Want More Energy, Clarity and Time?
It’s simple; I got more energy, clarity and time by doing my inner work. While that is a nice neat statement, I can also add that I’m more relaxed, have more perspective, more focus in areas that are important to me, a much better sense of self, my health is better, my body and mind look and feel better and my relationships are better. Honestly, life is just better.
What do I mean by inner work?
Well, I mean that I always felt stressed, tired and unhappy and was always looking to fix the things I blamed — usually circumstances and other people. After years of external change to try and fix how I was feeling inside, I realised it was time to stop running from the heaviness that seemed to lurk there and, instead, shine some light on it.
What has brought this to mind is I’ve been doing some catching up with friends as the year approaches its end, swapping our tales of challenge and triumph for the year. I had been sharing, among other things, the continuing work I’ve been doing rooting out old and unhelpful beliefs, thoughts and behaviours.
One response was “I’m not quite sure I’d want to think of all the crap stuff in the past, I am sure it would be helpful in some ways but in others, I think … just bash on with life. I know I need to chill out a bit and laugh and enjoy life more and will perhaps try and focus on that in 2021”.
That is how I used to feel too, I get it. My life was busy, crazy busy, and hard emotionally, I carried a lot. I felt alternatively like superwoman (I think that was the adrenaline) and anxious and irritable (which was probably the cortisol), and I also felt really weighed down (which, it turns out, was all the unhelpful thoughts and feelings that actually were weighing me down).
I’d sit there at 10pm at night, when my partner would switch off the TV, knowing I really needed to go to bed and get some sleep but simultaneously feeling like I was just being swept away on the tide. Meanwhile it felt like there were better possibilities that existed for my life, but it was as if those were happening somewhere just beyond my reach.
I’d often liken my experience of life (until recent years) to swimming through treacle, but it’s getting better as I wade through all my unhelpful thought and behaviour patterns. I’ve found that “all the crap stuff of the past” is really one big generalized bucket.
There was the first seven years of my life, of which I have little conscious memory, but that is precisely when all the internal wiring occurs, so that is where I’ve been focusing my attention.
It’s fascinating, it turns out my life was basically just a repeat loop of experiences that reflected all these crazy beliefs I had picked up as child, a toddler, a baby, and even in utero — in fact there is also a whole lot of inter-generational and collective trauma in there for good measure. It was all just playing out through more and more exaggerated experiences.
For example, last week I had been away for a few days with the kids while one attended an out-of-town course. When we got back I was busy and, after saying I would make salad for dinner, I then told my partner I was too exhausted and wouldn’t be making one.
His face fell, he was disappointed, but said he’d make it. His facial response had triggered me though; I was irritated and needled him. To give this context, he had also had an extremely busy week so we were both pretty tired and low on energy.
In the (not too distant past) this scenario may have played out with a lot more intensity than it did, given neither of us was in a good place emotionally. Thankfully however, having both done some inner work around conflict, it didn’t get ugly.
That said, I was still aware of an unhelpful belief that was bubbling up within me, the belief that I wasn’t seen. There was a definite voice of a martyr in my head, and what felt like a swelling or stuckness in my throat. I worked through the emotional intensity on a scrap piece of paper “I am angry because…”, “I am disappointed because…” working my way up the emotional scale until I reached a point of clarity and even the silver linings.
This perhaps makes it obvious how I’ve gained more energy, clarity and time.
Previously I’d have gotten really stuck on something like this for a good few days, because it would have seemed so much bigger than it actually was, because of all the deeper (and heavy, negative) meaning attached to it. I’d have jumped from recognizing I was too tired to make a salad to questioning the entire basis of our relationship and a minor blip would have become major battleground.
That takes a lot of headspace, a lot of energy and creates a much muddied view of life.
There are so many ways to tackle this kind of work, and gain insights, and start to lighten the load. I have taken advantage of many free video mini-series that teachers and authors often use to launch online courses, read many books, listened to many practitioners from many walks of life share their insights and experiences engaged with mentors and made use of other help; there is a veritable smorgasbord of tools, practices and people to engage with in whatever way suits the situation at the time.
How did I know where to begin? I just started to tune in to that innate wisdom that lies within. The truth is that there is only one person who knows what is right for me at any particular moment and that is me, I am my own unique cocktail of genes, experiences and much more. But I had to become practiced at observing my thoughts rather than totally identifying with them.
The way I did that was to stop procrastinating about meditation and start doing it. Every day I take fifteen minutes and breathe, letting my thoughts drift away like a cloud each time I notice them. Doing that has not only helped my nervous system enormously, it’s helped me to really get this sense of my inner — more objective — observer and the thoughts and feelings I’m noticing.
That has helped me to develop my innate sense of intuition, which helps me make better decisions about how to tackle things in my life. It’s helped me to connect with the various kinds of help I’ve needed along the way, most of which would have previously just been ignored.
In Judith Fertig’s novel The Taste of Lemon, the main character’s dad has been absent from her life for many years after he couldn’t cope following his time in Vietnam. Finally, after getting the help he needed with his trauma, he remarked “I feel terrible. I know that is how it’s supposed to work. You have to feel worse before you get better.”
It’s so temporary though, feeling worse, it really is fleeting. More than that, it is so much better than the feeling of dread and running away from the things I feared for years, not even thinking about them fears or as anything more than a dense mass of shadows somewhere back over my shoulder.
Psychologists are really changing the way they deal with trauma, whether it’s the more insidious common variety emotional trauma experienced by most people though the early years of attachment and attunement, or more obvious and heart wrenching trauma.
Terry Real has a three-part model for thinking about the psyche that can help clients understand the aftereffects of trauma and relate to other people from their most thoughtful, mature self. He says “Oftentimes, patients reenact past trauma in their current relationships. Not only is this heartbreaking to watch, the patterns are extremely difficult for client to change without awareness”.
In Brittany Watkins work, while centring on comfort eating and dealing with the tap roots of where that unhelpful behaviour begins, she powerfully and relatively easily addresses the emotional signature of those heavy feelings people have been carrying around.
Jimmy Davis, astounded by the far reaching effects of her methods, said Brittany had told him “If you have a computer and it’s slow… Usually, that just means there are lots of programs running in the background. When you get rid of the programs, the computer runs how it was designed to. Humans are the same way. Your brain installs software (belief systems) based on traumatic events that happen when we are younger. Usually, they are not positive, so your subconscious installs these programs to protect you. Once you get rid of those programs, you run how you are supposed to.”
He added “I realized in that moment everything I had tried to fix previously was simply managing symptoms rather than the actual root cause.”
I relate to this, I’ve had this drive to tackle the root cause (or dissolve the treacle, so to speak) as I’m crossing the halfway point of my life and I want my body and brain decluttered. This seems necessary to take on this next part of my life that I want to live from that less encumbered and more authentic perspective.
Anne McNaughton said “There is always the point in any month when you get a chance to exhale, catch your breath and make time to hear yourself think. There is some opposition to this, with life fighting back and (whether real or imagined) a belief that time out to hear yourself think is being lazy or unproductive. However there couldn’t be a more productive use of your time.”
With the end of the year and perhaps some downtime in sight, perhaps it’s time to hear yourself think and start becoming aware of some of those unhelpful patterns in your life so that you can gain more energy, clarity and time?
