Tag: caitlin pontrella

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Vulnerability, Reciprocity, and Being Able to Fully Express our Love→

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare” – Brene Brown

A good read and reminder: Time is too precious to be investing in relationships and endeavours that are not contributing to our growth, where we can not be our authentic selves, where we have to ‘hold back’, where we find ourselves waiting for permission, reciprocity, support, affection, or respect.

Who are the people in your life that you are most vulnerable with, and in what spaces? Are you giving your time, energy, and affection in the people and things that truly love and lift you?

I read this as a reminder to invest in the people that are ready to celebrate and embrace you wholehearted, who keep you accountable, who commit to your growth, to choose places where you can be vulnerable and honest, experiences where you can be fully expressed… For we all deserve to experience being seen, accepted, and loved, deeply.

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Stress, Challenge, and the Golden Growth Ratio→

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller

Your Golden Growth Ratio

A reflection I engage with once a year goes as follows: Where do I consider myself an expert? A beginner? What is the ratio of daily time spent in each of these different states?

If you spend too little time in a state of challenge and new learning, you will quickly grow bored, discontent. If you spend too much, you’ll likely meltdown, lose confidence, and burn out. Everyone’s sweet spot–the percent of time you spend either learning entirely new things or facing new challenges with old skills with maximum, optimal learning and retention–differs.

It is a delicate balance that we need to develop for ourselves that also must take into consideration all the various facets that affect our emotional, mental, social health. While we need to be doing things we are bad at / beginners, we also need to do enough to maintain our self-esteem, confidence, and existing expertise.


The Yerkes-Dodson Law relates Performance to Pressure, taking in to consideration the impact on our mental health when we take on more difficult tasks and new learning.

Figuring Out Your Ratio

Personally, when looking back on times where i felt most challenged and fulfilled, I found that I was in these unstable spaces / beginner spaces at least 60% of my time. Launching new projects or companies, writing books on new topics, researching and reading in new genres, engaging in a movement practice that has me moving in weird, unusual patterns and alignments.

A good place to start is just looking at your average day. How are you splitting your time? Break it down. Of the time you spend each day working and doing (from your job to your hobbies and extracurriculars), categorize: Challenge Engagement Time being any time where you are in beginner state, new learning or new application, and Expertise Application Time being time where you are executing tasks you know how to do with the skills you already have.

From there begin to tinker with it.

Recognize that this is an active process. You have to actively seek out new things to learn, new challenges to test yourself and your skills against.

Tracking Your Learning

I keep a small list on my phone that has three buckets:

To Learn
LearningExpanding
One Hand Handstand
Guitar
Intermediate Car Maintencen
Basic electronic wiring		Press Handstands
CSS/html
Non-profit investment strategies		 Handstands
Watercoloring
SEO Strategy
Late roman history and leadership

This is just a small sample of my current list, which is quite lengthy.

  • To Learn are things that are ‘on deck’ per se–when you have more time, energy, or interest, these are skills and knowledge sets you want to acquire but aren’t giving any time to. It’s a dumping ground of ideas.
  • Learning is a list I try to limit to a maximum of 10 things at any one time which I try to give a little time each week/day to. Sometimes they’re short sprints (IE: I am reading several books on Non-profit investment strategies and have a consultation with my accountant coming up, after which it will move over to the expanding column) and sometimes they’re long hauls (Ie: CSS/html is a 6-month project to become more self sufficient).
  • Expanding collects all the things that I feel good enough in but want to build depth and greater expertise in

Of course, some things disappear from all these lists once I feel like I’ve accrued enough knowledge, or if I’ve hit a point where it would be better to consult an actual expert. The whole point is that I bring some level of conscious attention and active cultivation of this growth golden ratio.

Be & Do Better

While I don’t condone unnecessary suffering, I do subscribe to a mentality focused on embracing challenge, stress, and discomfort, and ever stepping into the unknown. Yes, it is often unpleasant and difficult to engage with problems that seem outside of our immediate ability, but also the place of greatest emboddied potential for rapid growth.

It is also easy to fall into a comfortable rhythm, to want to become so good at something until it is second nature. And while there is value in expertise, there is also a very common danger and outcome of slipping into complacency and boredom. Things that used to be challenges can quickly transform into tasks and tedium, and growth slows to a snails pace.

And it’s hard to break out of because let’s be real–it feels good to be good at something.

But it feels better to grow?

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Happiness, Risk-Taking, and Being Enough Today For the Challenges You Face→

“If you have the good luck to have found something or someone that resonates with you, that amplifies your happiness–risk it. Life is too short and happiness too rare.”

Over the last two weeks, themes of happiness, love, risk, and readiness have appeared in almost all of my personal conversations with people in my life. Whether we are talking about making career changes, starting up new businesses, moving into new homes, or investing (or divesting) in personal relationships–the most common thread is *fear of not being ready or not being enough*.

🤔From these conversations, I took a little time to reflect on why.

When we experience fear or when risk taking is required of us, we often look for palatable excuses to disengage, delay, pass up, and say no, not now, not yet.

❓Do you ever catch yourself doing this?❓
👉Convincing yourself that the timing is off, or that you aren’t ready or that you aren’t good enough:
– strong enough
– smart enough
– pretty enough.
– experienced enough
– independent enough
👉Convincing yourself that you are not far enough along in your healing, learning, or growing? 
👉Convincing yourself that you would only do harm, feel pain, or fall short/fail?

🤷‍♀️Well, very few things happen at the ‘right time’, and much does not happen at all. It’s also impossible to be 100% ready for anything in life (probably not even 75%), for nothing is truly predictable, certain, or defined. I promise there will *always* be more you can learn, do, grow, fix.

So, its probably healthier to present in the now. To embrace opportunities — jobs, projects, people — when and as they appear in life. More so, if they have the chance of contributing to our happiness in a meaningful way… being vulnerable enough to take a risk and make a change.

For the truth is: You are ready, and enough, as you are today.
‘Success’ only needs a few things:
🔹The capacity for clean communication
🔹The ability to be vulnerable and ask for help
🔹The willingness to positively and creatively problem solve. 
🔹The trust in yourself and in your ability to learn the things you need, to grow and to love.
…and of course the ability to see success as achieving happiness, rather than the achievement of money, marriage, status, possessions, and so forth.

I know I don’t need to say it but… no matter how prepared you are… mistakes will happen: you will stumble, fall, experience failure, cause pain. This is inevitable. But you have to risk that to open yourself up to all the positive outcomes as well. (Brene Brown once wrote “You can not selectively numb your emotions, when we numb painful emotions, we also numb good ones”–the same goes for experiences, you might be avoiding the risk of a painful experience, but that means you also avoid the potential payout of a positive one)

➖➖➖➖➖➖

Seriously, as I reflect more on this, I really think the best thing I did for myself was to stop waiting for the right place, the right time, the right partner, and to start trusting myself, my vision, and my capacity to listen, learn, and love.

🙅‍♀️👎I didn’t feel ready when I took my job at Parks, or started up the Movement Creative, or launched any of my major projects and events. I actually felt under-qualified, inexperienced, and unskilled. An impostor.

🙅‍♀️👎I didn’t feel ready when I entered the biggest romantic relationship of my life nor when I started dating after it ended. I actually felt unlovable, unworthy. I felt far from ‘healed’, and that I had a laundry list of things I had to ‘fix’ or improve about myself before I was ready, good, worthy, able to be a partner to another.

🙅‍♀️👎I didn’t feel ready when I moved across country, left my family behind, and changed life path–I felt afraid, full of self-doubt and uncertainty. I worried I was unprepared and that I would let people down.

I also often felt uncertain of who I was, where I was going, what I wanted. I held deep limiting stories about myself as well as expectations of what I ‘needed’ to be (ie more educated, more experienced, more whole, more healed, more happy, more etc. etc.)

Yet when I stepped back, I was able to see that each opportunity (or person) resonated with me deeply. There was huge potential for creating positive impact, for crafting deep love and personal connection, for engaging in exciting travel and learning. And wow, it was right here, now, presenting itself to me. Sure I might not feel ready but who knows when I’d get another chance? Or if by saying no, I’d close off that opportunity forever? Or if inaction would actually be the thing to cause me pain? I couldn’t know. And I have had enough life pass me to know that experiences and people that resonate deeply with you don’t come by too often…

So I took some big risks.

And while I certainly failed at times–and still do, and have been hurt, and have hurt in turn… I had so many successes. I launched incredible programs and projects, I met and loved some amazing humans and in turn loved myself more, and I have created a life where I am the happiest I have ever been. Not to mention I have also discovered that I am far more capable than I ever believed.

Plus I learned that almost 
🔹no decision made is irrevocable, 
🔹no relationship marred is irreparable, 
🔹no failure to big to crawl back from, 
🔹no pain that cannot be endured and evolved from.

And finally: Big risk has the potential for big reward–and big fear usually indicates potential for big happiness, growth, and connection (not to mention fear being an indicator of things you actually need to explore–rather than run from)

WRAP UP
🔆I think the ultimate lesson I’m trying to draw up is that we all need the permission to be both imperfect and to believe that we are enough. We need the courage to be vulnerable so that we can take risks on the people and things that resonate with us and our happiness.🔆

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Respect yourself enough to walk away from anyone or anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy.

“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anyone or anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy”

🤔The last year I have spent a lot of time meditating on relationships, and observing both others and myself in relationships–whether it be with family, friends, or partners.

I should start first by saying that tension is a natural element of any relationship, as is conflict. But I am going to speak to when tension tips over into toxicity, when it goes from healthy to harmful.

And some of the most common markers I’ve noticed in unhealthy relationships, and the unhappiness that accompanies them, are 
1️⃣️️ an unwillingness to set, maintain, and respect boundaries, 
2️⃣️ a consistent and habitual willingness to forego and compromise on personal needs, and 
3️⃣ a slow growing complacency with mistreatment. 
(Not to mention a breakdown in communication)

I’ve been there, and understand some of the psychology behind it. And often times, we wish to give those we love the benefit of the doubt, another chance, patience in their growth despite the harm they cause, and more. We see their potential, and perhaps who they could be as their best self. We believe they can grow and change. And, in most cases, many of the good things we love about them are still there right alongside all the bad.

So, really, I *can* appreciate where the excuse-making, chance-giving, exception-granting, and tireless patience comes from (out of love)–but what I have learned to see and wish others to see is that doing these things are a form of self-harm.❌Every time we grant a toxic person another exception, excuse, chance, etc, we forego our own needs, weaken our own boundaries, and open the door to compromising ourselves and our happiness

📖When I read back on my annual reflection/post from earlier this year, I was struck again by this call to action I wrote:

➡️Stop putting up with people in your life who drain you.
➡️Stop making excuses and granting chances
➡️Stop waiting for people to come back, to change, to give a damn. 
➡️Stop standing for people who don’t stand for you.”

I still believe this is a worthwhile meditation and reminder. However, I want to add: ❕That it is OKAY to stop❕

It is OKAY to remove someone from your life — even those that you still love and care about– if they are causing harm or affecting you negatively. Not only is it OKAY, it is the right thing to do.

▫️Is it hard? Likely. 
▫️But is it healthy? Yes.

Because each person has a limited amount of time, energy, and love to give. And, every time we invest in people who harm our happiness, who overstep boundaries, who refuse to communicate, who aren’t helping us grow, we are actively working against ourselves.

As this post started:
“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anyone or anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy”

Because… when you do this… when you REALLY do this, you will discover that instead of losing something, in fact you will have opened yourself up to new connections, new growth, new friendship, and new love, including self-love.❤️

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Designing For Play

A few weeks ago I had a chance to jump on to the The Human Animal Podcast with Matt. This is part 1, where we talk a ton about design and play, including:

Developing Play Vision
The Interplay of Play and Design
What many gyms miss out on when designed
How to Craft a Play Session
The Importance of Inviting Others to Play

Check out the podcast here!

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No Contact

It had been years.
Long years.

So I wont lie.
I swear,
in that final moment we shared:
I lived a thousand lives,
a hundred thousand,
a hundred, hundred thousand.

And there,
I knew all the faces and forms
of what our love could have been–
powerful love
whole love
infinite  love.

But the moment ended

And the path was set
where I would not see you,
nor know our love
in any other shape but
sorrow

-Cpontrella 2017

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Smorgasbord

That night,
I remember it so clearly.
our appetites were enormous

Creamy words, earthy laughter,
Sweet, small glances
stolen when no one was looking
for our own
private delight.

It was a smorgasbord
and I felt bottomless.
Insatiable.

then, the Lovemaking.

A final course, the night-cap.

phenomenal.
How else could I describe it?
Intoxicating.
Lyrical.
Animal.
Raw.
Sublime.

There are no words.

I have been hungry every since.

-Cpontrella 2017

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M: On Self Deception

The prompt today is a series of quotes on Self-Deception:

QUOTE ONE: “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

QUOTE TWO: “I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy 

Response:

Self-deception is one of the worst and most readily practiced forms of self-violence. 

We regularly deceive ourselves when we aren’t ready to face the truth or the most-likely reality. This deception is deepened and made worse is when there is  actually a slim but legitimate chance for our desired outcome. Even the smallest of margins will exacerbate our delusions, making us cling ever harder to that delusion. A loving glance cast back as they walk away, a brushing of the arms in parting, a hopeful word suggesting possibility. These gestures become the foundation of the lies we tell ourselves.

And these foundational gestures and details enable us to continue to deny. And we will deny. We will deny any other developments even if they continue to drastically tip the scales towards the reality we are trying to reject–so long as that sliver of hope exists, as long as a legitimate chance exists for the outcome we want.

Because it is easier to deceive ourselves than it is to face the suffering that comes with the truth.

And these self-deceptions, when they are ultimately shattered, when we are left behind, when we are rejected with finality, when we are forced into the truth we denied: we are destroyed.  

But the destruction begins long before the end of the deception. The day we allow ourselves to be deceived is the day we begin to close ourselves off from growth, the day we find our awareness starting to shrink.  We no longer can leverage against ourselves in clarity, nonsense and whimsy begin to gain strength, the affinity for the ridiculous and the impossible grows stronger.  In time, this self-deception, even the smallest of self-deceptions, risk completely consuming our ability to read reality and to be honest with our selves.

Thus, It is of the utmost importance to be conscious of our self-deceptions, and to engage in them carefully. Self-deception can be useful, as it allows you to ignore everyday mistakes, flaws, and failures.  It allows you to move past shortcomings in order to see the best in people and their potential.  

However, engaging in such illusions can prove disastrous if they become too opaque. And even if you practice consciousness and awareness in your self-deceptions, even if you try standing in the light each day, you might find that you fall victim to them none the less.  

Even with a daily reminder that you are indulging a self-deception might not be enough.

[ omitted text ]

Be wary of self-deception; it is the quickest way to lose sight of your needs, values, and self. When we are comfortable lying to ourselves about one thing, we will soon find we are comfortable lying to ourselves about other things.

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M: On Conditioning and the Path to Authenticity

Before I can even beginning to delve into authenticity in some sort of deeper way I first need to address my obsession with the word authenticity.

There’s something about the word authenticity that really resonates with me. I think it is because it represents this idea of honest self? Or perhaps that it represents true originality despite living in a world that lacks originality or where no one is themselves original? Or that allows me to be original while using unoriginal material. More and more this word makes it into my vocabulary when I speak about self and a movement and my experience of life. I truly deeply creative authenticity.

I feel like it is only been in the last year or so that I have begun to understand really what it means to live authentically. Only in the last year or so have I started to establish parts of myself and delineate ideas and values that truly feel authentically mine. Many of my experiences this past year forced me to deeply question and reconsider some of my most fundamental beliefs of My reality. This process resulted in the dismantling of my ideas and then a reconstruction of something entirely new from the old.

And I think that this process of dismantling, examination, and reconstruction is the path towards an authentic self.  We are all composed of beliefs that we’ve shouldered unconsciousness,  as a process of being apart of a certain culture, family, friend group, etc.  As we grew up, we identified with different groups and subsequently assumed their values and lifestyles.  As we explored our own creativity, we copied those we admired.  We unconsciously assumed the components that made up who we are.

This leads to a sense of feeling fake, empty, discontent, etc.  It is because we don’t truly feel a strong attachment to any of our ideas or beliefs.  Because they were given to us (versus created by us), they can also be taken away.  They never fully take root.

Creating an authentic self requires discovering which beliefs we have assumed unconsciously, dismantling them in order to examine them honestly and apart from them, and the reconstructing new systems of knowing and thinking for ourselves.