What gets in the way of your calm and joy

Pressing Pause Podcast episode 100 What gets in the way of your calm and joy

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Welcome to Pressing Pause. I’m Gabrielle Treanor, a mindset and positive psychology coach and writer, exploring how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives. 

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Hello and welcome to episode 100. I deliberated for ages about what this episode 100 should be. It felt momentous and important because releasing 100 episodes of a podcast is no small task and I want to recognise that. But I realised that trying to think up the perfect way to mark this milestone was stopping me from getting on and actually making the episode. So I decided I’d talk about what’s been on my mind, what I really want to share with you, because that’s pretty much how the past 99 episodes have come about! That’s served me well and gotten us to this point so why not stick with it? And maybe I’ll do something different in a future episode by way of celebration.

As you know I talk a lot about feeling calm and joy and for two little words there can be a lot of thinking and baggage around them. So what I want to talk to you about in this episode is the stories, the messaging, the thinking, the stuff that gets in the way of you feeling the calm and the joy that you want. I’ve come up with five key obstacles that obstruct the path to feeling more calm and joy in our daily lives.

For starters the world is a LOT to deal with. It can feel like we’ve been fire fighting the hardest for the past couple of years but really, there has been conflict, injustice, pain, suffering and heartache in the world for a long time, much longer than you or I have been alive. Life is not going to magically calm down because it never has, that’s simply the world we live in.

Add in everything that you have going on in your own life and it can quickly feel like there’s no time for you (and should you even be thinking about yourself when there’s so much upset in the world?).

Here’s the thing: To not be overwhelmed by your own life and world events it is essential that you regulate your nervous system and take care of your emotional and mental health.

Only by taking care of yourself, by creating a little space in your day to savour and relish your feelings of calm and joy, will you have the resources, the capacity and the bandwidth to show up for yourself and for others in the way you want to.

Something else that gets in our way is simply misunderstanding calm, thinking that it’s passive, a bit weak, apathetic even. If you’re calm you won’t have any drive or passion, you won’t get things done, you’ll not be productive enough (whatever that means), you’ll be less caring about other people. 

But actually, calm is powerful. I’d go so far as to say calm is rebellious.

Being calm does not make you a pushover. It doesn’t mean that you won’t stand up for what you need or believe in, or that you’ll put up with unkindness, or that you’ll appease to keep the peace.

Quite the opposite in fact.

When you’re calm you can have an impact. When you’re operating from your calm, grounded, centred self, you can be an activist, fight for justice, stand up for yourself and for others.

When you’re calm:

• you act in alignment with your values
• you can consider your response and act confidently
• you feel clearer and more sure about the decisions you make
• you cope better when life gets bumpy
• you’re more able to honour your boundaries and say what you feel, what you want and need
• you’re kinder, more patient and compassionate to yourself as well as other people

There’s nothing passive or selfish about any of that.

Another obstacle is thinking that joy comes later. Once we’ve reached the next goal, once we have this thing, once we’re in a different job, once we look a certain way… then we’ll be happy. Then we’ll feel calm and joyful and all will be right in our world.

So we wait. And even if we reach one of our goals we move the goalposts to tell ourselves we’ll be happier when we get to the next level.

And so joy gets put off, it’s sidelined, held in reserve.

When actually we have the opportunity to feel joy right now. Within each day. 

You don’t have to wait until you’ve got a new car and the bathroom’s clean and you have a cheerleader for a boss. It doesn’t mean that you stop working towards your goals but it does mean that the journey towards them can be more enjoyable. You can find moments of joy within a day that also has frustrations or worries or boredom or sadness. You can hold contrasting emotions at the same time. We go through many emotions in one day and joy can absolutely be right there in the mix and experienced several times over.

Okay, here’s a biggie. We live in a society where the loud and clear message for women is that we need to be useful, productive, we need to achieve and contribute and to do that means putting our own needs and wants, including our own joy, aside. We feel guilty if we make time to do something that makes us feel good, or if we’re enjoying ourselves when other people are struggling or in pain.

But it’s contradictory. To be able to contribute, to be useful (what that even means is debatable), to care for and support the people around you it is essential that you regulate your nervous system and take care of your emotional and mental health.

When you intentionally and mindfully feel calm and joy you aren’t being selfish or uncaring. Taking care of yourself means you will have the resources to show up for yourself and for others in the way you want to.

When you make space for your own joy, when you rebel against your societal conditioning, just as you do when you actively embody calm, the positive impact on others as well as yourself is huge.

When you connect with the joyful part of yourself it allows you to feel lighter, freer, be more creative, optimistic and present. 

It means: 

• you’re more playful and light-hearted
• you find the hope and possibilities in tricky situations
• you have a rounded perspective and you can thinking creatively, coming up with solutions
• you drop the comparison and feel more contentment and peace

And just as when you embody calm you’re kinder and more compassionate to other people as well as yourself because you have the bandwidth, you have the capacity for it.

Our emotions are contagious – your calm and joy will rub off on the people you come into contact with. And you know what you’re like around your family, friends and colleagues when you feel calm and happy compared to when you’re fraught and frazzled, right?

The final obstacle that I think gets in the way of our feeling more calm and joy that I wanted to share in this episode, is that we think that we’ll only really feel the benefit if we’re calm all the time, or if we have great big sources of joy. Which means that it feels out of reach, too hard and too big to attain. 

But there’s no way we can be calm all the time, we can’t be any one emotion all the time – it’s not possible or desirable as all feelings are there to be felt. And we find so much joy in the small, everyday moments in life which are easier to find and more frequently occurring than the big trumpet-blazing occasions.

It’s the tiny steps, the small actions repeated over time which make a huge difference. It’s the idea of marginal gains – tweaking and improving by 1%. It’s marginal gains that took British Cycling from mediocrity and the butt of jokes to dominating the sport with astonishing success – from one gold medal in nearly 100 years of Olympics to 66 gold Olympic and Paralympic medals within 10 years. 

But I’m not talking about being an amazing athlete and world domination here, I’m talking about how you can feel more of the calm and joy that you want.

And it’s by recognising that living with more calm and joy every day builds your resilience to deal with challenges, makes you more compassionate to yourself and other people, lets you feel more content and at peace, supports you to honour your boundaries, feel more sure about your decisions, live in alignment with your values and resource yourself to stand up for yourself and other people. 

Feeling calm and joy more deeply, more often is powerful, for you and for those around you. 

And if you’re looking to infuse your life with more calm and joy my new offering The Calm & Joy Catalyst will help you do exactly that. 

By the end of The Calm & Joy Catalyst you will: 

• be equipped with a bank of actions that give you calm and joy in just 10 minutes
• have greater self-trust built by showing up for yourself day after day on this journey (including if you miss days)
• you will be experiencing more calm and joy every day
• you’ll recognise how you feeling calmer and more joyful positively affects your interactions and relationships with other people
• you’ll notice the ripple effect of your calm and joy on the people around you
• and you’ll have jumpstarted your calmer, more joyful life

The Calm & Joy Catalyst begins on 11 April so to find out more and to register for the Catalyst go to gabrielletreanor.com/catalyst or find the link in the show notes. I know how powerful this is going to be and I cannot wait to get started.

I hope you enjoyed this episode 100, you can find the show notes and transcript at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast. And remember, to find out about and join the Calm & Joy Catalyst go to gabrielletreanor.com/catalyst.

If you enjoyed listening to this Pressing Pause podcast please do leave a rating or a review on iTunes so that other people can find the podcast too.

Thanks again for listening, until next time, lovely people.

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