Episode 07: Shift from Doing to Becoming

Good morning everyone, and welcome to NF Learning Lab, where together, we access our innate, iNtuitive wisdom as unique and self-valuing women, and share who we are becoming in a safe, sensitive community.

Last week, we looked at the top half of the You Are Here Map, and the repeating cycle of ‘doing’ that happens there. We saw how that ‘doing’ cycle can be a closed system that promotes the ‘normal’ life script of the Sensing-majority culture in which we live; birth, school, job, marriage, children, work-work-work, and eventually, retirement. We saw that for many iNtuitive Feeling women, this Sensing script can set up a lifetime of self-judgment and self-doubt, because it is not a natural fit for us. We consistently receive, from it, subtle or not so subtle, messages about how ‘unusual’ or ‘different’ we are, and it’s hard not to take those messages personally!

Today we’re going to see how we can open the closed, Sensing-created system and move through to the aspects of life that most interest us as iNtuitive-Feeling women, which include the many dimensions and complexities that make up our inner worlds of self-reflection and self-evolution.

Let’s begin by reviewing why it is, that we can get so caught up in the Sensing world of ‘doing’. Actually, it is quite simple … somewhere between the ages of 3 and 5, most of us entered some sort of structured schooling; preschool or kindergarten. These schools were the creations of our Sensing-majority culture. Some, like the Montessori schools, were structured for child-centered education, so those of us who were lucky enough to attend those schools were given some freedom to explore our own interests and develop our own insights. But even with their well-meaning, alternative methods, child-focused schools are highly influenced by main-stream, societal structures. So, even there, we were likely to get caught up in the Sensing, competitive, performance-based ‘doing-mania’ that characterizes standardized education.

So, what is our alternative? If we’re not obsessively focused on the closed system of chronic ‘doing’ at the top of the You Are Here Map, where else might we look? Well, in NF Learning Lab, the alternative to a societally-provoked, compulsion to focus on ‘doing’ … is a self-chosen focus on ‘becoming’, and that is what the lower half of the You Are Here Map is all about.

However, to enter that lower portion of the map, we have to pry open the closed system we’ve been living in, and that is not a simple thing to do. The locks that keep that system closed are the ways in which we are addicted to the rewards of the Sensing-majority culture, rewards like titles, and material possessions, and social or professional status, and all manner of blue ribbons, gold stars and A-pluses. We can notice, absolutely, that those rewards are mostly external and symbolic in nature. They rely on the attention and approval of other people and institutions, so we never really have control over how they will impact our lives. And for certain, they do not provide us with the deep meaningful nurturance that we secretly crave as women with iNtuitive-Feeling personality preferences. Let’s move on to our journal prompts to learn more.