Forcing or Allowing?
Will you tear the leaves off the bud, and rip the petals open to see the flower hidden inside? Or will you allow the flower to bloom and reveal its inner beauty?
Recently I was busy working - working - working, trying to write up a description for the upcoming Yoga Immersion I’ll be teaching in the spring. I was sitting down to do it. And thinking hard about it while driving carpool and cooking dinner and doing just about everything in my life. The only problem was… it wasn’t coming. The description I was trying to make happen just would not come through. I tried everything to make myself be able to write with creativity and inspiration. And in the process I was over-working, feeling cranky and stuck. What did I have to show for all of the over-work? Nothing.
Then I had a day where I didn’t have time to work on it. I had my personal asana practice in the morning. Then I taught a bunch and I finished my day with an hour long meditation with my teacher. The meditation was nothing special. I didn’t see colors or have any particular revelation of divine light and beauty. No. I just sat quietly for an hour listening to sounds, feeling my breath, and noticing and releasing tension in my face. Just that. It was very simple. And my mind was pretty quiet.
Wouldn’t you know it, on my drive home ALL of the information I’d been trying drag out of my brain started shooting out like water from a fire hose. I literally said outloud to whatever force was at work : “Please SLOW DOWN and let me get home so I can write this down” I ran into my house, grabbed a pen and wrote for 15 minutes straight.
As soon as I let go of trying to make something happen, it happened on its own.
It’s the paradox of forcing or allowing
Say you have a project in mind, and you really want it to happen. But for it to happen you’re going to have to do some work. Maybe a little, maybe a lot of work. You’ve got two ways to go about getting the work done.
The first way is the way most of us try: force it to happen. That means sitting down and getting to work. Hustle when necessary. Nose to the grindstone. Squeeze it to death until it finally gives up and you have the project you were imagining. Usually doing things this way feels like a struggle and like a lot of work. It may feel pretty forceful - like you’re wrestling the life out of the project just to get it to come to you.
The second way is a lot harder for most of us to do: allow it to happen. Allowing is when you know you’ve got a project. It’s floating around in your imagination and you start to give it energy and time, but only when it asks for that energy and time. You start to feel for what wants to happen with the project. You don’t try to push it, but you listen for what it’s trying to tell you. It means taking a lot of breaks and just being at ease through the creative process. Allowing means letting it move on it’s own timetable. Allowing feels like a flower blooming: peaceful and quiet.
For most of us, Allowing feels ridiculous. I was taught to come straight in from school and get to work on homework, not to mess around first and let my brain relax. But it is definitely the messing around and relaxing that actually helps you get into a flowing creative state of mind - one that can help bring projects to life.
It reminds me of something the yoga scholar, Constantina Rhodes, told me: “Don’t micromanage the Shakti” She means: Life force energy (Shakti) is always flowing. And Shakti knows what she’s doing. Our job as yoga practitioners and creators in life is to make space and allow for that flow; not to choke it off because we have a particular timeframe and big ideas about what could happen.
What I know is, the big ideas NEVER come through for me when I try to force them. They only work when I step back and allow them.
The next time you notice yourself working too hard on something, ANYTHING, try taking a step back, letting it go for a while, and allowing it to come to you. If you can truly let it go, I know it will eventually come. Chances are, if you are listening to it and allowing it to unfold as it wants to, the end result will be better than you ever imagined.
Have you had an experience like mine - where you forced and forced with no results, then finally allowed and the results came flying in better than expected? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
Having trouble getting into the allowing state of mind? I totally understand! Let’s set up a coaching call to see what’s keeping you working so hard.