To Be, Not Just To Do
How to move beyond burnout, integrate what you’ve learned, and come home to your true Self.
When it comes to healing trauma, spiritual awakenings and any other personal development work, we’re full of ‘to do’s’.
✔️Read 57 books
✔️Sign up for 17 digital courses
✔️4 certification level trainings
✔️Go on retreats
✔️Meditate
✔️Yoga
✔️Chakras
✔️On and on
All this learning and doing is great. As a lifelong learner, I get excited over this stuff! There came a point in my own journey, though, when I had to ask some hard questions and face some tough answers.
My healing, my learning adventures had become an interesting form of escapism keeping from moving forward. Now as I coach coaches and other wellness professionals in starting and growing their business, I see it all the time.
“I can’t figure out how to market and get clients so I signed up for a third coach training.”
“I’m not healed enough to show up for others so I’m investing in a year long guided healing journey.”
“What if coaching isn’t my calling? What if I just think it is? I signed up for intuition training before I launch my business.”
Now it’s easy for me to spot what’s going on here but when I was in my dark night, I was as confused, overwhelmed and exhausted as my clients are now.
Another coach training isn’t going to teach us marketing.
A year long healing journey doesn’t mean we’ll magically feel ready to support others.
A joint venture partner asked me recently for my credentials because she was applying for a grant for our project. It’s my first grant, so not having a clue what they might need, I gave her ALL of it. As I had it all neatly listed out on one page, I beamed with pride.
“Wow, I’ve really invested in a serious education for myself!”
Having been raised in poverty, a single mom raising my kids in poverty (at first), I’d tried and tried and tried to go to college but life… work, not having a support system, just kept interrupting until finally I stopped trying. Seeing my long list of credentials showed me, ‘I did it!’ Sure it looks different than what I’d imagined. Unorthodox, for sure. But then, pretty much everything about me us unorthodox. What else could I expect for my education?
My JV partner commented that my list of credentials was as long as her arm and I just had to laugh because I could recognize that at least a few of them were pure escapism. Fear holding me back, safely under the guise of learning, growing, healing, doing the work. But that’s not actually ‘the work’.
‘The work’ is internal. Messy. Devastating. Empowering. Confusing as hell and equally sacred.
So, yeah, all the learning and doing is great! Intellectual knowledge can take us a long ways.
Until it can’t. Until it comes time to integrate. To embody the mass of knowledge we’ve accumulated. Our over achieving ‘to do’ list needs to be balanced with a ‘to be’ list.
What might this ‘to be’ list look like?
Before you dive in, I have to share one more story that happened just today. When my neighbor is at work, I let her dog out to pee and bring him over to play with my dog for a bit. It’s a glorious opportunity for both dogs. As I walked into her house today, four feathers blew in with me. I burst out laughing, where had those come from!? When I walked back out, there was a larger fifth feather on the porch.
Based on recent events in my life, I was able to deduce deep meaning in these feathers mysteriously appearing exactly when they did. That’s the power of being. When we get still inside, present, mindful, aware, deeply deeply aware, we can hear the universe talking.
It’s not that it suddenly starts, it’s always talking but all our doing is white noise blocking out the messages we’re afraid to hear. In the stillness, the internal peace, the messages come through with increasing clarity over time.
That is my wish for you. Peace. Clarity. Being not doing. Are you ready?
Your To Be List
A soul-soothing guide to help you live what you’ve learned.
1. Be Present
Let the moment be enough.
Set down the need to optimize or improve, and just be with what is.
Presence is the holy doorway where integration begins.
“I am here. This breath. This now.”
2. Be Receptive
Let life teach you.
You don’t have to chase more information—sometimes, the answers are in your body, in the breeze, in the pause between thoughts.
Receptivity is a sacred feminine energy we’ve forgotten how to trust.
“I open to the wisdom within and around me.”
3. Be Still
Stillness is not laziness. It’s where clarity whispers.
Stillness lets your nervous system recalibrate so you can listen with your cells.
It’s the exhale between initiations.
“I choose stillness. I rest in my own enoughness.”
4. Be Curious
Instead of trying to fix, try getting curious.
What if that trigger, emotion, or pattern was a wise teacher?
Curiosity opens space where judgment closes it.
“I wonder what this moment is here to teach me.”
5. Be Embodied
Drop into your body like you’re visiting a beloved old friend.
Feel your feet, your breath, your heartbeat.
Let sensation guide you. Let your body have a voice.
“I live inside this sacred vessel with reverence.”
6. Be Compassionate (to yourself first)
It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence with tenderness.
What if your healing was already happening, even when it’s messy?
Self-compassion is a quiet revolution.
“I meet myself with grace, not judgment.”
7. Be Expressive
Let your voice, your Truth, your art move.
You don’t need to polish it. Just share, raw and real.
Expression is how we shake off shame and make space for soul.
“I give myself permission to be fully expressed.”
8. Be Slow
Fast is not always forward.
When we slow down, we actually meet ourselves.
And from that place, aligned action becomes possible.
“I honor the sacred rhythm of my own becoming.”
9. Be Empty
Make room for the unknown.
We cling to certainty, but transformation often lives in the liminal—in the space between what was and what will be.
Trust the void. It is rich with rebirth.
“I release what I know so I can receive what’s true.”
10. Be in Communion
With nature. With your spirit. With community.
Not to perform or prove, but to belong.
Healing doesn’t always happen in isolation—it blooms in connection.
“I remember I am never alone.”
Bonus: Be Okay With Not Doing It All
You don’t need to read another book right now.
You don’t need to become another version of yourself today.
You can rest. You can play. You can just breathe and be. Because integration doesn’t require effort. It requires openness. Allowing.
It doesn’t demand a checklist. It asks for presence.
And you, my dear, are already enough.
