𝟰 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗨𝗽 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 

💛 𝗔 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙
😢 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀
🗣️ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀:
🧑‍🚒 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀

Today I’ll introduce the Core SELF.

💛 𝗔 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙– SELF is the natural leader of your system, and psyche, your natural essence, is undamaged, needs no improvement, and is perfect as is. The SELF is the support and care you have always needed. It is the CORE YOU.

𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗺, 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀, 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲, 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗼𝘂𝘀, 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗳𝘂𝗹; 𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗺 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗹𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻.

For years, even before IFS, I’ve drawn the Yellow Heart and used it as my logo because it reminds me to REMEMBER who I BE from an energetic and loving presence with myself.

I use the yellow/gold heart to help me remember that my essence is love and my true nature. The yellow heart also reminded me that my head and thinking parts, while brilliant, are not my core source being, that is in my heart. I can connect my head (or any of my parts) with my SELF-ENERGY by breathing into my heart.

When I came across IFS – and CORE SELF was represented – I KNEW that my yellow heart would expand to symbolize SELF Energy.

I often use this metaphor with my business owner clients – and if it resonates, I lead them in a meditation to see what “color” their SELF-heart is. Some are blue, one is red and gold, one is rainbow, and another is “fruity pebbles.” The clients KNOW what language and imagery help them identify & connect with this SELF-Energy.

If your SELF-Energy were color and energy – what color would your heart be 💛💚💙💜🤎🤍🧡❤️💞❤️‍🔥💖💟

• Visit: Website: www.allisoncrow.com
• Find out more about 1:1 coaching with Allison
• Internal Family Systems Coaching and a brief IFS Model Overview
• Get your copy of UNARMORED: Finding Home in the Wild Edge of Being Human

The post 4 Elements that Make Up Our Inner Systems In the Internal Family Systems Framework appeared first on Allison Crow.

Emotions, ADHD & Motivation – A Convergence of Ideas

Hi Y’all!

I’ve been meaning to do an ADHD podcast for over a year and I saw this quote today by Tami Simon from Sounds True,

“Sometimes only the answer is found through living life.”

When I give myself the time and space to live life, the connections reveal themselves. And unmixing my internalized-for-51-years identity as it overlaps with ADHD has been a bit of a rumble for me lately. 

While not solely about ADHD, I have had some recent insights that really landed as I continue on my learning and practicing of IFS, some  deeper study of the Enneagram (because those dang test never tell me the same number). This episode is a grand convergence of ideas connecting emotions, ADHD, and motivation–seen from a deeper than usual lens. 

Love, 

Allison

• The Enneagram Insights I’ve gained have been from listening to Suzanne Stabile’s podcast, The Enneagram Journey, and reading her book The Path Between Us. 
• I’m also reading Sari Solden’s Book (the revised and expanded version) Women With Attention Deficit Disorder Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life 

____________

• Visit: Website: www.allisoncrow.com
• Find out more about 1:1 coaching with Allison
• Internal Family Systems Coaching and a brief IFS Model Overview
• Get your copy of UNARMORED: Finding Home in the Wild Edge of Being Human

The post Emotions, ADHD & Motivation – A Convergence of Ideas appeared first on Allison Crow.

Life is suffering – AND.

Yup – both and again.

You know those plastic shit hummingbird feeders The ones that need to be cleaned every week because they can get moldy and kill the birds The ones that make a big sugary mess in your kitchen and all the way back out to the yard when changing over the water The ones that get brittle in the 100-degree plus temps and ultimately crack?

Here’s what works better.
Scorched wildflowers. Death in the garden.

This spring, the wildflower garden was all a/bloom – epic in her color and textures. And now, the heat has made a mess of tall-reaching-for-water-sticks with dead heads begging to be trimmed into something not so ugly……

And just like life – dead flower heads present an offering. We’re so prone to hate the suffering and the ugly, but the ugly brings seeds.

While you run with that metaphor, I will tell you literally who is thriving in the scorched earth of my dead wildflowers- the hummingbirds.

A few dozen every day, at all times of the day, are finding sustenance in something I regard as done, dead, and an eyesore.

The post Life is Suffering – And Hummingbirds appeared first on Allison Crow.

Seriously, you aren’t broken; you’ve done nothing wrong – our systems literally are built on you out-sourcing your self-trust and remembering. When you forget, you give away power and buy stuff you don’t need without thinking. (I love buying stuff I don’t need – with clear intention).

Love, Your Favorite Life Coach.

 

Allison

 

I hope you remember.

The post You Forget. It’s Not Your Fault & Here is What to do About it. appeared first on Allison Crow.

You are brilliant, accomplished, able, and driven with a caring heart.  And sometimes your brain runs faster than your body. (Mine is doing that this morning).   Overthinking and anxiety happen when we are going so fast that the body gets left behind. I know you have tons on your plate, families to take care of, work to get done, clients to create, a dog to walk, and so much more. Slowing down doesn’t logically make sense to your thinking parts. AND IT IS WHAT WORKS. Give yourself the SELF Connection that opens the channel of flow – you know that flow; I’ve seen you in it. That space where you remember who you BE, and everything works from there. It’s as if magic starts to happen. Your thinking parts forget this. So we have to choose to create connection and attunement to our own core SELF. Do this first.

Listen to the Latest Podcast Episodes:  197: Reinvention:  Tools for the Pivot & Success 198: Checking in and Updates – What to Expect  194: Beautiful & Miserable – Life is Not the Container Store     PS: Thanks for helping me make my new book Unarmored: Finding Home in the Wild Edges of Being Human a best seller in 5 categories! I LOVE seeing the actual book in your hands and being tagged on Socials! Thank you!

The post Flow Missing Do this First – It Works Every Time appeared first on Allison Crow.

, Allison

 

The post Allowing the Space for Heart Coherence appeared first on Allison Crow.

Current Hard:

 

In my current facebook memories – are the promos and images for the course I used to teach called Share Your Heart: Show Your Work – a delightful and helpful course about authentic marketing on social media. The course was reverse-engineered from what delightfully worked for me in the first 7 years of moving my business online after leaving corporate.

 

For most of that time, it was effortless – truly 98% spontaneous overflow of my precious yellow heart .

And that Sharing My Heart and Showing My Work allowed you all to get to know me – and many of you – hundreds – stepped forward to work with me in some way. It never felt like selling.

 

Recently, I have inner parts that are overwhelmed and irritated, and deeply sad about the extreme parts of crappy capitalism. My brain can’t unsee the patterns of greed. I, like many of you, often feel the burnout of crappy capitalism and the burnout of shitty social media. And yet, here I am, a capitalist, selling a high-fee service – a luxury. And my revenue has become reliant on me “Sharing My Heart and Showing My Work.”

 

Of course, instead of letting it rest, I wrestle and inquire with that repulsion; I judge myself and become hard on myself – not mean, but certainly, I put pressure to come to a conclusion.

 

What do I truly desire?

What would feel fun?

What obligations could I release?

What if I didn’t give SO much..what if I let less be more.

What’s possible in business and networking relationships away from social media?

What in the garden of my business is ready to be uprooted and released, what just needs some pruning, and what needs to be planted, anew?

 

The post Struggling with the Social Media Marketing Machine appeared first on Allison Crow.

In conversation with my coach (and my therapist) – when I tap into the clarity of where I’m pulled to BECOME, the light shows up in my eyes in one instant, and then in the next, I hit the gaping space between where I am and where I want to go…

And I wobble.  

My voice begins to shake, and my stomach gurgles – my brain amps up her stories and excuses.  The doubt fires up and conspires with all the reasons not to grow. 

And my coach, Tony, lifts his hand and vibrates it horizontally where I can see it – to remind me of the wobble that happens when we are attuning to something new.  It’s a visual anchor to remind me to slow down and be with what I call the wobble. While he shakes his hand – he often says, “I’ve got you.” 

The Wobble is a Part of the Human Experience.

This week, I also saw the wobble:

• In a few of my clients, as they saw the responsibility they were pushing away instead of rising in their leadership
• In one of my writing colleagues as she hit a grand new awareness about who she is becoming through writing her story
• In a high school friend who was sharing some of her tender therapy realizations with me over a salad and a bowl of mac and cheese at Panera.  
• In a few of my clients as they bravely navigate becoming their more authentic selves even when the world asks for them to “fit in.”
• In a precious friend who held a hospice vigil with her dying mother. 

The Wobble is Not a Weakness

• It is a sign you are building strength and new muscle memory. 
• It is a sign you are attuning to new experiences.
• It is a sign you are attuning your nervous system to a new state of capacity and calm in the face of doubt and fear.
• It is a sign you are stretching.
• It is a sign of the becoming you are in the middle of. (yes, I ended that with a preposition). 
• If you are a goal person – it is proof you are making progress toward that outcome. 

The wobble, the soreness, and sometimes even big trembles are what live in the space between your atrophy and comfort — and the being or doing you are growing into.  

• How will you hold the wobble In your mind with your thoughts In your body?
• I offer to you to slow down, and hold the discomfort with compassion and strength.
• I plant the seed of remembering, “YES – this is growth, and it’s working,” when the discomfort rises up and starts to freak you up. 
• And finally, I invite you to be the one that says to all parts of you, “I’ve got you.”

“Where have you atrophied#8221; is a question I’ve been considering for myself and offering to my clients.

My wise inner self shows me were it’s time for me to build strength and courage to be with the wobble. Yours can show you too.

And if you are looking for a coach to help support you – one who can say, “I’ve got you,” as you lean in, I can help with that.

Here are a few ways I can support you.

This is the work I am helping my business owner clients do.  These are the conversations in my book Unarmored: Finding Home in The Wild Edges of Being Human. This is some of the focus of my live event Camp Cultivate in May, and this is the foundation from which we do group life and business coaching in my small membership program, Soulies: Self Leadership Society.  

Love, Allison 

The post What to Know About the Place Between Where You are and Where You Want to Go appeared first on Allison Crow.

Photos: The ACA Bill of Rights. The photos are of my handwritten version, and you can find the pdf version on the ACA website. The second photo is my visual reminder to be clear on what is mine and what is not.

The problem with BE LOVE for recovering people pleasers.
Asking a recovering people pleaser and recovering over -functioner- to BE LOVE for other people is like asking an alcoholic to drink. An alcoholic uses alcohol to cope, but the people pleaser uses fawning, over-functioning, high achievement, and being pleasing to cope. We do this subconsciously to manipulate our experience of the world…and are rewarded for it in many ways. Many of us have lost out authentic selves in service of BE LOVE.

When a beloved recently shared with me the ACA Bill of Rights – It was all there so clearly – it struck me deeply as rights I would like to internalize and embody. Most of these rights I never gave myself – because people-pleasing worked for me from a very young age. Being the “good girl” worked for me. These were my unconscious coping skills.

These coping skills worked until they didn’t. The unbecoming and unlearning is a process. Becoming the sovereign and boundaried me is a process. I share because many of my clients and many of you are in the unbecoming of old patterns and finding your sovereignty and authentic SELF.

And the TRUEST way for recovering people pleasers to contribute love to the world, is to turn the LOVE inward – to all of our parts. This is a skill we need to develop and practice – insight is not enough.

I call this SELF-CENTERED (the exact thing many of us were told not to be). When I am centered in the love and SELF-leadership of all my parts, then my being contributes love to everyone in my orbit.

I hope this helps.
I know seeing it clearly spelled out helps me.

💛 Allison

The post The Problem with “BE LOVE” for Recovering People Pleasers appeared first on Allison Crow.

I have nurturing practices -that I KNOW bring me to clarity, confidence, and action.
I have internal processes that I KNOW work for my business.

And yet, because I’m human and live in society – I, at times, can get hooked into the “what’s normal” current. I call this FORGETTING.

Wouldn’t it be so fun if we all had the clarity and plan we wanted to have on Jan 1 – according to and along with the “New Year” date?

When I REMEMBER, I stand in the knowing and sovereignty of my own proven practices and processes.

When I REMEMBER, I fully trust my processes and practices and my own internal rhythms (and they RARELY fit with man-made seasons or dates).

This is your reminder that your own process is trustworthy – even if it doesn’t seem to “fit” what the world says.

Peace to you and to me and to us all as we practice what works for us.

The post Trust Your Practices and Process over the Man Made Dates appeared first on Allison Crow.