When was the last time you felt pressure to do something?
There has always been pressure to act, look, feel, and eat a certain way. In the midst of all of this pressure and judgement from others, it can be difficult to hear our own voice.
Sometimes we react to this pressure by deliberately rebelling against it – even when such an act is against our best interest. Often the experience of teenage children trying to find their own way in my experience!
But more often than not, we conform to that feeling of pressure within. Even though in our heart we know we don’t want to, the experience inside is too great to go against. This feeling that is often is born from fear of rejection, abandonment, and safety. All of which can sometimes be wrapped up in a package with a label marked as ‘obligation’.
Add up enough of those choices made from fear in your life, and we often come to a place where we don’t even know what it is we want or who we are… we just know we are far from that place.
When we decide to start to pay attention to what’s going on in our body, we start to notice those moments when we might feel that pressure. Sometimes there isn’t even anybody else present when we notice the pressure. It’s simply our mind telling us a story.
To start the process of freeing yourself from this pressure and ultimately changing your relationship with it, you have to start to notice it.
What’s that feeling feel like in your body when you feel what the brain might label as pressure? What are the thoughts? What are the sensations?
It will be unique to you because of your unique filter. But it’s a feeling that can become your wisdom reminding you that you don’t have to leave yourself in this moment to be loved and safe.
Once you have the awareness, you then need to be willing to not just accept your inner experience, but make space for yourself to decide your actions.
Do you follow the fear and cave in to what others may want of you, or do you sit in that and instead decide to choose yourself. Your values, your path. The path you know is taking you towards the life and health you want?
If you do this, it won’t feel easy. But it will feel true. It will liberate you and massively expand your awareness of the choices you see that are available to you. And every time you choose yourself when you feel pressure to do otherwise, it gets easier and easier, and you take a step closer to yourself.
It’s not about trying to get rid of the feelings of pressure (good luck trying that!), it’s about changing your relationship with it. Seeing that when you decide not to give in or rebel against it, stop fighting, suppressing, or distracting yourself from it, you will open yourself up to understanding it better… and yourself.
No matter what we feel coming up inside of us, we always get to choose what we do with it.
Our job merely is to create the awareness of this truth, then be willing to open ourselves up to it.
Oh, and why I may be focusing on pressure here, this process is the same no matter what the feeling we are confronted with. Cravings, urges, frustration, overwhelm, anger, shame, guilt, sadness, grief… I’m sure I’ve missed some.
So whatever you’re feeling, how could your relationship change to it if you followed this plan?