I wanted to wake up differently today. I wanted to be energized, refreshed, ready to get on to things.

But that’s not what’s here.

Today is dark inside. Something snide and mean is speaking, dripping little bits of acid on everything.

I’ve been waiting for something to surface.

For days my inner world has been foggy and aimless – with shades of un-named longing at the edges. I could feel an iceberg under the water, it’s tip not breaking the surface yet.

I’m almost relieved it’s finally here, ready to make itself known.

A part of me would like to push it back under, though. But I know that won’t be helpful. I know that all the energy I’ve been missing these last few days has been caught up in managing this lump of inner stuff as it’s been rising into my awareness.

And I’ve done this many, many times before. So I know a few things that make it possible to actually welcome this feeling, like:

• I will not be annihilated by this
• I will be more alive once I’ve been fully present with it
• It has something immensely wise to tell me

So I dive inside.

Breathe. Feel it.

Deeper.

I’m watching the part of me that gets off on the drama of this. I keep it in check.

I know if I really nursed this heavy, dark feeling I could be in a full blown depression within days. Part of me is SO compelled to follow it – I don’t know why.

Oh, wait….

I remember the wisest thing I was ever taught:  the part of me that’s feeling the feeling is CAUSING the feeling.

Riiiiiiiiight.

There it is…..an agenda….right behind the blackness.

I know what this is, now….this is my edge.

The place my ego doesn’t want me to go beyond.

And if it can just get me back into that old familiar sinkhole where I know that nothing is possible and it’s all crap anyway, then I won’t move forward and it won’t be scary.

But there’s a seed of something else here, too. The bitter hopelessness is just a cover.

Underneath is a pure, clear anger.

Aaaaahhhhh. Now feel that!… That’s my antidote to this sad, sinking pessimism.

That’s where all the aliveness has been hiding! It’s explosive. It can move me.

Breathe into it.

This morning’s deep disappointment must have brought this to the surface. A part of me was ready to settle and just go complacently along.

But this other part says – roars – NO!

This part is ready to show me how to be LESS tolerant when it’s right.

This part of me is all for going WAY beyond that edge. Because the stuff I really want is over there. And it’s not time to settle.

I’m always SO relieved once I know what’s really going on in there.

It’s like a bogey man in the closet until I can actually name it.

It’ll take a day or so for me to own and engage this new energy. I’ve learned not to push that part of the resolution. Maybe my body needs to move. This writing has helped…a lot!

I’ll take an action to honour it – to let it know that it’s wise message was felt and heard. And I’ll thank it.

And I’ll breathe with whatever shows up next….I hope.  = >

You might also like these:

1. The Sacred “Rightness” of Exactly Where You Are
2. Learning From Remorse Without Having a Self Pity Festival

Seth Godin just released his new book called Linchpin – Are You Indispensible? and from what I’m hearing it’s  another great offering. And lucky for us, he spends a significant number of pages on the concept of resistance and the lizard brain – what we here at The Heart’s Voice call the “safety brain”, the source of our resistance and defenses.

And suddenly everyone is talking about it! Up until now doing a Google search on the term “resistance” would mostly generate pages only a licensed electrician would understand.

In a recent guest post on Leo Babauta’s  Zen Habits Blog, Seth says this at the very end:

The resistance is powerful, so powerful that all the shortcuts, time savers and focusing tools are powerless in its path. Now you know its name. Now you know how it sneaks in under the radar and sounds quite sensible as it undermines your work and compromises your vision. When the resistance appears, you must call it out. Call it by name. Recognize it for what it is and then defeat it. You will defeat it not by rationalization or even a calm discussion. You will defeat it with single-minded effort, effort so deep and dedicated that it might exhaust you.

So what is it about dealing with resistance that’s so exhausting? And does it have to be this way?

And the answer is – it’s awareness and intention that require so much of our energy when we’re trying to get past our own resistance. And I’m convinced, through my own direct experience and that of others, that any one of us can learn the skills to handle our resistance much more easily!

If you’ve ever done any kind of mindfulness practice – breathing, a mantra, yoga or meditation – you know that it takes energy to watch your thoughts, your state or your body.  And it takes energy to stay awake and to notice when you’ve strayed from being present. And it takes energy to bring yourself back to the practice again.

We can expend a lot of energy just being aware and holding our intention.

And that’s just for 20 or 60 minutes or so. Magnify that by the weeks or months that it might take to complete a project that we’re resisting, and we can see the huge amount of energy that it takes to be present and focused for that long.

Add to that the fact that our resistance is constantly trying to derail us from our goal in order to keep us safe from some imagined danger, and we can see how much energy this takes when we approach it like a battle!

So can we ever really defeat our resistance?

And I would say that the answer is no…and yes.

Bottom line, no one can be alive without their amygdala, or their “lizard brain”. So, no, we never really defeat it entirely. And it’s actually designed to shut off access to our logic and left brain functions in order to take over and get us to safety.

Our brains were perfectly designed so that when a sabre-tooth tiger strolled into our village, we didn’t spend any precious escape time wondering whether to run to the left or right. The adrenaline closes a gate to our logic brain and simply reacts – fight, flight or freeze.

That’s why we call resistance “sneaky” – because it’s designed to act in a way that prevents us from being consciously aware of what it’s doing. And that’s also why we often don’t see what it’s done except through hindsight – our left brain is quite literally disconnected while our safety brain is operating. At least it is until we have some practice.

So what’s the antidote to struggling with resistance?
Awareness.

Conscious awareness is the single only thing that trumps resistance.

It’s entirely possible to be focused on our goal and feel our resistance come up, and notice the adrenaline firing, and notice the biological cascade of symptoms that follows, and feel the emotions and hear the thoughts, all bent on stopping our current course of action….and not react at all.

I know this because I’ve done it. And my clients and many of my friends have done it. And most long time meditators can do it.

And that’s because of awareness.

Think of awareness like a space you’re standing in. And think of your resistance like an agitated squirrel.

When you’re trapped in a 3×3 ft closet with your resistance, it’s pretty hard not to react to it. When we haven’t had a lot of practice developing our awareness and our capacity to not react, our inner space feels pretty tight and it takes enormous energy to stay detached and focused in that tiny space.

Now imagine standing in the center of a football stadium with the same agitated squirrel. You’d be WAY less affected by it. You could easily hold your focus and your intention, stay on a task you were doing, and not be bothered much by it. And it would hardly take you any energy at all.

That’s the power of awareness and that’s when resistance stops being exhausting!

So anything that increases your awareness will decrease the energy it takes to get past your resistance. And there are literally hundreds of ways to increase awareness and, for the first time in history, without needing to spend years in a mystery school, they’re widely available at a bookstore near you!

And I believe there are some really exciting things that become possible when lots of us gain this kind of awareness, and we’ll explore those in the next post.

I’d really love to hear your thoughts, feedback and experience with this idea. Please join the discussion in the comments below.

If you’d like to sign up to get the next installment by email or in a feed reader, you can subscribe. And if you’d like to learn 3 practices that will help you cultivate more awareness and detachment with your own resistance, you can download my free e-book.

You might also like these:

1. When Fear Makes Our World Smaller
2. Why Traditional Coaching is No Match for Resistance
3. Is Being a ‘Visionary’ One of Your Resistance Strategies?

What to do...what to do....

I’m just starting to get into exploring the whole “blogosphere” and finding like minded others to read and hang out with. And I found a gem today that I want to share with you.

Briana at Blisscovery wrote a funny and insightful post about the dialogue she had with a personal trainer trying to pressure her to commit to a contract after a free session, and also about the inner dialogue she had with herself about her right to take her own sweet time.

Take a look here:  I can make broccoli an unhealthy decision.

Then come back and leave me a comment below  and let me know if you enjoyed this.

And if you’re enjoying these posts,  go ahead, treat yourself and subscribe to receive free updates.

You might also like these:

1. If you’re going to fall off the wagon, DECIDE to first
2. All Your Great Evidence is Behind You
3. Come, come again…

Today was a heavy day. And yet it was a really good day and I’m really relieved at the end of it.

You Are Here!

Today I finally made space to just be present with some things that I’ve been trying like crazy NOT to feel. And they were uncomfortable…but, as it turns out, they weren’t nearly as uncomfortable as the frantic state I was in while I was trying to avoid them!

And the thing that made the biggest difference…  today in being able to just sit and breathe and be present and feel them is this:

I finally acknowledged that where I am now is exactly right and this is just where I’m supposed to be.

You see, for weeks now, I’ve been reflecting on and processing some very difficult events that happened in November. And I’ve been saying that I should be “over them” by now – that this moping about is just silly – that it wasn’t even that bad…and on and on.

Yet when I looked at how my life is feeling to me right now, I had to admit to myself that I’m really not coping very well these days.

You can ask my husband! I’ve had a “hair trigger” lately and I seem to be just inches away from anger at any given moment. I get overwhelmed easily and I’m way more exhausted than usual and I seem to need or just want a LOT of sleep.

And when I finally gave myself full permission to be right here, not over it yet at all, it became so very clear that there’s a part of me still feeling really traumatized by these events and needing time and space for healing to occur.

I suddenly had way more compassion for the me that’s been bitchy and angry and exhausted because of a healing process that I was making silly and wrong.

And this opportunity to honour and address what’s real in my heart always feels sacred to me and I find I’m able to rest in it.

Even though feeling this stuff was just a little bit “icky” at first, I’m so relieved to finally be getting what I need, and not pushing myself to be somewhere I’m just not yet.

So today I’d like to offer you the gift of knowing the incredibly perfect and sacred “rightness” of exactly where you are right now.

What’s going on under the surface that you’ve been telling yourself “shouldn’t” be there? Take a moment and breathe with it and give yourself full permission to be right where you are now, whatever that means to you.

And, just for a little while at least, stop pushing yourself to be “farther ahead” or somewhere different and see how delicious this feels.

And then do it some more! = >

You might also like these:

1. Breathing What’s Here
2. All Your Great Evidence is Behind You
3. Where Were You in 1988?

I was driving back to Halifax from Middleton, Nova Scotia the other morning and had a chance to hear Jian Ghomeshi on CBC radio interviewing John Patrick Shanley, the writer of the Pulitzer prize-winning play that was recently made into the movie Doubt.

And he said a brilliant thing : that doubt is the space where another person can touch us.

It’s a place inside where we let up on our need for total conviction and actually allow ourselves to be open and even affected by another person’s thoughts, opinions and emotions on a given topic. Even to the degree where we might actually change our own thoughts and emotions in response to theirs!

This is exactly the kind of dialogue that I’m deeply interested in, both between us and within us as well.

It’s been very interesting to watch myself getting clearer and clearer on what I’m really about just by watching what kind of things are moving me to post and how I respond to them.

And I’ve realized that my most favorite topics of resistance, desire and their alchemical meeting place is really, at its essence, an absolute love of the Dialogue. The place where one side meets the other and they transform each other.

And further still, it’s a love for the Space that makes the Dialogue possible. And this is what John Patrick Shanley is speaking to so beautifully.

He said he wrote the original play at the time when the case for the Iraq war was being made and there was a serious lack of dialogue about the evidence for “weapons of mass destruction”. He said that people would tell him that they believed the wmd’s existed but they couldn’t tell him why and he was even more troubled that the very act of doubt itself was made “unpatriotic” in that climate.

Apparently when an interviewer told Meryl Streep (who plays the main character of the school principal) that he was sure her character was right, she replied “Then we have failed.”

We’re meant NOT to know, because what John Patrick Shanley wants most is for the movie to be “the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one.”

My kind of movie! I haven’t seen it yet but very soon, when I do, I’ll expect to be left wondering, and I hope I can be spacious enough to let someone else’s opinions about it truly touch me.

You might also like these:

1. Beyond Repression – Making Space for Your Irrational Beauty