Want More “Yum” in Life? Try Cyclical Living + Doing Less

Want More “Yum” in Life?

Try Cyclical Living + Doing Less
with Kate Northrup

**This Podcast was recorded prior to the 2022 Desire on Fire Experience and was released 3 weeks post event.**

In a very linear world, cyclical living is radical

If you ask most women what they think of when they hear the word “success,” you’ll likely hear some version of the same concept.

It’s something (business, personal growth, physical health, relationships, parenting, career, whatever) getting progressively better and better, in a kind of predictable linear way.

The evidence of success is “more.” That is, more money, more work, more stuff, more sex, more attention, more followers. The “more” also moves in a line: X% increase in GDP this year means we’re succeeding.

And the way you get to success is by doing more

And the way you get to success is by doing more. You put in longer hours. You sacrifice those weekends. You say yes, even when you don’t feel like it. You set goals and strategize and schedule and program your way along a set path (another line!).

So you’ve got two qualities that characterize success by today’s cultural standards: linear progress and more.

And in this model of success, doing more = getting more.

Our guest in today’s podcast, the amazing Kate Northrup, offers a challenge:

When you look at the natural world, what do you see? You see cyclical living, not linear living.

Everywhere — literally everywhere — it’s circles and cycles. Nothing moves or evolves in a straight line. Seasons, growth, our bodies, night and day, birth and death, the weather.

In Nature, there’s balanced space set aside for rest + labor. Growing + birthing. Sowing + harvest.

Everything from the way microscopic cells produce energy to vast planetary movements … it’s all based on cyclical movements and cyclical living.

So … why do we insist on running our lives by a measurement that is SO out of sync with our bodies, our souls, and literally all of nature and reality?

And why are we surprised that we’re stressed, burned out, and that our creative, sensual, and erotic energy is dried up?

This is at the heart of 2022 for Desire on Fire!

If you tuned into our October 5th podcast, you know: we are IN THE MIDDLE of this conversation right now, as women, as sisters, and as business owners.

Ellie just had her baby six months ago, and it’s brought a major shift in identity and priorities for her.

At the same time, we’re loving our work and wanting to grow as a company.

We are inside of this work day in and day out that aims to honor the body and embrace cyclical living …

… and yet, we’ve found ourselves coming face to face with the power of the story of linear success.

At the end of last year’s Desire on Fire Experience, we were on a high after serving and celebrating with 300 women. And we thought: Next year it’ll be even bigger! 500 women! No problem!

Without fully realizing it, we had assumed 1) that it would be easy, and 2) that hosting more women would be the measure of our success.

So when July rolled around, and we weren’t on track (on that straight line!) towards hitting our numbers, we were stressed, confused, frustrated, and worried. We were working and working, and it was getting to be pretty draining. It was a slog.

And Kate Northrup came in and said a beautiful truth:

There is not a direct relationship between numbers and impact. We assumed more women = more impact. And fewer women = less impact. Because the patriarchal model says that more is always better.

But that isn’t actually true.

Because the Universe doesn’t deal in neat, predictable formulas.

When it comes to impact, you might ultimately affect as many lives with 8 in a truly present, transformational class as you would with 80 or 800.

You just don’t know, and you don’t have control over it. And that’s the point.

Cyclical living is an invitation to radically surrender.

We let go of our tight grip on what “should” be and allow what wants to flow. We’re not pushing and pushing, but rather releasing. We’re not killing ourselves trying to get somewhere. We’re invited to actually do less and finally have a real experience of more. More abundance, more freedom, more juiciness, more “yum” in our lives (we’ll get into that below). Can we say a passionate, in-love YES to the Universe’s invitation?

Listen to the Episode

Kate summed it up like this:

We think that when we do less, we’re going to get less result — but in fact, over and over, when we do less, we’ll find that the result is more of everything good that we want.

That includes “success” in the traditional sense (great money, blossoming career, positive impact) and also in a million other ways we couldn’t predict.

Doing less + cyclical living = more “yum”!

We covered so much good territory in this conversation, but one of the biggest themes we covered was the concept of more “yumminess” in our lives, and how doing less + cyclical living naturally brings us into that state.

Kate Northrup defines yumminess as our relationship to Life Force. Our creativity. Sexuality. Sensuality. Energy. Flow. Abundance. Courage. These are all amplified when we are in a healthy, balanced relationship with Life Force. And that comes from doing less and embracing cyclical living.

And a huge part of cyclical living is simply allowing change. Giving permission for things to be different than they used to be. In her words, “The fertility of our lives depends on our presence, and when we’re constantly referring back … it’s not particularly useful.”

And we (Aimee and Ellie) really got that. Like we felt it in our bones.

What 2022 doesn’t have to be like 2021.

We have permission for it to be different, and to trust that however it turns out, there is still going to be a beautiful fertility in our work. And if we show up to serve, it will bear fruit.

Our job isn’t to “make” it happen. It’s to allow it to happen.

And that goes for literally every other thing in our lives.

Kate Northrup is a force of wisdom and such grace. In a world that keeps trying to tell us that we’ll only be happy if we keep working harder and accumulating more and staying on that linear track to success … she comes in with her brash talk of doing things totally differently, and it is a breath of fresh air that also rings with truth.

We think you’re going to find this conversation challenging, inspiring, and opening.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

What the patriarchal model is missing, and why it’s time to let it go
Why you might want to reconsider goal-setting altogether
The lie we believe about finances and fulfillment — and what we need to embrace instead
How Kate approaches marriage, sex, and eroticism as a highly amibitious, successful woman (this one might surprise you)
Why there is no direct relationship between our numbers (money, followers, clients, etc.) and our impact — and how this can free us up (this insight was huge for us)

Listen to the Episode