There’s No Right Way
As a recovering perfectionist, I notice I have a pernicious little tendency to make everything another thing that I have to get right.
It's subtle. It sneaks up on me, just when I think I've got a handle on it and I find myself - once again - judging, shaming and forcing my experience to be something else.
This is true for me when it comes to the principles of cyclical living. Even last weekend, I caught myself getting frustrated that I wasn't in more of that fun, summer energy despite being in the ovulatory phase of my cycle. Which totally defeats the point of cyclical living - to be more in tune with myself, NOT to give myself yet another stick to beat myself with.
So let me address this question of what is the right way to live with your cycles.
The principles and frameworks of any cycle are just that - a model. They offer archetypes and reference points to help us better understand our own experience, not to shape it. There is no right way to be in a cycle. Whether you follow the lunar cycle, the solar cycle of equinoxes and solstices, the cross-quarter days of the Wheel of the Year, your own menstrual or circadian rhythm, or the project management cycle, the principles of cyclical living serve as a guide back to your own experience.
In simple terms, this boils down to awareness and choice - let me break that down for you building on the principles of Authentic Relating, again as a guide.
Awareness has three elements:
Notice it. It sounds so simple and yet it can be so easy for us to numb out to what's going on for us. Whether it's through busyness or the sheer discomfort of feeling, we end up ignoring or avoiding our own experience. Noticing - welcoming everything - is about orientating towards reality. Not condoning it, not blindly accepting it, simple recognising that it's there, that it's happening. This is a skill that requires a lifetime of practice. A body-based meditation practice can really help you develop this muscle - I'm enjoying Shinzen Young's teaching of noting and labelling in my own practice right now.
Drop the shoulds. Otherwise known as assume nothing. If you know anything about neuroscience and bias, you'll know this is impossible. The intention here is to notice the assumptions, the judgements and the shoulds and to make them explicit, to name them. In my example over the weekend, I noticed that I was applying a subtle, sub-conscious assumption that it wasn't okay to be feeling that way at this point of my cycle, that I should be feeling something else. Should is a powerful red flag for me that I'm judging my experience - what are the signs that you're shoulding all over yourself?
Name it. By making our judgements explicit, we create the opportunity to test them out and see if there's any truth in them. You might reveal your experience to yourself mentally or by journalling, or maybe you share what you're noticing with a trusted person (be clear with this person what you're doing - it can be really unhelpful to receive unsolicited advice here, and most of us love to try and fix other people's problems, so ask if they can simple listen and perhaps reflect back what you're saying). By giving our experience form in the shape of words, it becomes more tangible - like shining a light under the bed of a child frightened about monsters, it helps us see more clearly.
That brings us onto Choice, right?
Not so fast.
The common trick for any perfectionist at this point is to go straight into fixing mode, straight into "choice". And in doing that, we miss a vital step in the process that keeps us stuck in this self-brutalising loop, no matter how aware we are. So see if you can slow down a little more here in order to move more quickly and smoothly later. Here is where we appreciate and own our experience.
Our experience of ourselves is in some way a gift, no matter how difficult it is to be with. Our emotions are data, our body-mind way of interpreting the world around us and the balance of our energy to respond according to Dr Lisa Feldman-Barrett. Positive affect indicates that our needs are being met and our body budget is in balance; negative affect, or difficult emotions, show that something is out of balance and at least one of our needs isn't being addressed. So there is a richness of information in whatever we're feeling. On top of that, our patterns of behaviour are always adaptive - at some point in time, responding in this way has been helpful and has helped you survive. It's a skill you've learnt, maybe an overdeveloped one but a strength nonetheless. We are not to blame for the patterns we have developed; as adults, we are responsible for what we do with them.
Finding some appreciation for your body-mind for doing its job - like a cat bringing you a 'present' - creates the space for a genuine choice.
And that's where we can hold the polarity of honouring self and other.
The most important word in that sentence is AND. We perfectionists tend to see the world in black and white - it's actually quite an emotionally immature response to complexity. When we set the question is either right or wrong, the answer is usually not good enough! As emotionally mature adults, we have the capacity to hold complexity, to see that both honouring our own needs and those of others can be true at the same time. We can see that the world is full of shades of grey and that there may be several ways forward. There is never a right or a wrong way to be - it's always dependent on the context. We might ask, "is this state serving me given the circumstances and my intentions?" and from there, we can choose an appropriate, authentic response.
Coming back to how we live with our cycles, there isn't a right way to be. The cycles framework gives us a reference point to inform our awareness and our choice. The principles of cyclical living can help us understand our experience more fully. They can support us in making authentic choices aligned with our intentions. We can become more attuned to the shifts in each cycle, listen more deeply to our experience, and make more informed choices.
Cycles are fractal. None of our rhythms work in isolation. Like the different sections of an orchestra, they play together - sometimes in more harmony than others. My experience of my menstrual cycle varies with the different seasons, for example. And we are all being pummelled by the completely asynchronous experience of lockdown and a year living with the impact of Covid-19. So your experience of your cycles will continue to change - normally just when you think you've got a handle on them. Rather than seeing this a failure or another thing to get right (or is that just me?), see if you can start to view your cycles as an invitation - an invitation into curiosity, an invitation to come back to yourself, an invitation to check-in so you can be more sure of the direction you're travelling in, like checking a map on a journey.
This is a practice, not a performance. The only wrong way is to try to live this perfectly, in someone else's experience, someone else's way. Cyclical living is a practice to help us come home to who we are so that we can live and create authentically in the world.
So what's alive for you?
Learn how to find more alignment with your cycles and dance to your own rhythm with my free Rebel Guide to Getting Started with Cycles.