Speaker #0I think it's important that we do remember that when it feels like the world is falling apart that there are a lot of things that need to fall apart that need to be broken apart that need to be exposed and opened and fragmented and scattered and gone. Hi friends, welcome. to the podcast. This is Regenerative Work Life. I am Alyssa Murphy. I have just recorded a long and I thought quite beautiful and touching podcast and I did the whole thing with my eyes closed because that's that's how I think and express best and I just opened my eyes after about 30 minutes of speaking to see that my audio program had frozen and had recorded about the first two minutes you know it actually feels really good to make those sounds do you need to make one of those sounds right now my friend let's do it let's do it again ready okay um yeah so I'm going to re-record that particular episode another time when I'm not feeling quite so frustrated and I'm going to come to another topic that um it's actually been I did a couple of polls on social this was the most requested topic and I really didn't want to talk about it um but it seems that I'm being called to do so so here we go the topic that I I had put in it as a suggestion and that quite a lot of people wanted to hear about was What about when it all feels like it's falling apart? Okay, we're going to do this today. It's not going to be comfortable. I don't feel comfortable, nor should it. I don't really know what I want to say about this, but actually I do really feel like it's important to talk about this. And this is not a, like, how to cope when it's all falling apart. This is not what to do when it's all falling apart. I am just here to name the fact that sometimes, and in particular right now, it feels as though everything is falling apart. And for you, that might mean, on a micro level, that might mean you feel like you're... career is falling apart, your business is falling apart, your life as you understood it is falling apart on a macro level. I don't know how anyone could not feel like it's all falling apart. We are witnessing genocide every day. We are witnessing unbelievable complacency in the face of that genocide. We are in the middle of climate collapse. We are seeing huge surges in racism and transphobia and intolerance. And I could go on and on. I'm not going to. You don't need me to spell out all the details, all the components of what might be falling apart. And I've seen lots of posts actually on social that say some variation on, you know, if you feel like you're losing your mind at this time, there's nothing wrong with you, that that is the perfectly natural response to what is happening in the world. And, and I really, I really do believe that. I do. I. I can't imagine, I can't imagine looking at what is happening and feeling normal. And it's not to say that we can't hold paradox. Okay, that's another kind of theme with post at the moment that I also really agree with that it is really important that we learn to hold paradox that we learn to feel immeasurable grief and rage, potentially. And that we can also experience joy and wonder and beauty and whimsy. I think that is so important as well. And it doesn't mean that you aren't opening yourself to the reality if you are still able to experience joy and wonder in your life. And in fact, it's really important that we do. If we don't seek out those things for ourselves, then we will run out of the internal resource to open ourselves up to wider suffering. um and I think what I want to explore is both on a macro and micro level if you are in that place where it all feels like it's falling apart what if that is exactly what needs to be happening okay I'm going to try and follow this idea through on a macro level and I always feel a little bit uncomfortable when I talk in really big topics because you know this is I you know I'm not speaking from any depth of expertise here I'm just I'm speaking as someone who is witnessing and experiencing what is happening in the world and yet The falling apart definitely needs to happen. Because what would it mean if things weren't falling apart? If things were held together? What is it that we would be holding together? We would be holding together broken systems. We would be holding together fundamental inequality and lack of justice. We would be holding together... white supremacy, we would be holding together the dominance and power of the global north, we would be holding together racist institutions, we would be holding together colonialism. And so I think it's important that we do remember that when it feels like the world is falling apart, that There are a lot of things that need to fall apart, that need to be broken apart, that need to be exposed and opened and fragmented and scattered and gone. Unfortunately, of course, it's not a victimless unraveling by any stretch of the imagination. There's huge loss of life. involved in that. Human, non-human, the destruction of the natural world, the collapse of our climate. So it's not to oversimplify the falling apart. It's not to say this is not some kind of, you know, wellness reframe of like, hey, it's actually a good thing. I think all I'm saying is that it is. It is necessary and I don't know, I don't know that anyone can know how that is going to, how that's going to transpire, how that's going to unfold, how that's going to flow, but it is necessary. And this brings me to the micro, so this is where I can speak with a little more authority. and experience and perhaps speak more directly to you, my listener, because I speak to a lot of people who feel like it's falling apart. And I really invite you to ask the question of whatever it is for you that you feel like is falling apart, your work, your career, your... your standard of living, whatever it might be, your business. Could there be a necessity in it falling apart? Because as an objective observer, that is what it looks like to me. When people come to me and it feels like things are falling apart, let's say, you know, they are... It's really interesting because there's normally two things going on at once, right? There's someone who is still in a corporate job, they want to leave, they want to do something else, and then they struggle when... all of a sudden they are passed over for promotions in that job or they're not given the staffing resources that they need or they're not selected for a particular project and we all do this right we forget that we don't want those things anymore we forget that we have said out loud to ourselves if no one else that we want to leave we want to do something different And then we really struggle when it actually starts. falling apart in front of us but this is you know this is the momentum this is what needs to happen and again i'm not saying it's easy i'm really not i'm not saying it's not painful when you are being passed over for promotion even if you're in a job you want to leave you know there's a lot of pride um that goes along with that you know there might be all kinds of reasons you know very unfair reasons like whether it's gender or race or whatever why you're not being chosen and all of those things are true but also just come back and maybe remind yourself if you've said you don't want it anymore can you let it go maybe that's the real question here if we know we don't want it anymore capitalism perhaps If we know we don't want it anymore, can we let it go? Even when it's painful, even when it's destructive and chaotic and leaves us feeling completely untethered and unsafe. And if we are in that space in between where we are, we have left our old work life, we are beginning on the path of something new and It's feeling like it's just not coming together, like it's not working the way we want. You know, perhaps we have a particular offer that we put out or there's a particular avenue we're trying to explore. Sometimes when that isn't happening, again, it's because we haven't sort of deeply enough unraveled and untethered. There hasn't been enough falling apart, actually. And I really do understand that this is a difficult topic to internalize. There's nothing here that you can really kind of grasp practically and hold on to. It's not going to be a very satisfying topic for me to speak about or for you to hear about. And I might be wrong. I very well may be wrong. But I do believe that... The more we can let go of the things that no longer serve us, whether that us is us as an individual or us as a collective, a community, an ecosystem, when we can let go of the things that no longer serve us and let them break and let them fall apart, then we have the ashes that new life can grow from. and of course you've got to look after yourself in that process you've got to look after your family you've got to resource yourself but very often that's not actually the piece that is causing us the most disruption it's not actually the practical you know i need to put food on the table part normally it's much more a kind of falling apart at the ego level you know it's a sense of ah my cv is like a total mess now or um you know I'm becoming really estranged from my professional networks or people don't understand me or what I'm doing anymore it all feels like it's falling apart it's much more that's much more of something that's happening at ego level we're actually completely safe and provided for within that kind of unraveling so some questions that I offer you today to sit with to explore to be uncomfortable about. It is not comfortable to feel like things are falling apart. But perhaps it's even harder when we're trying to resist that, when we're trying to contain them, when we're trying to put them back together at the same time that part of us knows that that is a deeply necessary unravelling. So let me know what you think, what comes up for you. Does any of this resonate? Do you have any deeper insights? I would love to continue this conversation with you directly. I'm always open to being contacted by email. You can reach me at alisa, A-L-I-S-A, at regenerativeworklife.com. It is a great pleasure to me when people reach out after listening to the podcast and we can go deeper together. Thanks for coming with me in this unusual and uncomfortable and difficult exploration today. I'm glad that we spoke about this topic. I have a feeling it's something we will come back to again and again, because things are falling apart. That is the reality. And the question that remains to us is what we do in response to that. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you back here next week. Thank you for listening to the Regenerative Worklife Podcast. It's time to put what you learned today into practice. Remember, you were called to this work for good reason. Nature needs each and every one of us and you can do this. If today's episode has been helpful, please take the time to share it with someone who needs a little guidance in stepping out of corporate and into regenerative. Learn more about how I can help you find your vision for a work filled with purpose impactandjoyatregenerativeworklife.com and connect with me on LinkedIn. Just search Alyssa Murphy. I'll see you back here soon for the next episode.
