Welcome to Reset Learning Studio, a monthly newsletter to help you reach your greatest potential. Reset combines professional coaching with spiritual lessons to help you live a meaningful life. Each month, you can expect a theme with lessons, practices and tools to help you in your personal and professional life.
April's Theme: Seeing Yourself Anew ✨🙈✨
I spent three out of the last four weekends hosting friends at my house in Connecticut. This meant feeding several people multiple meals for days in a row, and I surprised myself and my friends by cooking delicious multi-course meals. My friend Doug remembered that when he and his wife visited the summer before, I basically just reheated frozen food for us. (That was the summer of my frozen pizza writer's diet!) Everyone was wondering when I learned how to cook, and it got me thinking about everything that's changed recently.
Since I went to college and have been living on my own, I haven't cared at all about the art of cooking, and instead, I've been a functional eater, just consuming whatever is easiest to make or acquire. I think a lot of my relationship to food comes from not having enough of it growing up, so I never experienced food as a source of joy, bonding, or love as many people do. Then, I spent a decade working very long hours in very demanding jobs, and I started believing that it wasn't worth my time or brainpower to cook, and it was better to outsource it, so I could be more productive.
Then this year, I moved half-time to the woods, and I started changing, feeling drawn to cooking, baking, and making food with my hands. But this desire disturbed me and I pushed it away. After all, I thought to myself, I'm a feminist. I intentionally chose a partner who loves my career and wants me to shine. I didn't change my last name when I got married, and I believe passionately in the equality of domestic tasks among partners.
My mom had dropped everything for her boyfriends and didn't have career aspirations of her own, so I always set out to build the opposite. I never wanted to be the demure or deferential wife. In fact, I didn't even know if I wanted to get married again after my quick wedding and divorce in my 20s. What would it mean to my identity as a strong career person if I suddenly put on an apron and spent my precious free time in the kitchen?
I talked to my friend Vanessa about this during an astrology reading with her, and she said, "You're looking at it all wrong."
"You're not giving up your power by exploring this side of yourself. In fact, you'll become more powerful as you embrace the Earth Goddess that you're meant to be."
With a few sentences, Vanessa changed everything for me. I could suddenly see my desires in a fresh, empowered, and resonant light. She helped me update a 20-year-old narrative that wasn't serving me anymore. She helped me see myself anew. I no longer had to sacrifice everything for my career. I could, and deserved to, have it all.
As of Thursday this week, we're entering eclipse season, which will run until May 5. Eclipse seasons are a time of big changes, breakthroughs, and insights, and they provide the necessary shakeup to see your life with a fresh perspective. These changes aren't proactive though-- there's no need for you to "make them happen." They come about on their own, and very likely, they will surprise you. So for the next few weeks, the astrological invitation is to become as changeable as water. I love these words from Bruce Lee:
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot and it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
What does this mean to you?
Starting today, what outdated narratives can you retire?
How can you see yourself anew?
Dear Liz,
What can you do to really believe and trust the universe, to believe that things in life are happening for me not to me, especially when it’s something horrific?
-Alex, 35, Paris
Dear Alex,
I've turned this question around in my mind non-stop for the past decade and it comes down to this. There is no objective, statistical proof that the universe is constantly supporting and affirming us, but there is no good option, except to believe it.
Let's break it down. Essentially, in the face of horrific personal events, there are two possible paths:
PATH 1: You can choose to believe that the universe supports you and everything is happening in your best interest, even if you don't understand it right now.
PATH 2: You can choose to be angry and upset at the universe, and believe that life is unfair, imperfect, or even worse, to believe that the universe is out to get you.
Of these two options, there is only one viable path:
The only path that can help you move forward is PATH 1
The only path that creates optimism is PATH 1
And the only path that can ever bring you happiness PATH 1
Everything great that has ever been created in this world has been forged in the face of great human suffering, and there are infinite books that make the argument beautifully. Whenever I start to feel the doubt about PATH 1 creep in, I refresh my thinking by re-skimming one of the ones below:
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Option B by Sheryl Sheryl Sandberg
Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser
Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön
Reading these books, and then willing myself to choose PATH 1 over and over again is what saved me. I know without a doubt that I would be decimated shell of a human being right now if I hadn't adopted this belief and held onto it tight during the darkest nights of the soul. Believing that the universe has my back has been my life raft. It's allowed me to be buoyant and happy instead of angry, cynical, and melancholy (as I was for much of my life).
So don't choose PATH 1 because you can prove that it is true. Choose it because it's the best path for you. Choose yourself. Save yourself. I promise you, when you start to believe that everything is happening for you, that's exactly how it shakes out.
I wrote about this very personally in my forthcoming book, using some of the exact language you used in your question, so I felt compelled to share it with you now. My hope is to provide you comfort that you are not alone in this very human experience of feeling utterly broken. I see you. I am with you. The darkness that surrounds you right now is paving the way for something beautiful to come. I know it.
Love,
Liz
Excerpt from THE KARMA OF SUCCESS-- Chapter 20: Let Your Struggle Be Your Making
Sometimes hardship continues for so long that we wonder how much more we can endure. We fall down, then get up, and do it again and again, until we are too bruised and demoralized to keep going. In these moments, we lament, why is this happening to me?
As of the moment I’m writing this, I have been trying to get pregnant for three years, working very hard and actively. I’ve changed my diet, taken vitamins, gone to acupuncture, seen a dozen doctors, and spent hundreds of hours and a big chunk of money on fertility treatments that my insurance doesn’t cover. I have been poked and prodded and had every type of test under the sun, but no doctor can tell me why it’s not working. Because I never had a conventional family, I’ve always had a deep, hungry yearning to create one of my own, so every month, when my period comes, I am devastated. It’s been thirty-six failures and counting.
That is one way to look at it, but there is also another way, and after some time, I was finally able to see it. The change I made was to understand that this experience was not happening to me, but rather, it was happening for me. Of course there have been countless hard moments, and I still haven’t gotten what I want, but with these disappointments have come a bountiful gift—major life lessons and personal growth that would’ve alluded me otherwise.
There are too many to list here, but one example of a lesson learned is empathy. From this long struggle, I got the gift of understanding for people with chronic and time-consuming health issues of any sort. I never had any patience for this in the past. Ironically, I remember a friend many years ago telling me about her fertility struggles over dinner, and I, young and single, dismissed her feelings as inane, uninteresting overreactions. This hardship, the chance to be in another’s shoes, has made me more kind.
Second, it has been my lifelong fear that if I emotionally unravel in front of my partner, they won’t love me. This belief was created back when I was kid and I wasn’t allowed to cry or be upset. My mom was superstitious, and she believed that sadness invites bad luck upon the house. So, when my tears flowed, she would become upset and yell that I had cursed our family. I learned how to hide when I was upset and never ask for help. I prided myself on being independent and self-sufficient, and created a long-held story that it was best not to need anyone.
So, even when Reset was going through its darkest period, I never asked my husband for help, emotionally or otherwise. Then, my fertility challenges gave me the sweetest gift. They forced me to change. I was depressed and despondent, drowning in a trough of sadness, and I had no choice but to break my pattern. Not only did I ask, but I demanded support from my husband. I pushed him to show up for me in a way that he was not accustomed to. To my surprise, he met me. Only from hitting rock bottom could I see that I too deserve unconditional love. It’s hard to imagine a richer treasure.
In the second year, during the worst of it, I woke up at two a.m. inconsolable. It started with a nightmare in which a group of doctors told me that I would never have children, then they listed everything I’d done in my life to deserve it. I woke up shaking and crying so violently that all I could do was roll myself off the bed and curl up on the floor hyperventilating until my husband helped me back into bed. Eventually my emotions settled, but I had disrupted our night for hours. I hate that I ruined our sleep, I said. But he didn’t mind at all—It’s okay, he said back.
At least we get to be awake together in the middle of the night. It is a metaphor for how I think of these three years of struggle and counting. I am deep into the night and there is much hardship, but at least I am awake and learning—uncovering treasures I would not have known otherwise. There is joy in the sorrow, lessons in the letdowns. I used to think of every monthly disappointment as a hardship. Now I know it is the opportunity to love myself more.
Pema Chödrön said, “Nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. I believe this. It was true in my financial woes with Reset. There were many changes I had to make on the inside before I saw results on the outside. And now the same is true in this moment. I am still waiting for the resolution to this story, for my so-called happy ending, for when I get to look back and say something like, “It all worked eventually, and I can’t imagine it any other way!” It’s not there yet. I’m not there yet. But that’s okay. I can accept where I am. I am fine to be here with all these lessons that I’ve been blessed with to learn the hard way.
There's just one favorite thing this month, and it's The Reset Guide to Career Astrology! Hooray! Download it here.
Also, a big thank you and welcome to the 600 newsletter subscribers who joined this community this week. Glad to have you here.
Love,
Liz
Pre-order THE KARMA OF SUCCESS
Submit a question for 'Reader Q&A' here.
Follow us on Instagram
Subscribe to the podcast with Apple or Spotify