April | 2013 | the artist's nest

One of the benefits of being a rabid journaler is that I have ample evidence of my patterns and habits and defaults. All that stuff I “tend to do” when I’m scared, overwhelmed, panicked, what have you. It’s there in ink on actual, physical pages. Hard evidence.

A client who also journals told me recently that he picked up a notebook from ten years ago and was depressed to see that he was struggling with exactly the same stuff as he is today. He thought it meant that he hadn’t changed at all, had been stagnating for ten whole years.

Which is so not the case.

Of course you were struggling with the same stuff back then, I said. Those are your core issues.

We all have core issues, those deep, resonant conflicts within us that we’re on this earth to be with, work with, and, over time, learn from. These issues are our teachers. It’s not about overcoming them or even letting go of them. The work is to become more and more intimate with our core issues as we cycle through them again and again in our lives. We peel our layers like an onion, each time getting closer and closer to our center.

I still struggle with much of the same stuff I did at twenty — it just doesn’t throw me as much, because I understand it better. I know how to work with it, play with it, in ways I didn’t then. In fact, some of the areas where I’m strongest now are the areas I had most difficulty with at twenty, even if those areas still cause me trouble.

For me, this is the work of my life. This is my real work, above, beyond, and beneath any other “work” I do in the world.

It’s these core issues, though, that trigger our resistance. Of course they do. They’re painful. Nobody wants to delve into pain. When I feel like I’m spinning my wheels and I just don’t see a way out, I can be pretty sure that some core issue has risen to the forefront and I’m in resistance to it.

What’s tricky is that we can often be blind to our core issues when they’re “up” for us. This is why I keep lists of my “resistance triggers” in my journals.

When I’m feeling stuck, I go to one of my lists. Resistance triggers basically boil down to painful thoughts that reflect our core issues. Here are some sample triggers from one of my lists:

You have to write something special, original and amazing or there’s no point. People have to be totally wowed by your writing or why are you doing it?

If you take too much time to yourself, people you love won’t understand and they’ll leave you. You have to be available to others when they need you or you’ll end up alone.

Even when you work really hard, it isn’t enough — what’s the point?

It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. Just keep going.

These are some of the biggies for me. You get the idea. The reason I write this stuff down is because I often don’t recognize that these issues are “up” for me. All I know is I’m feeling sad, empty, or pissed off and like I can’t move forward. Often, when I consult one of my lists I immediately see the thought causing the resistance jump off the page at me. Ahhh. Now I have something to work with.

So let me show you how this resistance thing plays out: If I’m in the grip of a thought like, “If you take too much time to yourself, people you love won’t understand and they’ll leave you,” but I don’t know it, I’m often over-responding to others, overscheduling myself, saying yes more than feels good to me.

Pretty soon I’m fed up, angry, withdrawing from and resisting interaction — even interaction that could be helpful and nourishing to me (such as taking time to truly connect with myself or with a friend who deeply wants to hear me).

If I’m in the grip of a belief like, “You have to write something special, original and amazing or there’s no point,” I become extra-hard on my writing. I become unwilling to experiment. I belabor every sentence. Everything feels squeezed and distorted, like I’m trying to fit my words through a teeny, tiny keyhole and hope they can make it through to the other side as magical, life-altering prose.

Pretty soon I don’t want to sit down at my desk at all. Writing has become painful, not life-enhancing. And certainly not fun. So now I’m resisting writing at all; I’ve become disconnected from why I ever wanted to do it in the first place.

Writing these triggers down as we become aware of them is a huge act of self-care. It’s about knowing ourselves. Seeing your thoughts on paper is a good way to cut them down to size — sometimes, thoughts that feel horrifying when they’re stuck in our heads can look absolutely ridiculous when you see them written down.

Just the act of noticing that I’m being triggered by one of these thoughts can create a huge shift for me. I’m no longer merged with the thought — I’m now outside of it, observing it, so it’s over there where I can question it, and not a driving force within me. The next step is to question these thoughts, look for evidence of where they are not true. (The Work of Byron Katie is an excellent way to question your painful thoughts.)

What triggers resistance for you? How do you know you’re “in it”? Let me know in the comments!

Image is “Stone and Brick Wall” © Peter Szucs | Dreamstime Stock Photos

I’ve noticed a pattern with myself and some of my clients. We want to add new things to our lives and we’re excited about that. But our current lives are so full that there literally isn’t any space for that newness. We try to stuff the newness into the cracks in our current lives, but our lives start to feel like they’re bursting at the seams. Ouch. The newness can’t truly take root and grow because there’s no rich soil for it to anchor itself to.

We need to actually make space in our lives for the newness. We need to create room where the future can enter. If we keep ourselves constantly busy and scheduled every day, if we choose not to notice our need to let go of something which no longer feels good or serves us, we spin our wheels.

I know, this sounds mildly upsetting and maybe even scary. Change can suck, even when you desperately want it.

But you can open up this space in your life, this space in which to allow for the new, bit by bit. You don’t have to do a massive overhaul of your entire life.

One of my clients who felt ready for change but completely burdened by her schedule had been taking a weekly Pilates class for more than two years. It wasn’t feeling great to her anymore, but how could she let go of it? It was Pilates, and therefore, good for her! Right?

After some poking around on the issue, we realized that the energy of the group in the class had shifted significantly and it didn’t resonate for her anymore. What had once felt like a supportive habit no longer did. She quit the class, and just that one open evening a week began to pave the way for change. She found herself using the open time to sit quietly and within a couple of weeks she started cleaning out a closet and packing up some very old stuff to donate to charity.

Sometimes the “one thing” might just be a one-time letting go, too. A friend of mine who never, ever takes a day off work recently decided she would take just one day off. She’d been convinced that things would “go to hell in a handbasket” (I love that phrase! — what does it mean?) at her office if whe wasn’t there.

As it turned out, everything went smoothly in her absence and it occurred to her that she could loosen her grip on things around there a little, delegate more, and maybe take a day off here and there in the future. (If you have perfectionistic tendencies, you are likely addicted to “showing up”. See what happens when you don’t. Just once.)

So, I know you’re thinking, what if the one thing you choose to let go of is on a grander scale, like a job, a relationship, a project near and dear to your heart? I know. That is so, so hard. But, while there’s no denying letting go can feel utterly crappy, the way we think about letting go can make it either harder or easier.

Letting go happens in layers. You don’t have to do it all at once. Even the big things we let go of are full of tiny things you can let go of one at a time.

Years ago, I left a job I’d been at for a long time, and it was hard. I knew in my heart that letting go was the thing I needed to do, but the thought of it was so overwhelming. The change! The massive change! For several months, I spun around in this cycle: I want to leave. But it’s so hard. It’s so overwhelming. I can’t do it! I won’t. But I want to leave. But it’s so hard. I can’t do it!

Then one day it occurred to me that I could make the decision to leave without having to act on it. I know, it sounds counterintuitive, right? But that’s what I did. Making the decision to leave was my “one thing.” And as soon as the decision was made, my entire body felt lighter. I didn’t actually give my notice at the job until almost a month after I’d made the decision to do it. Giving notice was another “one thing” in a series of “one things” that needed to happen for me to exit the job.

Note that my making the decision to leave — even before I’d actually given my notice at work, before I’d actually physically left the job — created space for newness to enter. Because I was no longer spinning my wheels — do I or don’t I? — my energy was freed up to magnetize itself to my not-yet-created future. And because I could see a finite end to the work situation, it became far more bearable for the remaining time I was there.

As I write this, I remember, too, that another “one thing” that helped me make the decision to leave was that I had decided to sit on the blue chair in my apartment instead of the couch where I usually sat. Yep, that was it. I looked at the chair and thought, I’m sitting here while I write in my journal today. Not there. And from that journaling space on the blue chair came my decision to leave my job.

Do not underestimate the power of letting go of one thing. Even if it’s only for today.

For a variation on this theme, check out my previous article, “The power of tiny new things.”

Work With Me: Are you in transition and feeling stuck or scared about moving forward? I have two openings for new coaching clients. Read more here to see if we might be a good fit.