Emerge Mindfully

Called to Emerge (Mindfully) Anew Why This Book? Why Now? You deserve to live a fulfilled and joyful life. It doesn’t mean that it is always straightforward or simple, and it certainly doesn’t mean you won’t experience difficulty and hardship. A fulfilled and joyful life includes traveling through dark winters as well as bright summers, and all of the transitions in between. When you nurture yourself with kindness through your winters of difficulty, chaos, uncertainty, or despair, you renew yourself and step back into the world stronger and more alive than before. If you’ve picked up this book, some part of you is calling to be nurtured into something new. Perhaps you found this book while recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, or perhaps you found it while in a life transition such as a job change or divorce. Perhaps you are experiencing what feels like your own dark time, and this book appeared, and you aren’t even sure why exactly. And yet, something in you is stirring. You sense spring will follow winter, and you are curious about how to reemerge in a way that feels authentically alive and less at the whim of the world. Eyeing a new reality, you tiptoe back into the world, and this book is meant to help you emerge from difficult times into a new, healthy normal that you choose. Throughout this book, I’ll reference the pandemic of 2020–2021 as a shared experience. You can apply all of these lessons to your personal transitions or challenges. No matter your personal story, the practices in this book will help you imagine living vibrantly, giving you practical tools to have less stress and more joy as you build your life on your terms. What is interesting about referencing the pandemic of 2020–2021 is that it has been a shared global experience. Over time, we are emerging into our old world, and that world is not the same world we had left. And this process is cyclical, providing the perfect example of how to emerge into the life you want from any difficult or uncertain time. As we find our way forward from the pandemic, I’ve spoken to so many folks who are scared in one way or the other. “What if this happens again? Can I trust the vaccine? Can I trust the people who don’t take the vaccine? What if my company never goes back to the office? What if my company tells me I have to go back before I’m ready? What does all this mean for schools? Will my business survive next year? I don’t want to go back to the way it was before.” Most folks are exhausted. And the rules are still shifting, just as they have been since March of 2020. All of that uncertainty causes stress. I’m not talking vaguely about stress here. I’m talking about the real physiological fight-or-flight reaction that is constantly triggered in your nervous system as you try to navigate these perpetually changing waters. And here is the thing: even if you are reading this year’s past the pandemic, when you are in your own difficult winter or challenging transition, it feels just like all of what I described above. Often you will not know who to trust or what to trust. You’ll lose sleep and feel isolated. You’ll exhaust yourself. This is how stress occurs. This is the human condition. Because the human condition is timeless, the practices in this book are timeless, and they offer an effective antidote to the stress response. Here you’ll be given simple tools you can use to clear the stress out of your nervous system instantly. You’ll enjoy exercises created to help you step back into your life so that it feels like you are choosing your life rather than just surviving it. I’m not promising unicorns and rainbows, although rainbows are always a possibility. I do promise that if you try the strategies in this book, you’ll very likely sleep better, be happier, and make more life-affirming choices as you navigate the continued flux of our world. These are timeless and proven strategies packaged to make a difference for you right now. You deserve to define what reemerging into a new world looks like. You need not be at the whim of fear, reactions, and anxiety. You can make healthy choices to stay grounded and move into the world intentionally, in a way that nourishes both you and your community.