I’m not someone who tends to write about the steps you need to take to overcome something, or fix something, and today I want to talk about something Alison Armstrong shared that landed and resonated deeply. And it’s directly connected to our willingness to let ourselves grow, stretch, and ultimately thrive… So, I hope you will indulge me in sharing with you what you could do if you are currently feeling overwhelmed.
I’ve spent the past seven months or so in conversations with so many different women about their current level of thriving, aliveness, and how much they are taking up space in their own lives. I have seen a few brave women reach the point where they are no longer willing to struggle, and they are willing to consider that there must be another way. They are saying yes to thriving.
I have also seen several women retreat in fear, and feeling too unsure or scared to step into thriving for themselves. And I have so much compassion for this, because I have been there so many times over the past eight years. I have shared this often with my clients, that so much of what I have created in the past eight years, I have created with resistance and fear. In fact, I don’t think that we are ever fearless when we choose to play a bigger game.
Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s fear walking. It’s the willingness to feel the fear, to let it be there, and not let it be the reason I don’t go after what I want. Courage is the willingness to tell the truth about what’s really going on, and to be willing to meet myself exactly where I am, and start from there. You can only ever start where you are, and where you are is just perfect. It’s where you need to be right now – even if where you are is drowning / suffering / struggling.
I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had over the past seven months with women who feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of what they are holding, and who are so afraid that leaning into thriving would mean that they would have to take on even more. First, I want to say that that is simply not true. Thriving is not about doing more. It’s about putting down that which doesn’t need to be carried to make space for you to be more alive and present in your life right now. And here is where I think that what Alison Armstrong said might be valuable…
Whenever you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things on your plate, or by what you are learning, or by what you are wanting to create that feels out of reach, there are three important sequential steps to take…
Step 1: Breathe. Take a deep breath. And then another. And take at least three, or as many as you need to bring your nervous system back into a regulated state. See, slow deep breaths, helps us regulate when we are moving outside of our window of tolerance. It sounds so simple, and yet, how often do you pause to simply breathe?
Every time one of my clients comes onto a call hurried / stressed / flustered or in some state of urgency or emergency, we pause everything and we breathe. Pausing to take a breath, has helped me stop myself from spiralling in moments where I was at the edge of what I thought I could handle. It has helped me come back into my body, and respond from presence, rather than from activation.
Breathing has helped me slow down, and take stock. It has helped me reconnect with myself, with my wisdom. And as I have shared with you in my last piece, it has helped me release trauma my body had been holding on to, and reconnect with myself in ways that I had believed I would never be able to do.
Step 2: Stick out your stomach. Alison means this literally. She says that when we are tense or stressed, our Inner Perfectionist has us suck in our stomachs, and we lose the connection with our core. Now, for me personally, I don’t know if I have paid enough attention to whether I am sucking in my stomach or not, but I do know that when my Inner Perfectionist is online, I become tense, and I lose access to my Inner Wisdom.
Over the years, when I have inevitably fallen into a spiral of self-doubt and self-attack, my coach would point out to me that I have forgotten who I am. And that would bring me back to my intention for who I wanted to be or how I wanted to show up in that moment.
[As a side note, I actually found it incredibly valuable to create a living document for who I am, and I refer back to it as much or as often as I need to remind myself of my authentic purpose and intention. This is something that the women who participate in THRIVE will also get to do for themselves.]
Coming back to who I am and what I’m committed to, has helped me regulate back to my Wiser Self, and not let the Perfectionist take over and run my life.
Step 3: Take ten. Take ten years to implement everything you’ve learnt. So often, when we are in the deep work of healing, growing, learning, or unlearning, we can put tremendous pressure on ourselves to fix everything and fix it yesterday. This is where our Inner Perfectionist can wreak havoc with our ability to thrive where we are right now.
So, I love this advice from Alison to take ten. Give yourself at least ten years to implement all the things you are learning to grow and thrive. If you keep in mind that you are not broken, and that there is nothing to fix, then it becomes so much easier to simply let yourself have your experience, and to allow the seeds of new learning to germinate.
What if you don’t need to work so hard? What if you don’t have to push for perfection? What if even small actions can make a huge difference? In my experience, this is the real journey of transformation – small consistent actions that end up transforming your life.
Alison states that “small, intentional actions are radio-active”. In other words, they will spread into other areas of your life, and they will reshape your life from the inside out, and it doesn’t require herculean efforts from you. It simply requires a willingness to be in the discovery of what might be possible, the courage to be honest with yourself, and the fierce courage to take small, intentional actions that change the end destination, even when you feel resistant.
A ship can end up at a completely different destination by making a small change in direction of just a few degrees. This concept illustrates how minute, consistent adjustments — whether in navigation or daily life — create huge, long-term impacts.
Direction matters more than effort. If you think of thriving as a continuum with drowning / suffering on one end of the spectrum, and thriving / fully alive on the other end of the spectrum, it doesn’t matter as much where on the spectrum you are. What matters more is which direction you are facing. Facing in the direction of thriving, will over time, get you to that destination.
Adjusting a ship’s course by just one or two degrees at the start of a voyage can result in it arriving hundreds of kilometers, or even thousands of kilometers, away from its original destination. What if you could start exactly where you are, and end up somewhere that is profoundly different, and profoundly more liberating, and you don’t have to do it all in the next week?
The women who are participating in THRIVE are all in different stages of thriving. They are not all starting at the same point, and I even though I have no idea where each woman will end up, I do know that it will be remarkably different from where they start. Their commitment to facing in the direction of thriving will shape their experiences and will bring them opportunities to thrive that they cannot even fathom at the start of the journey.
There is one last thing I will say about overwhelm, and that is that overwhelmed means under-resourced. If you are experiencing overwhelm right now, I want to invite you to consider where you in your life you are under-resourced? Where are you not supported? Where are you not held that could make the biggest difference in your level of thriving if you actually experienced yourself being held and supported more?
Asking for, and needing support, is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of courage. It’s a commitment to thriving, instead of merely surviving.