[T]o be our best, our first step is to make the choice for something better.

Spiral Up! 127 Energizing Options to Be Your Best Right Now, by Chloe Faith Wordsworth, 1993 (book with online supporting materials including audio)

Not everyone experiences teen angst, but I did. When I first heard of the book “Spiral Up,” I almost immediately thought of one of my favorite albums when I was a teenager: “The Downward Spiral,” by Nine Inch Nails. You know the one? Some of the songs are “Mr. Self Destruct,” “Piggy,” “Eraser,” “Reptile,” “Closer,” and “Hurt.” “Closer” probably got the most radio play. (I bet if you look it up, you’ll recognize it.) “Hurt” was equally as popular, in part because Johnny Cash covered it. I still love that album, and I always will. Tbh, I get a little rush just thinking about it, like an old flame. Seeing NIN play live when I was 15 is among the best moments of my life.

I remember when my mom first heard some Nine Inch Nails and said she just didn’t understand it. Why would someone want to take their creative gifts and make something so angry and hateful? Of course as a teenager, I thought she just didn’t understand, because she didn’t understand anything. Her comment partly justified my infatuation with the band. My teen angst found a place to feel seen, and it was in Nine Inch Nails’ music. Trent Reznor, resonating

But I’ve since learned that I do prefer to limit how much I listen to Nine Inch Nails’ music and other music like it. What Chloe Faith Wordsworth’s “Spiral Up” book does is serves as a reminder that everything in life is a choice, including and maybe most importantly our perspective. This is a good reminder for me. I can get stuck in a way of thinking, in a perspective, and feel like that is my truth and anything else is an act.

I felt out of place as a teenager, and I lingered in that spot, sort of removed from society and what society deems as good. I wasn’t rebelling … I still got excellent grades, hung out with friends and family, and did a lot of babysitting, because I enjoyed these things … but I was exploring too. Exploring the underdog, the ignored, the outcast.

To this day, I still find this a natural space to inhabit. Perhaps I always will. But I’ve learned, or I’m still learning, how to inhabit that space without being angry.

Which brings me back to “Spiral Up.”

Wordsworth uses the word “resonate” over and over again in her book. In fact, she’s developed an entire system around the word: the Resonance Repatterning System. The idea is that what we resonate with is what we are drawn to and what we attract. Sort of like the saying “No matter where you go, there you are.”

“Resonate” sounds a lot like “Reznor,” the last name of the man behind Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor.

I remember as a teenager thinking how cool it was that his music resonated with so many young people and his last name sounded like “resonate.” “Spiral Up” shows us how we can shift what we resonate with. It is the first of four truths Wordsworth outlines in the introduction to her book.

"Truth #1 Resonance. We need to change what we resonate with. This truth is not about changing the other person. Our life is a projection of the mental state and attitudes we ourselves resonate with. Truth #2 Point of Choice. We need to resonate with making our Point of Choice to be and do something different and positive, to spiral up to our optimal frequency range – to be our best at this moment in time. Truth #3 An Input of Coherent Energy. We need an energy input to synchronize our frequencies with what is energizing, light-giving, and life-giving – called in Resonance Repatterning the Energizing Options. Truth #4 A System that Works. We need a system that enables us to free ourselves from the non-coherent spiral down range of frequencies and enables us to return once more to our natural spiral up state of optimal coherence. Such a system enables us to maintain our spiral up way of being more and more consistently. When we drop into a spiral down state, we don’t have to stay there: we know what to do to spiral up to our best frequency range once more.”

I don’t regret my choices as a teenager, and I certainly don’t regret loving Nine Inch Nails. I love loving the underdog. I love the dark. I have been mesmerized by it at times, and I’ve ventured into it.

I see how it’s helpful, and how it’s not. I simultaneously see how I know almost nothing about it, just the same as I know almost nothing about the light, the good, the popular.

These are mysterious things.

What I love about “Spiral Up” is its focus on practical things. Resonating can sound a little woo-woo and “out there,” the stuff of hippies and “good vibes only” people. But really it’s just a tool for living a life more aligned with what you actually are and what you want to experience in your day-to-day life. We think this has to do with owning a house, or meeting our soulmate, or getting that degree, but it’s about how we feel, about ourselves and others.

“Spiral Up” is a tool for feeling what we want to feel and living how we want to live.

Want to learn more about Chloe Faith Wordsworth and her approach? Check out her website, where you can also listen to recordings of her radio show – which is kind of like a podcast before podcasts were a thing.