August 13th, 2010
Why Letting Go Can Be The Best Way To Get Exactly What You Want
Sometimes I have a near out of body experience when I notice how hard I push everything in my life. I take chances daily, dive into challenging projects, trying to find new things to create, and I am always pushing pushing pushing to live my life to the absolute fullest. Most of the time this gets whatever I need done. But sometimes it feels like no matter what angle I push from to achieve x THING, it backfires or simply doesn’t work out.
Since I’m probably talking in circles here, let me stop and give you a few personal examples that came up recently:
1. My daughter is 2 1/2…About 2 months ago, I started letting her run around with her diaper off in the mornings to see if she’d start using her potty chair. Not a chance. She’d hold it until I put the diaper back on. Today, after I’d pretty much given up, left her alone on the commando front for a few weeks, she asked to go potty and then proceeded to sit on it and simply went.
*I know this depended on her readiness for the toilet, but the point is that prior to my letting go I was pushing her (pushing gently, but pushing nonetheless).
2. Another area this happens is with my pilates business. My client load fluctuates so much that it’s sometimes very frustrating to plan anything. So, during the town periods, I push and push to find new ways of connecting with new clients. Wanna know what my best client-getting strategy has been? Letting go and NOT pushing! The second I say, well, people are seeing my site, they know me, they can find me. I’m not going to be the desperate girl looking for a date. I simply refocus myself on the other projects I work on regularly and new people come to me naturally….and they are usually people that turn into long term students & friends.
3. Same thing happens sometimes when I try to monitor every single food/drink that I consume for long periods of time. When I first started changing some unhealthy eating habits, this method really helped me a lot. But at some point, writing everything down was actually driving me insane…and I think I’d eat bad things just so I could rebel and NOT list them! When I relaxed a bit and stopped journalling for awhile, my eating habits went back to my clean, healthy ways.
I am a firm believer that to start most any project or process you do need to push a bit and I even wrote in a recent newsletter how to lean into it and get some momentum. But at some point this initial push may feel like pressure and its effectiveness is going to change for you.
I highly recommend taking a look at the areas of your life where you push a lot. If you aren’t getting the results you want that way, simply stop pushing. Let go and say to yourself, if that opportunity is coming to me, it will. Or…I can trust myself to make some food choices without having to stick them all on a piece of paper. Or…I can get that promotion without bugging HR and my supervisor.
I’d love to hear from you. Where do you push in your life? What pushes work and what pushes DON’T work? Be honest with yourself. The answer isn’t the same for everyone and doesn’t look the same for anyone.
And remember, if after you stop pushing you still don’t feel like you’re making headway to reach your desired outcome, you can always choose to start actively pushing it again from right where you are now.
But, give yourself a break once in awhile. You probably need it more than you realize.
I totally get this. I was recently having issues with my blog – I felt really pressured to write posts, and would get writers block, get frustrated, and it was a bad experience all around. So I quit for a while and after a month or so, took a day to really think hard about what I wanted my blog to be, where I wanted it to go, how I could make coming up with new posts last, and how to tie it in with my Etsy shop and all the other brilliant ideas I’m going to get to someday.
I finally decided on something, which felt great, and started planning out the first couple months of posts. I write the posts a month or 2 in advance, which lets me work on whatever post I feel like, so there’s less pressure, and thus it’s more enjoyable. I actually want to work on my blog now. I also redesigned my blog look to go with the new ideas. I’m pumped 🙂
This is such a great transformation – thanks for sharing. I did something similar when I started to write my posts in chunks… and not the day before or the day of. I like letting them marinate now and I go back to them and clean them up, but now the process feels less forced for me. BTW – just looked at your site and I love it!! It’s simple – easy to read – easy to navigate… which spells all good things for you! Thanks for commenting. Looking forward to getting to know ya!
Thanks! My graphic design degree helps on that front. I like the simplicity of your site too, and I look forward to getting to know you too! 🙂