When your needs meet with resistance

Pressing Pause Episode 104 When your needs meet with resistance

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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, writer, introvert and sensitive soul with an inclination to ponder over the stuff of life. Join me as I explore how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives.

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You know that feeling of just never having enough hours in the day? And if someone tells you that you have the same number of hours as Beyonce you want to slam them over the head with a heavy book. That feeling of always trying to get on top of things, of trying to not fall behind, of needing to be in three places at once.

And you think that if you could just be more organised, if you could just get a grip on everything, if you could just be more productive you wouldn’t be stressed, you’d feel calm and sorted and life would just be so much smoother.

And yet that never quite happens. 

Yep, I hear you and you are not alone. This is what I hear from the women I work with in coaching, who reply to my weekly emails, who message me on Instagram – there’s a constant feeling of trying to keep up and often not managing to do so.

And that’s exactly why I created a course to tackle this issue of there never being enough time, and it’s called Spacious – how to have more time, and feel calmer and happier too.

Because that’s what we want, right? To feel spacious, at ease, lighter, calmer, rooted in ourselves rather than caught up in the whirlwind of life.

I promise it will not require you to turn your life upside down and move to a remote cabin in the woods, unless that’s what you want to do. And it will not require you to become a hard, uncaring, mean person. You will discover that you can have more time, and feel calmer and happier as well, while still being your kind, thoughtful, caring, generous, gorgeously unique and lovely self.

Spacious the course is open for registration now, we begin on 6 March, it’s a live course which means that you will have access to me throughout the course, and right now there is a special early bird offer!

So, go to gabrielletreanor.com/spacious to find out all about how you can have more time, and feel calmer and happier too, and join with the special offer which ends 23 February.

I’m really excited for what you’ll gain from this course and if you have any questions feel free to email me [email protected].

Right, let’s get on with the episode, shall we?

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Welcome to episode 104. At the start of this year I was not feeling ready to dive in full of energy and attack 2022 with gusto, even though that’s the message that’s trumpeted every January in mainstream and social media. I didn’t have the energy, I was craving time and space and rest – all the things that our society wants us to abandon for busyness and productivity.

I decided to pare things back so I met all my work responsibilities and honoured my commitments, I didn’t let anyone down, AND I also honoured the commitment to myself, to create the space I so needed in my day and in my head.

But it wasn’t easy! It wasn’t simply a matter of declaring I will go slowly and that’s it. I had all kinds of thoughts and feelings coming up!

My brain piped up with a myriad of opinions about what I was doing and tried to tell me I needed to crank things up a gear. 

“This has been long enough, now you’re just being lazy.”

“Other people don’t get to rest, why should you?”

“What will people think if you look like you’re not ‘doing’ much?”

“Do something!”

The list went on but you get the idea, right? No doubt you’ve had similar thoughts when you’ve tried to take more time for yourself, when you’ve tried to rest, to take a break, to ease up on a few things, when you’ve tried to make some space in your life.

These thoughts are going to pop up for several reasons. For a start we can’t control what thoughts ping into our brains, that’s not in our power. 

But, here’s the but, we DO have control over what we then do with those thoughts. I’ll come back to this in a minute.

We live in a society where busyness is glorified and rest is vilified. 

Where we are told and shown that being productive is good, important and directly reflective of our worth (it isn’t but that is the overwhelming message). 

Where, as women, we’re told to look, sound, think and feel within certain parameters, all while putting everyone else first and ourselves last. The joy of living in a capitalist, racist, patriarchal, ableist society, eh?!

So when we decide, and take steps, to have a slower, calmer, more peaceful and easeful life our brain goes into hyperdrive because we’re going against what has been drilled into us. 

It’s an act of defiance which is why we meet with resistance inside our own heads.

And when we meet with resistance we think we must be doing something wrong. 

If it feels uncomfortable to take an hour out of the working day to go for a walk in the sunshine or to not get involved with a school event or to do things differently to how you normally do them, or to do whatever it is you need – it must be wrong, right?

You must be wrong for giving yourself love, care and kindness in this way. 

But what if you’re not wrong? 

What if the resistance, the discomfort, the plain old wrongness you feel is actually a sign that you’re doing EXACTLY the right thing for you?

What if the angsty thoughts that are pinging into your brain is just fear of the unknown, of breaking from habit?

What if it’s a test to see if you’re serious about taking better care of yourself, about claiming the calm and ease you want, about creating more space for joy?

When we meet with resistance we can think there are two ways to deal with it. One is to turn and go back the way we came. The other is to double down and push through as hard as we can.

There’s a third way – we can sit with it. 

Here’s where we get to decide what we do with the thoughts.

Acknowledge the thoughts and feelings, the resistance and discomfort, and let them sit next to you. Look at where they’re coming from, hear them and talk with them…

So this is what I said to myself when the stressy thoughts and feelings were popping up:

“I know it feels weird, wrong even, but that’s because it’s new, and the world tells me I’m not supposed to do this. So I get where you’re coming from and it’s okay. 

“This feels uncomfortable but that doesn’t make it wrong. I’m doing this for good reason – I need to and I want to – and I think you thoughts shouting at me is kinda proving the point that I’m on the right track, strange though it seems. 

“So let’s just keep going like this for a while and see what happens, okay?”

And I did use that tone voice, I didn’t want to get frustrated or shame this fearful part of me that was stressing out because I was doing things differently. I wanted to reassure and tell that part that it’s okay for me to claim time for myself, to make space for my own calm and joy.

Taking care of ourselves, claiming time and space for ourselves, living a calm and joyful life is a radical act. 

Not because it’s wrong in any way but because it goes against so many of the societal messages that we have grown up with and are surrounded by every day.

So when you feel resistance to you practising kindness to yourself, to you making space, claiming the time you want, to you choosing calm and joy over productivity and expectations, know that the resistance is the fear of breaking with the norm and sit gently with it a while.

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Thank you for listening to Pressing Pause, you can find details of what I shared in this episode in the show notes at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast. 

And as I mentioned at the start my course, Spacious – how to have more time, and feel calmer and happier too, is now open for registration. You are going to discover what eats away at your time and how to get it back, what and who your time sucks are and how to deal with them, how to claim the time you need and want, and so much more! So that you can feel more space, peace and ease each day, so that you can feel more connected to the people you really care about, so that you can feel more content and satisfied with how you spend your valuable hours, and so that you can have more time, and feel calmer and happier too.

So go to gabrielletreanor.com/spacious to find out more and join while the  special early bird offer is available until 23 February. The link is in the show notes too.

If you have a question about Spacious or if you want to message me about the podcast feel free to drop me a line at [email protected].

Thanks again for listening, until next time.