One of my early mentors in coaching pointed out that a vast majority of the issues people seek coaching for are due to some form of resistance of what is happening in their lives.
There is a huge amount of pain we cause ourselves simply by pushing back against the reality facing us.
I had a simple and basic but enlightening experience with resistance this evening. I ordered food from a restaurant and signed up for curbside pickup because I had two little ones in the car with me and I didn’t want to have to get out of the car to pick up the food.
When I got to the restaurant, the drop-off took quite a bit longer than I was expecting, and when the employee finally did come out of the store with my food, she didn’t find my car, so I ended up having to go inside to pick up my order anyway.
As I walked back to the car, I felt so annoyed and frustrated and realized that I was causing myself this emotional distress by thinking that that shouldn’t have happened. It did happen, and my annoyance didn’t change the fact that it had happened — it only extended my negative emotions past the time the issue had been resolved.
To help process those negative emotions, I intentionally acknowledged them: I named them (“I feel annoyed, frustrated”), then I went into my body and noticed where those emotions were showing up (a tightness in my chest and shoulders, etc.), and as I was acknowledging and describing these emotions, they faded out and disappeared.
It’s amazing how that works — when we stop resisting (the negative emotions, the realities we face), we allow the experiences to pass and we move through and onward, free from the trailing negativity.
I realize that this was a very simple and basic example, but when we can notice and practice non-resistance in the small things, we can get better at allowing the bigger things in life to be what they are and thereby take back control over our own emotions. It’s excellent practice, and an important step towards finding and creating peace for ourselves.
Love,
Bethany