Living the Lessons: Carri Adcock Makes Space for Transformation
For the past 16 years Carri has written a letter to God every morning. This regular practice of intentional attention, independent of country, time zone, agenda of the day ahead, is part of the foundation of her regular practice. Consistent focus, small shift, and practice stemming from this routine fuels her passion to show others the courage in stepping back and staying connected in a noisy world. This is part of the coaching she provides to her community.
Carri is a teacher who applies the lessons she offers others to the rhythm of her own life. “The foundation of what I do is daily practice,” she says. “Ten minutes can change your life if you allow small but consistent shifts.”
For example, in her personal practice and to stay connected to herself, Carri doesn’t look at electronics, or media inputs, for the first two hours of the day. “It is paramount to begin each new day aligned to you v. other’s agendas. This is related to an assignment she gives to all of her clients: no electronics, no inputs for the first hour of the day. It is often bookended with the suggestion to end the day in the same way – “coming home to you”. While this may sometimes be met with resistance, it allows for great openings and transformations of perspective.
These days, our perspective is everything.
“We’re living in times of collective trauma, re-entry, and potentially transition that leads to transformation,” Carri says. It’s more than the subject of her upcoming retreat at Palmaia, House of Aia, it is an ongoing ethos that connects us to the daily work of transformation.
In these days, she says, we can move with intention and use whatever is happening as a teacher in our lives.
Using everything that that life delivers as a teacher is something she’s applied in her personal and professional lives in a variety of settings and formats. Carri’s passion for taking these lessons into facilitating retreats is part of her life’s work. “Even in 25 years of corporate work, I organized global workshops and led teams.” In this work, she helped people perform at their highest levels, and continues to be the work she does today.
On retreats, while she begins with a framework and a general theme, there is a spontaneity informed by the people who show up. “The retreats are based on the guest list,” she says. This reveals her commitment to real growth and to perspective, including the perspective of seeing people clearly.
This goes back to that commitment to personal practice and how Carri begins her own day. Unplugging and grounding in order to plug into intuition, clarity, and perspective. “We have all we need in the present – always. Tapping into this trumps striving action every time.”
Carri looks to many places to recharge her own inspiration and then bring that to others. Appropriate for being on retreat, Carri says she finds inspiration in, “The water, the beach, the ocean, the mountains, the redwoods, and the animals that inhabit these places.” She continues her list, “At the same time, museums and art are very inspiring.” Carri also looks to writers and poets for inspiration, such as anything that gives her a good cry, the emotional and evocative verse of Nikki Giovanni, and on the other end of the spectrum, she’s also been reading books on business, organizational behavior and her favorite, quantum physics.
All of it, the work and the play, connect to what Carri sees as living her own life of purpose. She says, “My purpose on this planet is to bear witness to God’s grace, to see the gift in the annoying, and to remind us all to lighten up a little bit.” After all, amidst the transformation, “We all need a little more fun,” she says.
“We are 37 trillion cells all put together for us to become a human being. Someone went to great lengths to create us and wants us to have fun and enjoy it. Translate that however you want. We are miracles bopping around this planet with a lot of noise – worldly noise that invites us to forget.”
“I like to cut through the noise.”
When asked about some of her go-to experiences for fun, Carri reflects, “Part of my fun is finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Outside in nature and while traveling. It doesn’t matter where. Getting friends together is super fun to me. I love to host retreats, create amazing experiences that light others up and I like to host gatherings.” Community amplifies everytime.
Carri’s passion promises that the work of transformation will also be fun, and social, and involve the inspiration found in nature.
“If you’re going to give me a gift, give me an experience over things every day.”
When she’s traveling away from home, or in a foreign country, one of Carri’s favorite excursions is to visit the grocery store. “What strikes me when I can’t read the words are the pictures and how things are presented. I love going to the deli and seeing what the salads look like, and seeing the staples that are a reflection of the country, the region. I like being somewhere where I don’t know. It cultivates beginner’s mind.”
“Anything that sparks that beginner’s mind is super fun to me,” she says. “I think it is a love language.”
Cultivating the phenomenon of beginner’s mind is one of the reasons to go on retreat. Carri says, “Most of the stuff I miss, I miss because I think I already know.”
Carri provides an example from her own life to illustrate this. “I had the opportunity to move back to an area where I used to live. I haven’t lived her in seven years and wasn’t planning on moving back here. While walking in this area, I notice it is all familiar, but I am not familiar to it. Getting quiet and looking at the perspective of what it feels like and looks like after seven years of experience and coming back has been very powerful.”
“The main ingredient has been slowing down enough to see it.”
We can all relate to this and we don’t have to pick up and move in order to see it clearly. On retreat, Carri says, “We take ourselves out of the day to day. We don’t always know the people. And we may be a little uncomfortable. But everything on retreat is taken care of for you. It is fertile ground for your ability to have breakthroughs and to learn something new about yourself.”
Carri then facilities the ability for people to take these breakthroughs and insights home with them.
Carri says, “Experiencing a shift doesn’t come by making grandiose changes, it comes in small shifts in perception.”
These shifts in perception set the tone for what happens next.
"The real work begins at the end of the retreat,” Carri says. When asked what advice she gives people in order to integrate these changes in their everyday life, she answers, “The end of a Retreat is all about this. People may learn a lot, but then we set attention and identify one tangible action that they will take home. Information is great, but the wisdom comes in the application of the information.”
So whatever people take home, hopefully they will take with them some of the lessons and examples that that Carri shares and lives in her own life. These include finding ways to have fun and to truly live the miracles that we are. All 37 trillion cells of fun-loving miracles.