Embracing Intention: Small Ways to Stay OK in Global Chaos

Megan Hamilton (00:02.158)
I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment Podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Today we are going to focus on small ways to stay intentional. I know that at one point I think I said that this week we would be focusing on symbols and again I just made that.

silly joke in my head about drum cymbals. But this felt a little more critical at this moment in time. So let's just pull a card.

set the intention. So many of you reached out to say that you enjoyed the live taping with Tarot Lurie that was released on April 4th. And I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve for more live tapings. So, you know, make sure you're subscribed.

for all the good stuff we've got coming up. And holy moly, do we have some really good stuff coming up. I actually can't wait.

So let's see what wants to come through today.

Megan Hamilton (01:28.404)
Upright only.

Megan Hamilton (01:33.166)
flippity flop. Okay, we've got the 10 of swords. If you want to see what this looks like and in case you don't know, every episode is up on YouTube and you can access YouTube from the website, embracing enchantment.com.

Megan Hamilton (01:54.23)
But we have the 10 of swords in the Rider Waite Smith deck. And basically, I'll just describe it for you super duper quick. You got somebody who is lying face down on the ground, dead, with 10 swords running all the way from the base of their spine in their head down to the base base of their spine. So top to bottom 10 swords running all the way through.

behind our mountains, there's water, it's nighttime. And we know that 10s are endings. We know that this is the final moment of whatever this journey has been. Swords are in the realm of air. We associate them with stuff related to the brain, strategy, communication, writing, thinking, talking.

Sometimes we associate swords with fear. Swords are double edged. They can protect us, but they can also, we can be harmed by them. We can harm others with them. There's a lot of things to think about with swords.

Where does spirituality intersect with our rational brain? Do they have to be different? So there was an episode of the Oracle of LA's podcast. I think it's called Between the Worlds. I listened to with Mary J. Greer, who is a tarot expert and really fun. And I've taken a few of her workshops now.

And they did a deep dive on this particular card. And one of the things they joked about, because you get this card and you look at it you think, okay, well, this is, mean, I remember when my daughter was sort of first interested in like, what's mom doing in the office? And like this card fell out and she was like, yeah, no, this does not, why would you want to look at images like this? And I get it.

Megan Hamilton (04:02.21)
But I think there's a lot of dark humor in tarot. Sometimes that comes forward. And so the concept with the 10 of swords, which was, know, this is an hour long episode. It's really great. Go listen to it if you, if you feel like it, but it's like, okay, how many times did you need to have this before you let it unfold the way it was gonna? How many messages of the same?

thing did you need, right? Like this guy did not need to die with 10 swords. One would have been good enough. Why did it need to be 10? Where in your life are you getting the message over and over, over again, and you're not taking action because the thing is this thorn in your side, this sword in your back, this can be done, but you have to take action. And that's always the message with tarot. It's not just magical thinking. It's not just fortune telling.

I mean, it's definitely not fortune telling, but it's like.

you can have the card and then you have to take the action for the thing to happen. is reciprocity. is a message given to you and you must take action. It's sort of like Elizabeth Gilbert's theory of creativity that she talks about in the book, Big Magic, which is, believes that...

Ideas are their own beings and they come into you and you either take action on them or else they leave you and go back into this sort of ether of great ideas. Action is important and I'm saying this to you because I'm also saying it to myself because I pulled the devil this morning and I know exactly what it's about and I need to take action on something.

Megan Hamilton (05:49.39)
So what keeps showing up for you over and over and over again that you need to take action on so it can be done?

And look, I'm guessing in today's incredibly, what's even the word we use for these times? In these times of today, we have a lot of 10 of sorts opportunities available to us right now.

So today we're going to focus on small ways to stay intentional as the world continues to feel like it's imploding, as our beautiful trans and non-binary or gender fluid two-spirited friends continue to be used as political fodder while they face increasing violence because of policy decisions, as systems meant to protect are being eroded and we're inexplicably using resources to send pop stars and besties of Oprah Winfrey into space

as war and targeted death machines rage forward, it's all increasingly overwhelming. And so the very premise of this podcast, of the Embracing Enchantment podcast, is how to use spirituality to stay hopeful because we know that hopefulness, the belief that things can change,

is one of the driving factors that creates actual change. The belief that things can change and it has to be a belief because nobody can foretell the future. Well, okay, listen, it's not lost on me that in this particular podcast, we might be talking about people who can foretell the future, but it's always nebulous. So.

Megan Hamilton (07:50.134)
It must be a belief that things can change and then that makes it possible for things to actually change. And this isn't just woo, this is science. There is so much research on this. It is a choice. A belief is a choice. And I've talked about this before in the episode, Is Magic Real? Doesn't matter. It's a choice to believe in it. It's a choice to find

Meaning. I'm going to be writing a talk about this soon. The importance of meaning making.

And so this podcast is supposed to be supporting your hopefulness through different ways of looking at spirituality and spiritual people and what they're doing so that you can find what works for you in order to help you stay hopeful in order that the world might change. And just like with tarot, there has to be action added to

this hopefulness.

It can't just be, please, please, please, please, please. It has to be, I want it to be this way. I'm gonna take this action. I believe it can change. I don't know how it's gonna happen, but I'm gonna take action towards that because...

Megan Hamilton (09:17.664)
In my opinion, thinking otherwise leads to despair. And I don't believe that we have to spend our entire time on this earth in despair. Now.

Megan Hamilton (09:35.05)
I am seeing this from the position of a fair amount of things that go my way. Okay. I am a white person. I don't experience racism. I live in Canada.

So there's a lot of things that are available to me that are not available to folks in other countries, right? If I have some kind of health issue, I go to my doctor. I don't have to make the choice of whether I'm going to or not.

Megan Hamilton (10:14.072)
So those are things that are, you know, I grew up like not worried about food. I didn't have food insecurity as a child. I did as a musician, but that's another story. And then on the other side of this, I also do have things that traditionally can be complicated for people. I'm a queer person.

A late diagnosed queer person, or not diagnosed, but like a late understanding queer person. I am a person with ADHD that, you know, I didn't get diagnosed until I was 49 years old. I have chronic illness that I don't talk about and won't talk about, but I do. So I've got stuff and we all have, the point of that is that we all have stuff, but we're also, many of us are sort of sitting in bigger pockets, I guess, of things that we don't have to deal with.

And the reason I bring all of this up is because hopefulness is going to be more complicated for some folks than others. So I, you know, if, you're like, fuck off, Megan, hopefulness is really hard for me, then like valid a hundred percent. and I'm still going to move forward, putting forth

options and opportunities and different ways of thinking.

as my

Megan Hamilton (11:48.568)
I can't think of the word right now, like, way of helping, among other things.

Megan Hamilton (12:00.258)
With that in mind, I wanted to focus on small things that we can do to stay hopeful. We're currently dealing with trauma. We're all dealing with trauma right now, whether we are aware of it or not. We're dealing with the trauma of the pandemic. We're dealing with the trauma of continued war and killing of

people and conflict that doesn't seem to end and, you know, people just disobeying the rules left, right and center all over the place and huge human consequences as a result of that. The suffering that we are made aware of. There's secondary trauma with that. I don't know how many of you are aware of the different kinds of trauma that exists, but learning about other people's trauma is a trauma.

Now, is it as you know, capital T or however you want to say it, as the folks who are experiencing the initial trauma know, but being exposed to that continually is traumatic, which is, you know, why you might consider putting some boundaries around how often you pay attention to the news. And I know lots of people have lots of different opinions on that. And that's OK. I think probably I'm not going to get into that today.

Megan Hamilton (13:28.994)
And there is genuine and warranted fear.

So I also asked some of my friends if they would share what they're doing. Again, we're looking at small stuff today because when we know that sort of like universally, most of us are in a period of overwhelm and trauma and fear on different levels.

We want to focus on small things we can do so that we can actually do them. Because if we try to do things that are too big and then we don't do them, then we're just adding another thing to our plate of the shit that's not getting done, the things we're not doing. Now I'm not even taking care of myself. So we want to avoid that and instead focus on small ways to stay intentional with the hope of hopefulness. Okay.

Here's a really easy way to stay intentional. Use your passwords and good Lord, do we have so many passwords these days as phrases of intentionality.

Okay, so one of mine used to be a...

Megan Hamilton (14:53.918)
you can do it. And then my nickname for myself with an exclamation point. And I don't use that password anymore. So, and that was when I was starting my business in 2018. Every time I had to type in my password, I had to write down, you can do it. you could, you could make your password, password, end of suffering. You could make your password.

towards hopefulness, whatever you want, making sure that you at least once a day have to type this thing in to remind you, right, right, right, this is something I'm focusing on because, you know, the other day it came to me, like, why do I do anything? And it was in service of love. And I thought, okay, that's really good. But my brain is so scattered right now, I'm gonna forget that.

So what do I do? Take out a sticky note, write it down, and there it is right behind me on the wall behind this computer in service of love. Because it's easy to forget, it's easy to get angry, to get triggered, to get activated.

these days, possibly, you know, minute by minute. And if every once in a while I can look up and remind myself that I would like to be in service of love of the concept of love, then that might stop a couple of those activations that might stop me, you know, like losing my temper over something or feeling frustrated with something in service of love. I remember

A recent guest, Molly Donlin talking about, for today, I will not anger or just for this minute, I will not anger, right? Trying to be intentional because we know that anger is really important as an emotion that gives us information, but we also know that getting angry can also wreck some of our best intentions. And so what, you know, like,

Megan Hamilton (17:08.598)
It doesn't mean that we're ignoring it. What can we do instead? How can we recognize that something is frustrating, but also work our way through that?

So sticky notes, was my second note here. Face all the seven directions. Okay, so what do I mean when I say that? Right now I'm running a program called the Magic of Aliveness and it's seven weeks and we're looking at every one of the seven directions. What are the seven directions? Well, some people work with four, some people work with five, some people work with seven. I'm a little bit extra so I'm always gonna go with the seven.

And here they are. East, south, west, north, below, above, within.

Megan Hamilton (18:01.12)
Each of them have an associated element or feel to them. East, and this varies depending on your hemisphere and depending on who you talk to. So these are mine and you can use whatever you like. East, we associate with air. So the realm of swords in tarot, okay? South, we associate with fire. So the realm of wands in tarot. West, we associate with water. So the realm of cups in tarot.

North we associate with earth, so the realm of pentacles in tarot. Below I associate with darkness, so shadow work. Above I associate with light.

So shining the light or allowing the light in or what light means to you. And then within or center. So your own magic or sometimes what I think is where everything intersects to create this specific journey that involves you.

Knowing what each of those elements mean. So, you know, we had the 10 of swords and we were talking about swords relating to, you know, cognitive things, strategy, air, rational thinking. How can you think about that element? Where are the areas in that element that you might want to focus? That can help keep you intentional or even just allowing

each of those directions within your body to be activated. So when you're thinking about the East, let, you know, if you're facing South, let the left-hand side of your body feel energized. If you're thinking of South, let the front part of your body be energized, right? West, the right part of your body. Did I say right? When I was talking about East, because I meant left. Anyway.

Megan Hamilton (20:12.846)
This is probably getting a bit too convoluted. But once you activate like each of the four sides of your body and then including like your feet below and your head above and then within sort of the whole shebang, that's like a minute of meditation that keeps you intentional of, OK, this is stuff I'm going to focus on right now. And with that in mind, let's take a minute to listen to what some other folks are doing for intentionality.

Megan Hamilton (20:54.796)
All right, so let's keep looking at the stuff that I've jotted down for today. You can ask for signs on a daily walk. You can go for a walk and depending on your worldview, if you believe in a spirit world or in animism where we believe that there is a soul within every living being, then you may ask for a sign.

Am I on the right direction? May I please have a sign? And often something's going to come up and you'll know what it is. I think I've talked before about, asked for a sign and that hailstorm happened, but it was like a weird hailstorm where I could hear this rushing and I didn't know what was happening for a couple of minutes. And then I looked up and I watched a hailstorm coming towards me. I felt like that was a pretty good sign.

And so now whenever I get the rune Hagelaz, which is related to hail, I think of that sign that I got and the spirit ancestor who I associate with that particular moment and feel like I'm getting a message from that being. And you can do whatever you want because like I said,

Is this real? Is it not real? It doesn't matter. How is it enriching your life and how is it making you stay hopeful and moving forward and working towards something better than all of the

suffering that seems to be happening right now. Commitment statements when journaling. I think I've shared this with you before, but mine is, I commit to trusting that what I put out will come back to me in expansive growth. I commit to action, to justice, and to doing the next right thing. Almost every day I write that out. There's a period maybe last year or the year before where I was using different things and trying them out. I keep coming back to it.

Megan Hamilton (23:15.264)
It's my mantra, but as soon as I'm writing it, I get into my zone. I know what's happening. I'm looking and writing the words and thinking about, right, right, right. I have to take action, right? I'm working towards justice, right? All I can do is the next right thing. Helps keep me on track. One of the things I love to do,

when money is not a really difficult thing as it was last year. I've talked about that before. But when money is not taking up all my brain space, I really enjoy if I'm scrolling through the internet and something comes up, mutual aid.

We have a really great mutual aid organization here in Kingston or other folks who are who I like to follow who signal boost folks who need aid. I like to send 20 bucks. I'm like, OK, it's a sign. It came to me right now. I've got 20 bucks. Easy. Done. Send it out. Now, sometimes we can get tripped up by this because we're like, I don't know. Like, I also get a lot of social media requests from folks who

You can't tell if it's real or if they're trying to prosper on your sense of trying to help people and making up stuff. Sometimes it can be really hard to tell. So I like to let other folks who are interested in vetting people do the vetting and then I follow them. I generally know that

whatever is being signal boosted is somebody who is in need and I will send it off and think, okay, that's a small thing. It's not the only thing. It's certainly, you know, and I'm not like, I know you know this, but I'm not saying this because I want people to be like, my God, Megan, at all. I know you know that I am sharing it with you because it's stuff that I do. And maybe.

Megan Hamilton (25:42.168)
there's certain things that you're like, I haven't thought of that before. I never really knew how to figure out like where to send money to directly. That's why I'm sharing this stuff. Writing letters, writing emails, something comes up. Okay, so for example, here in Canada, we're about to deal with an election. We've got one guy who in my opinion seems like he's basically gonna be Trump light.

And then we have somebody who I would generally want to vote for, but it's just not gonna happen. And in my opinion, I'm voting strategically because I need to keep this guy that I think is gonna do a great deal of damage out of office. And so...

One of the things that happened when our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down and the person who was elected within the Liberal Party, Mark Carney, stepped in as is how our government works.

he took away the office of the status of women. basically reduced his cabinet to a very small number.

well. I'm not into that at all. Even his, you know, the talking about it from his end, he needs to make the cabinet as small as possible because Canada is in a really difficult time right now. We've got the tariff stuff is obviously really complicated and could be potentially quite damaging for a lot of different reasons.

Megan Hamilton (27:29.162)
Yes, okay, fine. However, like, boy, does that ever send a message as well. So I thought, my God, what can I do about this? I can send a letter. I can send a letter saying, here's how I feel as a woman in this country. Why I thought that was a bad move. And what I would suggest you do to rectify it. Is that the only thing I can do? No, is it something I can do in the moment to deal with the

frustration that I have so that it's placed somewhere. Yes, you can write letters, you can show up to protests, you can go door to door for a candidate that you really believe in. can, there's all kinds of things you can do. But writing letters and writing emails is taking action.

Megan Hamilton (28:19.926)
intentionally doing joyful things. A lot of people that I know find it very difficult and even makes them feel guilty for having joyful times when other people are suffering so much. yep, feels pretty weird to be having birthday cake.

when folks are experiencing incredible harm.

Megan Hamilton (29:00.521)
and

it's going to do you no good to help folks if you are constantly exposing yourself again to secondary trauma or you know actively.

Megan Hamilton (29:24.406)
making joy inaccessible to you.

Megan Hamilton (29:30.346)
it will just continue to cause you suffering. And if your suffering feels like the way to help.

Megan Hamilton (29:41.832)
you get to do whatever you choose. But finding those pockets of joy also helps to remind us that it can be both and right. We can we can help. We can take lots of action and we also can still experience joy and that joy could be going for a walk and enjoying birdsong and feeling

a moment of peacefulness. You know what I mean? But I know a lot of folks and have been working with a lot of folks who are so

traumatized by what's happening everywhere and continue to expose themselves to the trauma that it's eventually going to make it impossible for them to take action.

So I leave that with you for the choices that you want to make. But I personally believe that actively seeking joy during these times, not only joy, certainly, but making sure to keep nourishing yourself with the things that you need means that you will stay in a position to be active.

and to take action.

Megan Hamilton (31:15.788)
And that involves intentionally taking breaks from the news. I know a lot of folks who have like time limits of what they will absorb because you want to stay up to date. Of course. You want to know what's going on. You want to in solidarity with people who are suffering in other countries. And, you know, I'm not just talking about the Middle East. I'm not just talking about Sudan. I'm also talking about

the United States and as a result Canada, right? All of the groups that are facing increasing threat of violence because of these political and

very harmful policy decisions. We want to stand in solidarity with those folks. We need to know what's going on so we know how to help. Especially if we are not personally directly impacted by these decisions. However, know, 24 seven news cycle, the true definition of doom scrolling that

will over time potentially.

make it impossible for you to stay hopeful or believe that things can change and then where are we going to be?

Megan Hamilton (32:47.83)
and avoiding, you know, or dealing with the secondhand trauma that comes from the news cycle. So that means, you know, getting a therapist who has some training with how to process trauma. That means getting some help, processing the trauma and the grief, because we know that trauma can be dealt with.

There are lots of different ways that we can process trauma. And so if you are, and by the way, all of us are dealing with trauma, then there are ways to actually deal with it. You don't just have to carry it. You can get help. Therapy is not a choice for everybody. Financially, it is a huge investment that is 100 % not available to everybody. We just changed our, we just...

our health plan just changed due to circumstances beyond our control, which means therapy is not covered. And I'm like, well, it's going to have to figure we're going to have to re-budget a little bit because that is not an option of for me of not having it. I absolutely require therapy as a way of staying healthy.

Megan Hamilton (34:17.23)
Yes, I'll survive without it if I need to, but you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? So if you feel like you have a lot of trauma, therapy, shadow work, talking to friends about it, but being very mindful. Again, when we're talking to other people about traumatic things, we are exposing them to secondary trauma. So we need to ask consent before we do any kind of conversation about trauma or traumatic things.

They call it trauma dumping. That needs to be talked about ahead of time. So getting really good at the communication around that can be incredibly helpful too.

Megan Hamilton (35:01.676)
And I think I'm going to leave you with that. A relatively short episode for me. I hope you found one or two things in here that were new to you that you might be able to try that can help you process and place all of the stuff that's happening in the world today. And I'd also love to hear back from you. What did you find helpful? What did I miss? What do you disagree with?

you can send me a voice note at embracingenchantment.com. You can send me a DM on Instagram at embracingenchantmentpod.

you can connect with me. I love to hear feedback.

So you can find all the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at embracingenchantment.com. Please subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts and we'd love for you to leave a review. I love reading the reviews. I really, really do. And as I mentioned, you can also leave a voice note at embracingenchantment.com and we might feature it in a future episode.

You're going to want to make sure you're subscribed. Holy moly, you guys. we have some very exciting episodes coming up where we talk about whether or not evil spirits exist. I chat with the psychic medium and a scrying expert, and we are going to have an episode with one of the most well-known people in esoterica and witchcraft today. She is, she's, she was in my top five folks who I were on my dream list of.

Megan Hamilton (36:49.23)
being on the podcast. You can catch up on previous episodes where we talk with Tarot Lori, Colin Bedell and Cult Mother and episodes about Tarot, human design, shamanism, the question of whether magic is real and so much more. Until then, I am sending you so much love.

Here's to building an enchanted life.