A Book Won't Change Your Life
But here's what will
I know I have just angered basically half of the internet and maybe all of Substack by claiming that a book won’t (and can’t) change your life. But hear me out. No matter what you read, no matter how inspiring or how informative, it’s all just words on a page until you do something about it. I have to admit this is a pretty hard position to take as someone who has, in fact, written a book that I hoped readers would find life-changing. For however high my hopes were in writing it, though, I already knew that my book alone wouldn’t and couldn’t be the life-changing catalyst I wanted it to be.
Reading is only information. Books are a way we can communicate from one intellect to another. I’m not saying they aren’t valuable. The ideas and stories we encounter through reading are like seeds, when placed in proper soil they grow into something beautiful and nourishing, but without the right soil they at best stay dormant or at worst die completely. So, what is this good soil? How do we cultivate it in our lives so that the things we read, or watch, or listen to can actually change our lives?
Funnily enough, this “good soil” so to speak, was the topic of my book, The Conscious Enneagram: How To Move From Typology to Transformation. I break down in the book, in quite a bit of detail, the things in our lives we need to focus on in order to have information develop into transformation: Practice, Lineage, and Community. I don’t want to completely restate what I wrote in that book because 1) it would take too long and 2) it would be bad for sales, but here’s a quick run down that I hope will be enough to get you started, and maybe even pique your interest enough to pick up the book.
PRACTICE
This one to me, feels both the most accessible and the most intuitively understood. At the core, wanting our lives to change, means we want to be doing something different. If we want to learn to do something different, truly all we have to do is practice it. Now, my training as a yoga therapist has given me an even deeper view of practice and what it can look like and offer us. Yes, we can and should practice new ways of being in our lives, intentionally working to be more generous or kind or thoughtful in your everyday life is a deeply necessary part of transforming one’s life. But there are other kinds of practices that can both facilitate and enhance these more practical practices. Contemplative practices such as conscious movement, breathwork, and meditation directly affect our inner world, while creating in us the capacity to make more meaningful shifts in our outer world. As I’ve engaged in my own work, I’ve found that both inner and outer practices are necessary and play off of each other in powerful ways. You won’t be able to continue becoming more kind or generous (or whatever your goal is) if you aren’t creating more space and balance in yourself through contemplative practices, AND your contemplative practices will plateau, stall, and eventually degrade if you aren’t actively changing and shifting things in your outer life.
The Enneagram offers us a wonderful breakdown of how we can craft our practices to be most helpful. Through understanding our types we can see more clearly the practices we truly need instead of the ones that we just enjoy. We can also use the Enneagram’s centers to focus our practices in specific areas of our lives. Having practices that directly address our head, heart, and body centers means that our practices are address all of who we are. But how do we know that our practice is right for us? How can we tell if it’s working? When do practices need to change? This is where the next piece comes in.
LINEAGE
Let’s break down what I mean by lineage. I use the word to highlight two main components, having an instructive and supportive relationship with a qualified and experienced teacher, guide, or mentor, AND having a clear sense of the progression of what you’re learning and how you want to be in the world. So, not only having a teacher, but knowing your teacher’s teacher, and their teacher, and so on. Now, it’s not always so clear, but having an understanding of who has influenced the person who is influencing you helps you to see the teacher more clearly, and connects you to an ongoing flow that grounds you into tradition and the past while also propelling you into your future.
We often have many teachers like this in our lives, but when we start working on these big life-changes, consciously choosing a teacher who embodies who you want to be, and has been where you want to go is absolutely key. This is because teachers not only transmit knowledge, but transmit being. We already have access to information, knowledge is not the issue. It’s connection, relationship, and being that we’re lacking, and bringing ourselves under the tutelage of a qualified and experienced teacher means we can learn from the example that’s set for us.
It’s said that people are horrible listeners, but we’re great imitators, meaning, we might not be great at doing what we’re told—for a million reasons, but we’re really great at copying what we see around us. Anyone who’s ever raised children knows how true this is. We watch our children take on our habits (good or bad) without us ever speaking them out loud. This is why it is so important to choose a teacher intentionally.
Now, I have to mention that this could look like someone like me, who is a yoga therapist and enneagram coach (who just so happens to be taking on new clients—apologies for the shameless plug) but who the right teacher is will depend on how you’re wanting your life to change. I’ve recently been getting into gardening and wanting to grow more of my own food, reaching out to a yoga therapist wouldn’t be a great move for that. But I did reach out to a friend in town who happens to be a master gardener. She helped me see my yard differently and offered suggestions and support to inspire me and help me get started. When it comes down to it, anything you want to learn, or any way you want your life to change, someone else is already doing it, go ask them for help.
But just asking one person for help won’t be enough for this change to last, even with all the great practices and support from your teacher. We need something more.
COMMUNITY
To run with this gardening example, I asked a teacher for help, I have a practice of not only going out into my garden daily to check on the plants, water, etc. but also a regular practice of learning and listening to experts on what I want to do. But what makes this something that really sticks in my life, is the fact that we have a community around us who are also doing these things. Our neighbors are also engaged in growing their own food and tending to their gardens. We share ideas, inspiration, and the surplus veggies and seeds we harvest. This community aspect not only offers inspiration, it gives the work more meaning as we become more connected through what we love doing—together.
Finding ourselves in community means we not only have a place to truly practice our new ways of being, we are encouraged and supported to do so. We receive deep and profound gifts from our community, but then our work, growth, and development can be offered back to our community as gift. This creates a reciprocity that adds meaning and value to the effort we will be required to put into these changes.
It’s in community that our work finds it’s true purpose. Any transformation that ends with the individual is worse than useless, it will eventually lead to an isolation and self-centeredness that is fundamentally antithetical to transformation we were hoping to achieve. It’s in community we find a true sense of wholeness, and only in community. In some sense community is both a means and the end of our transformational journey.
SO HOW?
Now, while the basics of this approach seem simple, they are far from easy. At every point in this journey we may question our choices, we will frequently be required to be wildly uncomfortable, we might not always have a sense of how things are coming together. A great sales pitch, right? If we stick with it, though, we will slowly, but surely, watch our life change and become more filled with meaning and purpose.
It’s not easy, but I am offering something this summer to make it easier: The Conscious Enneagram Summer Cohort. Of course, I’m not saying you have to join this cohort to implement these aspects into your life, but I am saying this will give you a solid jumpstart on this journey. We will develop and cultivate our personal practices, we will discover and honor our lineages, and we will become a conscious and supportive community for each other. You can follow the link above to learn more and register.
But even more than just this summer cohort, I have a deep desire for this online space to be more of a community. I want to hear from you. I would love for readers to engage with each other. I never want anything I write to merely be a statement, but instead be an invitation to conversation. So, whether or not you can join us for the summer cohort, let me know in the comments how you are incorporating Practice, Lineage, and Community into your life, and how they’re helping you grow, and even how I can help along the way.
May none of our efforts ever be wasted.
Good soil. Love that.