Arguing with what is
TL;DR
Acknowledging the things we can't control can be emotional.
But feeling those feelings is sometimes the only way to start tackling the things we CAN control.
I'm excited to turn this and next week's Words of Wisdom posts over to our amazing coach, Liza Dickinson. Liza has some great insight into something that I think many of you will find very resonant.
Take it away, Liza!
My family has had a hard few years, with the end of ‘22, beginning of ‘23 marking a particularly rough patch. It has been hard in many of the ways that the last few years have been difficult for families with children.
A fact which offers some solace, but does not change the fact that it has, in fact, been hard.
So when I sat down to do my Monthly Meeting as the dust (literally) settled from our 3rd move in less than 3 years with 2 young children, I knew I was exhausted. I knew that for months, I had been sick with one nasty cold after another. I knew I was going to have to adjust my Path.
I had started the year with what felt like fairly restrained, reasonable goals for both my professional and personal tracks. It was clear, though, sitting in the chaos of half empty moving boxes, that I was going to need to scale back my month even further. I started by trimming a little here, pulling back a little there.
But no matter how I nudged and tweaked, I could not find the “E” in SMARTE. Nothing felt “exciting.”
Finally, kicking and screaming, I had to acknowledge that my upcoming month was actually going to have to be about something totally different — I needed to press “PAUSE” on most of my tracks and instead care for myself and refill my tank in a serious, focused way. Simply cutting back on coaching hours or how many times I did PT or, or, or…wasn’t enough — I needed to refocus until my body was physically capable of building towards my year goals.
I needed to actually rest.
Acknowledging this…sucked. It brought up all of the feelings of grief and frustration over all of the many uncontrollable life factors that had left their sticky handprints all over my and my family’s lives. That made it not possible for me to accomplish the goals I wanted to in the time I wanted to.
I finally admitted I was in that state a toddler reaches at a family holiday at about 9pm — that no-mans-land where exhaustion blurs into deep, illogical, existential sadness and they dissolve into an inconsolable puddle, wailing “I am NOT tiiiiirrrreeeeddd!!!”
And like that toddler, I gave into the hot, incoherent tears I had been unconsciously holding back. I allowed that grief and frustration and helplessness and exhaustion to move through and out in the form of a good old ugly cry.
This was not fun or easy, but it did bring a kind of relief. And it brought clarity, and oddly enough, energy.
A staple question in the coaching room (that Betsy emphasizes in the Path course!) asks you to identify what you can and can’t control, then focus on the things you can.
Very often, this immediately brings great relief, clarity, and can quickly save you a WHOLE LOT of energy.
Sometimes, though, I find myself or my clients falling into the trap of what I call “arguing with what is” (a phrase I likely stole from a meditation teacher). It is the moment when you want to stamp your feet and flat out deny that you cannot, in fact, muscle reality into the order you want.
We’ve all done it in obvious or subtle ways. And this (I realized in hindsight) is exactly what I was doing as I fought the fact of how tired I was and that my own care needed to be my focus if I wanted to be able to pursue my loftier goals.
Often the reason we resist acknowledging and accepting what we can’t control is because there are a whole lot of FEELINGS about all those things you can’t control. Because of this, I’ve realized that there is actually sometimes a sneaky third step to the process of:
1) Identify/clarify what you can and can’t control
2) Focus on what you can
And that is:
1) Identify what you can and can’t control
1.5) Throw a temper tantrum/grieve/FEEL THE FEELINGS
2) Focus on what you can control
This is important, because if you have “big feelings” (as I refer to them with my 6 & 3 years olds) about the fact of needing to adjust, but don’t acknowledge or release them, it’s not as though they disappear. Instead, they become internal friction in your efforts to “focus on what you can control.”
They become the whiny 5 year old in your head, dragging their feet and saying “I doooon’t waaaaaannnaaaaaa!!!”
Instead, if you take a moment to let the feelings move through you, you can let them go.
(This is a subtle and IMPORTANT distinction – I am NOT suggesting you sit or get stuck in these feelings, or feed a thought/story pattern that keeps adding fuel to the flame.)
But that is plenty to digest for today…Next week, though, I will walk you through a practice of actively noticing, feeling, and releasing those “big feelings” that can get you stuck if you pretend they don’t exist.
For now, I’d love to hear about your experiences of “Arguing With What Is!” What have been some of the most challenging events/obstacles/uncontrollable life forces you’ve had to accept? How have you found a way to accept them? What has happened when you did?