it wasn't right for me, that was pushing my body too far. So I just rearranged them. It was really interesting. It was a really interesting process of calm clarity in grief. What matters most, and I guess one of the reasons for that is there's nothing like grief to make you think of death. I mean, I say that as if it's obvious, but it's not always. I'm not saying it's that easy, you know, grief, we don't have a good way of dealing with it, and and the actual facing of death in grief is different than just dealing with the grief. But for me, I was looking at death, thinking about death, thinking about a good death, thinking about a good life. What matters most to me? What's important here? What do I want? What am I up to? But I it's interesting because I'm talking about this as if it was an intellectual exercise, and it really wasn't. Very, very physical. I felt rotten, felt awful, felt like I was coming down with something, but I wasn't coming down with something. I just needed to rest, I needed to be still, I needed to be. I actually really needed to be on my own. I needed to be quiet and still, with very, very little noise or interaction at all. And in the end, I ordered myself two duvet days, and on those two duvet days we had terrible weather, and it was perfect, perfect weather for a duvet day, and it did me the world of good. And on the second duvet day, I started to spontaneously recover, which is what I've noticed before. That feeling like if I if I stopped and rested, I will never get up again. Time and again I found that's not true. When I listen to my body and I just go with it and say, right, you need to rest. We're going to go all in on proper rest, rest matters, and a duvet day is like serious rebellious rest, right? I am not dealing with that, I'm not checking my emails, I'm not responding to everything. Everything is as under control as I can make it. People are looked after, everything's okay, it's safe for me to let go and withdraw from the world because that's what I feel called to do, that's what feels right for me. It just did me the world of good. And now I feel better. So much better. So that was interesting. So that to me felt chaotic. It felt chaotic because it blew up my plans. Completely blew up my plans. I did not get I was I was on such a roll, so happy, I had this plan, I knew what I was doing, I had clarity of purpose in my work, which I don't always have because things change, curveballs come, that's life. But I just felt like I did. And then it all got blown up by this unexpected grief. I did not expect to feel that way in reaction to this very old uncle leaving. It was a good death. I was able to be strong and be there for other people, and then the day he died, it started to hit me. Really surprised. But now I'm grateful for that. Was not much fun, so I'm not like grateful for feeling rotten. I'm grateful that it caused me to pause by being such a chaotic distraction, and it feels like the wizard of oz kind of winds, winds of change, stuff's shifting, and I don't know exactly what's shifting. So it's not it's not intellectual yet. I'm sure that'll come through. I'm sure there's all sorts of things to come through. The only stage I'm at now is that listening to it, going with it, acknowledging it. As soon as I acknowledge, oh my god, I'm grieving. This is grief. I I've been here before, I recognize these symptoms. Very, very physical, very stopping me, stopping me in my tracks, causing chaos. I can't do what I all these things that I had planned went out the window, and I had to let go, force me to let go. That's chaos, that's real proper chaos to me, and out of that, I could feel there was a chance there, an energy for transformation. I don't know what that transformation is. The only place I am with it now is one, listening to my body, even at a deeper level, two, giving myself permission to respond to what I needed and take really good care of myself. Three, trusting that everything that needs to get done would get done. And four, there's something going on there about grief and looking back at all the losses in my life and processing them more deeply. It's not like it's a done deal, it's just, ah, there's still some sadness there. Maybe, maybe that's what's going on, maybe that's in my body in some way. So it wasn't trying to force it out, get rid of it. I wanted to, believe me. Believe me, I could have gone for the googling of some ritual that would have shaken it out of my body immediately. But I stopped wanting that and just went with it. And it's it's worked its seems to have worked its course, which is good, because I've got a busy week and I really like doing the stuff I do, and I want to get back to it, but I feel changed. I do feel different. I feel like I've let go of more grief, I feel like I've practiced some more forgiveness, just feel more at peace. So that chaos feels like good chaos, highly inconvenient, very discombobulating through me until I went with it. But I feel like I surfed it more skillfully and I feel better for it and I'm grateful for it. The other chaos, the traditional end-of-year chaos, I'm looking at that now from this lens of what matters really to me because I've looked at death, looked at it from a broader perspective, an end-of-life perspective perspective, and I'm just looking at it going, oh my goodness, I don't know if I can be bothered. It just feels like it's very demanding the end of the year. So instead, I'm starting to think about it in terms of how do I want to feel, which is which is my process anyway, but I'm just doing it even more. It's like, well, how do I want to feel? Do I really want to get all of that done? What really matters? So, one thing we're doing we did this week in session three of the From Chaos to Contentment course was draw up a wish list of how you want the end of the year to go. So we were looking at holding steady versus holding on tight and all sorts of things. We had some fun. We even made we even played with cheeballs, which I hadn't done for a long time. Obviously, something I did with the Zen Master all those years back. Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about this week, and I just wanted to share that with you as you decide and become aware of how you're pushing through to the end of the year. Are you holding steady or are you holding on tight? Are you pushing through overwhelming to exhaustion or are you up leveling to a nicer way to end the year? Are you focused, are you still managing to focus on what matters most to you? Is there a difference for you between transformational creative chaos of major life stuff and the traditional predictable chaos? Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Predictable chaos. Predictable chaos that's kind of partly self chosen and self created, as opposed to the big the big stuff that may have something for you. Maybe it all has something for you. Anyway, I'll leave you with those thoughts. Have a great week.