Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast
351 episodes - English - Latest episode: 14 days ago - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsJoin Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise from Thirdspace for weekly conversations that ask how we might bring ourselves to life with as much courage and wisdom as we can. We start each episode with inspiring sources and then dive deep together into the questions and possibilities they open up. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, YouTube and FaceBook, at http://www.turningtowards.life and at http://www.wearethirdspace.org
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Episodes
192: Homecoming
June 07, 2021 13:35 - 37 minutes - 34.6 MBMany of us avoid ever really saying what we think is true because we're afraid it will rupture the relationships that matter to us. But it's our truthfulness with one another - especially about our experiences, our values, our promises and commitments - that's so often called for if we're going to step forward into the unknown future together. So what about learning to be the ones who, in the face of rupture in our relationships, help one another to return and, in doing so, help one another...
191: Undoing Overwork
May 30, 2021 09:20 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBEven if we're doing work we really care about, many of us are steeped in a narrative that our work should always be 'busy' and that it is only 'work' if it profoundly depletes us. But in exhausting ourselves, in living in the 'heroic' narrative of always more and always faster, can we really say that we get to bring our width, and depth, and wisdom as a gift to others? And what is the cost to the world that so many of us orient in this way to our contribution? This week's Turning Towards L...
190: Set the Tigers Free
May 23, 2021 09:12 - 34 minutes - 31.9 MBWhat does it take to let go so that something new that is calling has a chance to be freed up in our lives? And what does it take to be the ones who can support others - especially those we love and want to cling to - to let go when it's called for? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about hope, grief, leaving, and letting ourselves be changed, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation ...
189: The Songs We Could Be Singing
May 16, 2021 09:47 - 34 minutes - 32 MBAs Maya Stein writes in her beautiful poem this week, our lives aren't 'a stage rehearsal where you skip the high notes to save your voice'. So this week we wonder together about what it is that has us hold back, and hold others back, from bringing ourselves fully into our lives... 'the songs we could be singing while the light takes its own sweet time to change'. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about, in part, an aspect of diversity and inclusion: can we welcome the 'o...
188: We are Brought Forth by the Universe
May 09, 2021 08:53 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBIt can seem so difficult to connect to one another and listen to one another, but when we soften and open and quieten down it's not beyond us to know others and their worlds with enormous depth and sensitivity. As Lizzie says in this episode, we're made for connection, because we were never really as separate as we feel to begin with. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about our shared heritage as participants in a vast unfolding process that brought all of us into being,...
187: Bonus Episode - The Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course
May 05, 2021 17:50 - 55 minutes - 50.5 MBIn this special edition of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course (offered in partnership with New Ventures West), a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us. Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between...
187: Relational Power & the Possibilities of Parenting
May 03, 2021 06:32 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBWe return this week to our exploration of relational power and ask what would happen if we gave up using our power to control people (and in doing so our attempts to get what we want) and instead used our power to liberate the creativity and contribution of others? And how would this shape our parenting, our leadership, and our friendships? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn whatever power we are given from 'control' into love, hosted as al...
187: The Relational Power of Parenting
May 03, 2021 06:32 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBWe return this week to our exploration of relational power and ask what would happen if we gave up using our power to control people (and in doing so our attempts to get what we want) and instead used our power to liberate the creativity and contribution of others? And how would this shape our parenting, our leadership, and our friendships? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn whatever power we are given from 'control' into love, hosted as al...
186: Relational Power as Love
April 25, 2021 09:21 - 38 minutes - 35.4 MBIt's easy to use whatever power we have in the world as a way to make ourselves feel safe and in control. But what if we used our power not to reinforce being in a position of 'power-over-others' but instead to cultivate the conditions in which mutuality, emergence, and reciprocity between us could be born - in our organisations, with our life-partners and romantic partners, in friendships, as parents? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn wh...
185: How to Apologise
April 18, 2021 09:13 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBIt can be so hard, and so painful, to apologise sometimes. But what would happen if we saw that rupture and repair were an inevitable part of every relationship? If we knew that it is the very act of repair that knits us together into something more real, more durable, more connected? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a loving, mutually respectful, dignified path we can follow when we're in difficulty with others, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of T...
184: Questions to Ask When Waking
April 11, 2021 12:40 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBWhat would we do if we found different questions to ask, bigger ones, than the habitual questions we're asking of life without even knowing we're asking? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what we might do if we stopped contracting away from life, if we undid our own everyday self-diminishment, if we trusted that we had gifts to bring and that we, and others, could be blessed by the giving, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is T...
183: When We Meet
April 04, 2021 09:01 - 31 minutes - 28.7 MBThe predominant narrative in our wider culture is that human beings were made for conflict, for dominating one another, for 'getting ahead' of one another. But that's only one story. What if human beings were made for meeting one another, for welcome, for mutual wonder and mutual seeing, for cooperation, for the intertwining of our many gifts? For giving, even when we ourselves have not received and are hurting. For seeing without being seen first. For holding without being held before. ...
182: Vulnerable
March 28, 2021 12:21 - 34 minutes - 32 MBTurning Towards Life 'Live' - an online event for everyone - is coming on Sunday 18th April 2021 2pm-5pm UK. Join us! Details are here https://bit.ly/2NYkeNC How finite everything is, including the time we will get to spend with any of our great loves. And how much we want to turn away from this, avoiding feeling too much of our love in an attempt to try and avoid the inevitable grief that will come with our losses. But to feel it all is one of the great gifts given to us as human being...
181: Standing and Acting in the Tragic Gap
March 21, 2021 10:19 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MBWe're not machines, but we often treat ourselves as if we are. Many of us in our lives become 'busyness machines' or 'target-hitting machines'. But we feel, too, how small this is as a way to live a life. This week we are guided by Parker Palmer's luminous writing into a bigger question - 'What is it to be faithful to something bigger than ourselves?' It's a life-giving alternative that calls us into community, courage, and dedication to repairing and improving even what we know can't be re...
181: A Higher Standard than Effectiveness
March 21, 2021 10:19 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MBWe're not machines, but we often treat ourselves as if we are. Many of us in our lives become 'busyness machines' or 'target-hitting machines'. But we feel, too, how small this is as a way to live a life. This week we are guided by Parker Palmer's luminous writing into a bigger question - 'What is it to be faithful to something bigger than ourselves?' It's a life-giving alternative that calls us into community, courage, and dedication to repairing and improving even what we know can't be re...
180: The Self is a Gift That Can Be Given
March 14, 2021 10:16 - 34 minutes - 31.3 MBWhat can happen when we share our 'selves' with each other, making our gifts, qualities and experiences available. How we grow through this, how we long for it, and how much we try to defend against it. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation of discovery: that our selves are not something we made on our own, but gifts given to us by the sharing of others. Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute...
179: What is it in Ourselves That We Should Prize?
March 07, 2021 10:04 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBThe education most of us have had taught us how to know the answer, how to be right, and how to move quickly to solve problems. But, by and large, it didn't tell us much about how to be true to the one life we have, nor what kinds of practices of creativity, inquiry and attention might support us in that project. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might start to dignify and honour the unique possibilities of our own lives, guided by the wisdom of Marcus Au...
179: What is it in ourselves that we should prize?
March 07, 2021 10:04 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBThe education most of us have had taught us how to know the answer, how to be right, and how to move quickly to solve problems. But, by and large, it didn't tell us much about how to be true to the one life we have, nor what kinds of practices of creativity, inquiry and attention might support us in that project. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might start to dignify and honour the unique possibilities of our own lives, guided by the wisdom of Marcus Aure...
178: Saying Yes
February 28, 2021 10:06 - 32 minutes - 29.8 MBWhat does it take to not just say 'yes' to our lives and to one another, but to bring our beauty, dignity, creativity and imagination in response? It's a different path to take from 'turning away', and equally different from 'passive acceptance'. Being a human affords us this possibility - that when we encounter fear, shame, wonder, injustice, confusion, or hope, we have the chance to muster a response that brings something new into the world. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conve...
177: Learning to See
February 21, 2021 09:57 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBWhen we discover that we're not really separate from one another - that in a very ordinary way we are always deeply shaping and affecting one another - we also open to new ways that we might be of help to one another and care for one another. And we can also find that we can be profound teachers to one another - that we learn to see, feel, and hear in new ways by the very act of being present to each other. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the gifts of reciprocit...
176: This Morning I Said No
February 14, 2021 10:08 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBThe possibilities of saying a 'bright shining no' where previously we've been in the habit of saying 'yes'. Or a 'bright shining yes' where we've been in the habit of saying 'no'. And on the possibility of newness, creativity and discovery when we greet other people's new ways with wonder and welcome. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about letting our genuineness into the world, and doing the same for the people around us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wis...
175: Where Conflict Goes
February 07, 2021 10:47 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBWhen we're faced with difference or conflict it's often easiest to turn away, to give up on ourselves and our own values, or to try to force others to agree with us. But what if we were to learn to trust the creative possibilities that arise precisely because we are different to one another? What if we found a way to enter together into the promise that our encounter with the difference of others - and the difference that lives inside us - can be a path that opens us to something we long fo...
174: When I Ask for What I Need
January 31, 2021 10:36 - 35 minutes - 32.1 MBAsking for what we need is difficult for so many of us, because by genuinely asking we open ourselves up to the possibility that another person might respond in a way we're not expecting. Said another way, making genuine requests shows us that we're not - actually - in control of how other people show up in our lives. But at the same time, it's our capacity to request that opens up worlds - of dignity, mutual relationship, and the possibility that we might actually get met in a way that's m...
173: All the Way Ourselves Again
January 24, 2021 15:37 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBA conversation about the essential goodness of people, how it gets misdirected by our misunderstanding ourselves, and the gifts of people who see our goodness, support our stopping our usual defensive ways, and who gladly welcome our remaking… and the possibility of being that way for others… hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep in...
172: Who I Become in Disappointing
January 18, 2021 18:52 - 34 minutes - 31.6 MBPerhaps one of the most difficult steps in each of our development, in our becoming more ourselves, is the push-back we get from the people around us - often the people who are closest-in to our lives. We find ourselves caught between the life that is longing to unfold into the world, and the parts of us that want to keep us safe from shame and disapproval. And at the same time, even as we long to bring ourselves in new ways, we find ourselves holding other people back in the name of stayin...
171: Necessary Boundaries, Enabling Constraints
January 10, 2021 16:09 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MB"Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out" writes Richard Rohr, and at the same time we need to be able to fight and engage with boundaries before we discover what we really need or want. So what does it take to be one who makes 'enabling constraints' for ourselves so that the full possibility of our lives can be focussed enough to come into the world? And what does it take to be one who extends trust, gr...
170: Our Learning is a Craft
January 03, 2021 13:15 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBTo be human is to learn... but very often our learning is made much more difficult by narratives of shame, or our demands for perfection, or our worries about not being welcomed by others in our unfinishedness. Learning is both what we are made for, and among the most difficult endeavours of our lives, particularly the learning about ourselves that requires ongoing patience, generous kindness, and rigorous attention and self-observation. But when we start to see learning as a never-finishe...
169: Coming Apart and Together at the Same Time
December 27, 2020 12:27 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBIn between our certainty that we’re too small, or too inadequate to meet life, and our fantasies (perhaps even expectations) of perfection, mastery of life, and personal power, there is a middle place. And the middle, if we’ll meet ourselves and one another there, is far from a place of mediocrity. Instead it’s a way in which we can be real with one another, truthful about our messiness and our gloriousness, and the messiness and gloriousness of life. Will you meet us there? This episode of...
168: When the Unexpected Comes
December 20, 2020 10:53 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBWhen something difficult or unwelcome happens, there are many reasons for us to contract away from our lives in an attempt to control what we're feeling. It's a kind of self-protection, yes, but can also be a kind of violence to ourselves. And it often cuts us off from what could most support us, open us, and hold us. So how about learning to connect to the memory of our vastness, and our intimacy with all of life, when we are triggered to retreat? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a...
167: All the Dragons are Princesses
December 13, 2020 09:53 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBSo much of what we're afraid of is inside us... we're afraid of the feelings that will come with shame, or with grief, or if we really let ourselves feel the scale of our love or our longing or our hurt. And often our fear is, itself, a way not to feel what we imagine we won't be able to tolerate feeling. So what happens if, instead of treating all these experiences as terrors, we start to see them as, in their deepest essence, something helpless in us that really wants our love? This episo...
166: The Alive Ones
December 06, 2020 09:51 - 32 minutes - 30 MB"The opposite of life is not death", writes Caitlin Johnstone, "The opposite of life is habit." So how, we wonder in this conversation, can we invest the ordinariness of life with the reverence and awe that calls to us? How might we find that aspect of ourselves, in our vast inner landscapes, that is neither our reactivity nor our defensiveness, but is itself life looking out at life in wonder? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the difficult and liberating possibi...
165: And the Spiral Begins Again
November 29, 2020 10:18 - 34 minutes - 31.3 MBHow can we cultivate a real, mature kind of gratefulness that keeps opening us to both the wonder of life and the suffering and difficulty that's here? A gratefulness that doesn't seek to cover over anything at all, but instead awakens our care, skilfulness, and capacity to step into the world with the action that is called for? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about having love be what holds our care, fear, hope, anger and defensiveness so that we can turn deeper into...
164: In the Blaze of Your Presence
November 23, 2020 10:36 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBWhat does it take to allow ourselves to be who we are, and to allow other people to be who they are? What happens when we relate to one another from a deep respect for our own goodness, power and care, and a deep respect for the goodness, power and care of others? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the possibility of being in relationship in a way that allows us to bring the world alive for one another, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace....
163: We Are Made for Belonging
November 15, 2020 09:58 - 34 minutes - 31.3 MBWe are made for belonging... we are made to be the ones who can hold onto one another with hope and love as we descend into the darkness... and we are made for discovering in ourselves and one another an indestructable goodness that holds and welcomes all our hurts, all our difficulties, all our confusion. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the practices of hopefulness and love we can bring to one another in the midst of whatever we're experiencing, hosted as alwa...
162: The Shape of a Heart
November 08, 2020 09:58 - 32 minutes - 29.4 MBWe all carry wounds and hurts with us into our lives, and we present them to the world in our longing to be seen and to be healed. Perhaps when our hurts are so easily 'out front' we shouldn't be surprised at how often we each get triggered into self-protective and defensive patterns which are at odds with our deeper intentions and longings. But if we could find a way to support one another in hearing not just the wounds but the steady pulse of life that flows beneath all our hurts? This ep...
161: Small Kindnesses
November 01, 2020 09:48 - 31 minutes - 28.5 MBIt's in the small acts that we build a life: the way we look at one another, the way we talk to one another, the way we listen. At these times when so much of what we rely upon is being called into question, what does it take for us to see that it's these small acts that also shape who we are? Can we learn to be the ones who, a step at a time, bring to the world exactly what we are longing for? Can we learn to be the ones who relate to one another with the dignity and sacredness that's the ...
160: You Too Are That Beautiful to Me
October 25, 2020 09:52 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBSo many of us live in the midst of a harsh narrative of self-criticism and self-doubt, feeling all the ways we imagine we fall short of who we're meant to be in life. But every now and again we might catch a glimpse of something very beautiful in us, something essential, that reminds us that to be a living being in the midst of a living world is always in one way or another to belong, to be at home. How can we remember this life-giving truth from the midst of our forgetting? We have some id...
159: A Table Made of Listening
October 18, 2020 09:16 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBListening deeply, lovingly and fearlessly to one another is among the most nourishing and life-giving practices we humans can take up, and yet many of us have few places in our lives where we regularly do this. Perhaps that's because laying out a 'table made of listening' for one another, one that is open enough and solid enough and safe enough, calls on us to welcome parts of ourselves and others that we often push away. It turns out that the practice of listening to one another, difficult...
158: Divided No More
October 11, 2020 08:56 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBWhen we allow our hearts to be completely colonised by the demands of the organisation, community, movement or family we're part of, we lose a vital gift of our own individuality - our capacity to take a stand on our lives that includes us fully, and our capacity to speak up truthfully and with integrity about what we see both within and around us. And when we find ourselves more and more able to include and incorporate the many different parts of ourselves, we're more able to turn towards ...
157: Loving and Being Loved by the World
October 04, 2020 09:56 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBWhat does it take to be good ancestors, to be people who come not from fear but from a deep love for the world and a commitment to its future? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the tricky, necessary and life-giving possibility of committing to love of the world not as a 'feeling' but as a practice, a promise, and a commitment - and when we work to widen our understanding of what our lives are for to something bigger than our own personal safety and preferences, wi...
156: Always Return
September 27, 2020 16:28 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBWhen we make our relationships into projects, when we demand that the people close to us be different to how they are, when we bring only our 'fix things', 'make things happen', 'change things' energy to them, we should perhaps not be surprised that the people we are in relationship with quickly become disappointments to us. And, as we do this, we quickly become difficult to find and meet deeply ourselves. What if we were to return, often, to the possibility of returning to our flexibility,...
155: Every Moment a Surprise
September 20, 2020 09:05 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBAs Oliver Burkeman writes in our source for this week "So much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control. And the main thing we try but fail to control – the seasoned worriers among us, anyway – is the future". This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what can happen when we start to relax our attempts to have life go exactly our way, the many ways this can have us return to our lives as they are, and how all this can uncover our capac...
154: You Might See an Angel, Anytime
September 13, 2020 15:14 - 30 minutes - 28.1 MBA great deal of our suffering comes from our certainty that life is meant to go our way... and this certainty easily throws us into on the one hand imagining we're meant to have the powers only a deity could have and, on the other hand, feeling small and cynical and disconnected from life. But what if we could see that we're participants in something much more like a dance in which we barely know the steps, and came to be less certain about exactly how this would turn out or, even, quite wh...
153: Receiving Our Lives
September 06, 2020 09:31 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBWe're encouraged to live our lives as a way of controlling things - most particularly in the realm of acting into the world to get attention from others and to be recognised as special. This understanding leads us quickly down a painful and deeply unsatisfying path of needing to be verified at every turn. But if instead we could learn to pay attention to life, and to find a way to receive the one unique life that we are, we might find ourselves more fully inhabiting the gifts of our lives a...
152: The Right Side of the Wrong Tree
August 30, 2020 09:10 - 31 minutes - 28.7 MBHow often we compare ourselves to impossible standards of perfection, and how often this comparison produces the kind of contraction, efforting, and pushing that distances us from ourselves and others, and that is the opposite of what we seek. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find playful ways of loving the messiness that it is to be human and, from there, respond with the love, care and creativity that our lives call for, with Lizzie Winn and Justin...
151: Parts of Me, Parts of Her
August 24, 2020 18:24 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBVery often our relationship to the world is, in some way, a projection of the inner relationships between the different parts of ourselves. And, just as often, our experience of others is really a projection of some part of us. All of this can very much get in the way of our being in full and truthful contact with what's outside us. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might become more skilful at letting go of the grip our inner parts have over our experience...
150: Bringing the Darkness into the Light
August 16, 2020 14:56 - 34 minutes - 31.3 MBAs we grow in whatever family and wider culture we're born into, we inevitably find out that parts of us are not welcome. Most of us are pretty adept at exiling or hiding those parts away. But what if, instead of labelling them, judging them, and trying to keep them out of view, we learned to turn towards them as if they were bearers of gifts? And what if we could learn that we are indeed made up of many parts, and did what we could to welcome them all? Our 150th episode of Turning Towards ...
149: Our Mortality is our Gift to the Future
August 10, 2020 16:34 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBHow would we live our lives if we understood our mortality to be a gift - one we were given by all those who came before us, and that makes possible the lives of those who will come after us? What kindness and forgiveness might we bring to our lives if we understood that each of us - especially those with whom we are in difficulty - is a brief flash of life in a universe-sized unfolding process? Episode 149 of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might stop trying to be unaff...
148: The Gift of Sadness
August 02, 2020 12:57 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBWhat if sadness isn't something to be avoided, but an opening, a doorway that we can step into? What if sadness could wake us up to what we most care about? And what if it could bring us into the orbit of others in a way that deepens our lives? Episode 148 of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might treat our inevitable grief as a call, a question, a possibility - and about how we might do that with the support of others - with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Th...
147: Willing to be Changed
July 26, 2020 09:04 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBMost of us were never taught to admit we don't know - and as a result we hold onto our positions and beliefs no matter what. Others of us learned early on that the most important thing we could do was get along with others, and so we routinely give up what we see or care about in order to avoid disagreement. At the heart of both positions is a kind of distrust - distrust that we can still take up our place in the world even if we're changed by our encounter with other people, or even if we ...