It Is What It Is! Is That All There Is?

What if this is “it”? What is the “it”? Do you want to move beyond “it”? Can you move beyond “it”?

What I have learned from my clients and my own development and training is that “it” can have such power over us that we just don’t see a way out. It’s almost easier to give up than to keep on trying for a “better life”.

It seems as though the “it” is the status quo. As Thoreau warns us, “The mass of men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called ‘resignation’ is confirmed desperation.”

What are our options then? Give up or change? Ah, but change takes effort!

Okay, I wanted “it” to be a certain way by the time I reached my 60’s…but it’s not!

How can I come to terms with “it”, so I can feel some Ease and Comfort and then…maybe move on?

In my coaching training, I was taught that “You cannot move a client from A to B until the client feels heard and seen at A.”

This is the most important part of coaching…and a wonderful skill in relationships – to support clients and friends to feel heard and seen in their situations. That way, people can shift their perspective so that they are looking at their lives and seeing the possibilities available.

When we are stuck in our limiting beliefs, we just don’t see a way out.

And thinking about it often keeps us more stuck.

In the Twelve Steps programs, we are reminded by Bill W. (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), “You cannot think your way into a new way of acting, you have to act your way into a new way of thinking.”

How do we act our way into a new way of thinking?

Doing mental exercises works for some. It didn’t work for me. I just got more confused and felt as if I were gaslighting my Self. “If I feel unhappy, I’m unhappy…so there!” I cannot think my Self into feeling happy; I have to feel my way into a new way of being. Here is where Somatic awareness works better for me than mental gymnastics.

Fighting, struggling, resenting where we are in life leaves little room for movement. Often, we don’t even know that we are resisting. We have such grip, and we identify with what is, that we cannot see that we’re holding on to something that’s no longer working.

We just say, “I feel stuck”, “I just don’t seem to get it done”, and other rationalizations for our behavior. They sound logical to us. That way, we do not have to peel off another layer of our protective shield, our defenses for staying the same.

Protective shield?? What do you mean?

Every time we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them. And often, it may not feel good, but it’s more comfortable to stick with what we know than to move out of our “conditioned prison” and face the unknown.

When my husband died, I hung on to my identity being Bob’s wife for the first two to three years. Then, I just had to give it up and own the fact that I was now alone! I was Eva, and nothing else. I felt so scared, unprotected, lonely, without my rock, my husband, my protection.

Before Somatic awareness became an integral part of my life, it was very hard to change how I felt about my Self. Feeling “right” about my identity gave me a bizarre sense of being safe. See, if I’m right, I’m safe. It had become more important to be right than to be happy.

As the famous quote from Elizabeth Appell (also known as Lassie Benton) says, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

I don’t know that I have yet totally opened up to all the possibilities in my life. However, I am not tight in a bud anymore. With lots of Somatic sessions, and being seen and heard in my pain, I do feel movement in my day. I’m slowly getting from A to B. And…I’m becoming used to being alone with Eva….and feeling good about it.

What does blossoming mean to you?

What is it that you suspect, maybe even know, that you need to do to feel better? And instead, you let another day go by just the same. Can you feel the discomfort from remaining tight in the bud?

How much more can we take before we burst out and say, “I want to be free! To Be Me!” How can we find the courage to blossom?

Remember…Freedom Is Only a Breath Away!

Baby steps. Let’s start with baby steps.

Many theories exist for how to find courage. My experience, and the experience of many of my clients, has been that we have set these goals…lofty goals, so big that they feel overwhelming. We don’t even know where to start.

How about making it easier to move from A to B? How about smaller increments? How about starting with Self-care, Self-acceptance, Self-love? I know: It doesn’t sound productive, but it seems to be a gentler and more successful way to find the path from A to B.

Well, here’s the thing: When we feel unhappy, sad, or resentful over what life has given us, and/or depressed over where we are in life, we have very little energy left to use as fuel to move on.

Within all these feelings and sensations is the lingering resistance to “what is”. And that resistance costs an enormous amount of energy.

If we really resist our day (meaning, if we mentally struggle with accepting “what is”), we have to start looking at how much energy we are using up NOT to feel our emotions around our issues.

What we resist persists! When we do not allow our emotions, and instead avoid feeling them, we are leaking energy and sinking back into our silent desperation. We may not realize that we are not allowing our feelings to surface.

Instead of resisting, we need to dive into the sensations, and feeeeeeel them.

When we do this, we experience a physical sensation that dissolves the “stuckness”. Our perspective shifts, and we see possibilities.

We can liken it to holding a beachball under water. Imagine the energy we exert to make sure we keep the beach ball submerged. When we use the same metaphor for mentally holding our thoughts and Somatic pain "submerged" below our consciousness, we can see how this is mentally and emotionally exhausting. And by the end of the day, we are spent…without having done much.

Sometimes, to avoid the “what is”, we just decide not to think about it.

We make sure the brain is occupied with other busywork such as scrolling, drinking, and other habits. After all, the brain is always looking for something to keep it occupied. It’s up to us to decide what we want to feed it – something new and interesting, and inspirational, or the same old habitual thinking.

It can feel really heavy to shift our body-mind in a new direction. It becomes a mental war, and often we surrender to the brain’s autopilot and just give up. Any change in our behavior will feel uncomfortable, so it’s tempting to just “rest on our laurels” and sink into the familiar “what is”.

Well, that’s okay. Who’s to judge how you choose to live your life? But, maybe, like me, you want to leave the old “it” behind. Maybe, you want to move on from “what is”. Maybe you want to allow that beach ball to come to the surface, expose "what is", and float away. What's left is an open space with fresh breathing room for creating new thoughts and habits. It's Freedom! 

“It is what it is!” Really? You and I know it’s not!

If you are interested in learning more about the BEAM process, contact me on my website at www.evaangvert.com or email me at [email protected]