How & Why To Know Home

Aug 13, 2014

I often use terms in my work that have evolved over many years and I often neglect to define them. In honor of my many new readers (welcome!) and in preparation for my upcoming Life Navigation Course, I hope you find this short series of “Jen’s lexicon” or “What in the heck is she talking about?” useful.

Know·ing [noh-ing] verb: to perceive or understand as truth; to understand from experience or attainment.

Home [hohm] verb: to go or return home to one’s own heart; to stay on one’s side.

To shape and build more of the life you want, you have to make choices. To make choices, you need awareness. To access awareness, it helps immeasurably to be able to calm down no matter what.

Knowing Home is the core life navigation practice, an essential part of building more of the life you want. It’s so fundamental, it’s easy to discount, or to pretend you do it when you really only think about doing it.

What is knowing home exactly?

  • Whatever calms your nervous system, your animal nature.
  • Whatever brings you back into contact with your compassionate heart.
  • Whatever helps you remember you always have a choice.
  • Whatever puts you back on your own side and out of the war with self.

What it looks like for me is:

  • My hand on my heart, focusing on a good feeling (I remember Bob’s face at our wedding or Lilly’s or Aidan’s or our circle of friends and family), savoring that…. then asking, “What do I really want to do next?” or “What’s most important here?”
  • Remembering there is space for everything I am feeling and experiencing, and I don’t have to make that space. Then relaxing into that space.
  • Asking, “Can anything eat me?”
  • Getting up from the desk and moving – breaking the trance with breath and dance or a simple doggie cuddle.
  • Talking myself down with compassion and a kind voice. “The world will not end because you don’t get this done today. Hasn’t happened before, won’t happen today.”
  • Naps!

What we do doesn’t matter so much. What matters is we do something. We intervene. We reset. (It does help to involve the body and to practice kind self-talk.)

Knowing home. Knowing the present moment. Knowing choice.

Thanks for reading the first of my lexicon posts!

Love,

Jen

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