I Fell Flat On My Face Last Week

On Failure, Recovery, and the Battle to Be Fully Alive

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” — Rumi

For the past few weeks, I’ve been promoting a 4-session coaching cohort on Values Mining, and the tagline for the work is “Follow Your Aliveness.” A few weeks ago, I did a video on “What Values Are, and Why They Matter,” and this past week I hosted an open zoom call where we talked for over an hour about what aliveness is, and the vital necessity of connecting to and living from a place of aliveness every single day of our lives.

Why? Because that connection to the aliveness within us is a restorative and strengthening wellspring for our souls. The more minutes a day we spend connected to that center of aliveness within us, the more resilient we are, the more powerful we are, the brighter we burn in the world.

So, I’m literally leading the charge on this. I’m calling people to it.

And yet…

For the last several mornings, just as I have awakened, I have barely had time to take a few peaceful breaths before a cloud of dread descends on my mind as my thoughts turn to the day. A mild revulsion rises in my soul:

• I do not want to face the day.

• I do not want the day.

• I do not want to do the day.

For the first few days of this malaise, I pressed through the resistance, writing it off as a cranky attitude or a bad night’s sleep. But then, a few mornings back, as the dread descended, I actually paused to notice it, as if for the first time. I paid attention. I got curious. I inquired of my soul, like David in the Psalms, “What is troubling you so? What is all this dread you’re feeling really about?”

“Why are you in despair, O my soul; and why have you become disturbed within me?” — Psalm 42:5

The answer rose up in me almost immediately:

My heart is suffocating under the weight of All I Have To Do.

I have been busy, you see. Really busy, actually. I’m in the final stages of preparation for my upcoming book launch campaign. It feels a bit like juggling twenty balls at once. So here lately, because of the uptick in all the tasks I’ve got to do, I have neglected the disciplines and practices that keep me connected to my Core Values—those specific ways of being and doing that feed my spirit and fortify my soul. For me, those Core Values include things like getting out on the trails with my camera or sketch pad and hunting for beauty in the wilds (Beauty Hunting), lingering over the words of a great writer and journaling my response to his thoughts or her insights (Words Are Magic), or following the pull of my mystic soul down a lonely road in the middle of nowhere just to see what waits to be discovered over the horizon beyond what I can see (Wildman Mystic Explorer).

These excursions into the deep waters of my own aliveness are not luxuries. They are not extras. They are not add-ons I tag on in spare moments only if and when I have time. They are vital to my thriving; vital to my being as a person. They are oxygen. And I have been slowly suffocating my heart in their absence.

So, to the shock of absolutely no one, not protecting my connection to those Core Values has led to this daily experience of dread upon waking, and the dull, weighty malaise that hangs over my day like a cloud.

What we have here is a classic case of a coach not walking his talk; a teacher not practicing what he teaches. I am not shaming myself, mind you. I’m just using myself as an example. We all need a little help sometimes. Not one of us gets it right 100 percent. Not one of us has fully cracked the code on our complicated hearts. To come fully awake and alive, and to remain that way, day after day, every one of us needs all the help we can get.

Knowing your Core Values is absolutely key.

Realizing my mistake, I pulled up my full list of Core Values. I’ve been helping people name their values for over two decades now, and in my experience, you can have as many as twenty or even thirty named values (though, usually, only five to ten of them are Core—meaning, they must be continuously honored in your life in order for you to thrive). I have eighteen values that are named:

ONE                           Wingnut
Into the Wild            Hineni
Tristan                       Get Up
Wild Horses              Deep Molten Love
Samurai                     Mastery
Elessar                       Lightfoot
Jesu                            Seven Cords
Beauty Hunter          Words Are Magic
Joy Bursting              Wildman Mystic Explorer

I selected just three of the Core ones, and three simple practices I would commit to doing over the next many weeks, most of them tiny habits I had previously established that I know make my heart come alive. For if my heart is not fully alive, what is the point of anything else?

I cannot emphasize this enough. When I talk about honoring your Values, I’m not merely talking about doing things that make you feel good. Values Work is the vital, essential work of being a fully conscious human being, and living a full and vibrant human life.

But many people—okay, most people—mostly sleepwalk through their lives, barely conscious of their own humanity, largely numb to their own experiences. They are spectators and not participants in their own unfolding story, like passive consumers watching their life scroll past them on a video screen.

The scale of this tragedy is monumental.

It is such a miracle to be here! To be alive and know that you alive. To be conscious of the universe. To have the capacity to be curious about the billions of mysteries that fill it. To know what love is. To be able to give it, and receive it. To be capable of engaging with everything that is good, and true, and beautiful in the world. Even to learn the secret and terrible gifts of pain and suffering. All of it is a wonder. A treasure beyond telling.

And most people are largely numb to most of it. They live, but they are not fully alive.

We are all subject to this numbing malaise. I’m no different. This is why knowing your Core Values is so critical to waking up, and staying awake, so you always know how to do those things that uniquely nourish your soul, and keep the fires burning in the hearth of your deepest heart.

That hearth becomes then, of course, the light that shines as a beacon of hope and grace in the darkness of the world—a light that the darkness cannot overcome.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
— Rumi