3 Things I Simply Refuse to Do Anymore
This post is an homage to three tired, unhelpful habits that have been eradicated from my life over the past couple of years.
Here’s some not-so-sexy backstory:
Midway through 2019 I fell into a deep, ugly, unexpected, DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL.
As a result, roughly fourteen different wake-up calls erupted all over my life.
I’ll be sharing more about that period of rapid transformation and brutal surrender in a new podcast project I’m cooking up, but in the meantime I wanted to share some of the palpable patterns that have radically shifted for me as a result of said DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL.
I also want to add that at no point in time did I try to stop doing these things.
It’s more that they fell away and died as a result of me focusing my attention on other changes that needed to be made.
(Which, by the by, is always my favorite kind of transformation -- the rooted, authentic, byproduct-y kind.)
Here are three things I simply cannot, do not, and will not do anymore:
Rush
Years ago I had a boyfriend who was always astonished (and annoyed...) by my haphazard morning routine.
I would snooze my alarm for upwards of an hour, and then bolt out of bed like a drunk Jack-in-the-box, rushing around to get ready for work in fifteen minutes, leaving no time to eat breakfast or look even halfway presentable.
“Wouldn’t you rather wake up early and enjoy your morning, instead of starting the day already feeling behind?” he would ask in earnest.
“Nah; I like sleeping and can just do my hair and make-up on the subway, like any other normal New Yorker,” I sluggishly retorted as I rolled over to hit “snooze” one more time...
It would have been more accurate to respond with the following:
“Of course I’d rather do that, but my system is clearly addicted to a state of constant stress and dysregulation that keeps me hyper-aroused, anxious, and exhausted. A leisurely morning feels way outside the bounds of what I’m familiar with or accustomed to, and also doesn’t fit my scattered, stressed, frazzled identity. So I will perpetuate this pattern of last-minute-living until I someday have enough awareness and resolve to make the necessary adjustments. Thanks though!”
FOLKS -- I now have enough awareness and resolve to have made the necessary adjustments.
And I don’t rush anymore...for anyone. Or anything. At all.
This often means I have to get up earlier, leave the house more than on time, and pad in extra minutes for travel, traffic jams, and general life surprises.
This also means that I no longer say “yes” to a lot of things that will wind up making me feel time-crunched or spread too thin.
Nor do I trouble myself with inane goals like “inbox zero”, or making sure I respond to everything or everyone that wants my attention at any given hour of the day.
It does not matter.
I’ll hit “decline” and lower everyone’s expectations and pad extra time in all the live-long day.
Because I refuse to feel or be rushed.
I am cultivating an incredibly leisurely life. Choice by choice, one slow moment at a time.
This is sadly counter-cultural in a world that thrives on “busy” and rewards hyper-productivity.
This “I don’t rush” proclamation also (very likely) feels like a personal affront to people who believe rushing around is “just how life is” or “impossible to avoid”.
It’s also probably frustrating to those who are allegiant to an environment or community where being stressed, burnt out, and overwhelmed is the norm — and even rewarded.
I felt that way for years (I lived in New York City for nearly a decade, after all), and totally fell into the various “gotta grind” traps.
The difference is that now, my system has practically zero tolerance for the external (and sometimes internal) pressures that suggest running through life like a chicken with my head cut off is any way to live.
When I rush, I lose my sense of what’s actually important.
I get caught up in what other people expect of me, or what they must be thinking about me.
I forget to eat. I forget to drink water. I forget to stretch and move and breathe deeply.
I do not stop to notice beautiful things throughout my day.
I make fast decisions that aren’t aligned with what I truly want, or the direction I know I want to move in.
When I’m moving too fast and feeling frazzled, I can’t hear my Soul speaking to me. My shoulders get tense. My stomach gets anxious. My mind is buzzing, tired, and loud all at once. And I end my day in a hazy stupor, unsure of how I just spent the last eight hours...
As soon as I start to experience “feeling rushed”, I know that it’s actually an indicator to slow way, way down. To breathe a little deeper. To step back and assess why I feel the need to move fast? What am I trying to prove in that moment? And to whom? Is there a different, gentler path forward?
These days, I’m much more interested in moving through the world like a turtle, versus keeping up with a pack of frenzied racehorses.
I’ve removed “busy” as a badge of honor, and instead enjoy luxuriating in quiet mornings and pausing for mid-day slow-downs. (Getting to bed early helps too.)
In short: If rushing is what we think it takes to be successful, effective, and pleasing to others then I am perfectly content to be an unsuccessful, useless, displeasing sloth.
2. Fake it
During that dark-night-of-the-soul period I mentioned at the start of this post, I experienced a very uncomfortable awakening...
In certain areas of life, I was a big fat faker.
It played out like this:
Friends or family would ask how I was doing, and I would instinctively respond with some version of, “Oh y’know, same as ever! Good! Can’t complain.”
I would prattle this off even if I was anything but “same”, “good”, or complaint-free.
I just reeeeally didn’t want to let people into my pain.
I’ll be going in-depth into all this secret pain (whoa -- so mysterious-sounding) in the new podcast, but in short:
I REALLY DID NOT TRUST ANYONE TO HOLD SPACE FOR ME, OR LOVE ME IN MY UNCOMFORTABLE UGLY HUMAN VULNERABILITIES.
I was also very ashamed of the fact that I was struggling at all.
Uncovering this pattern was honestly very strange, because historically I’ve always existed on the more open-hearted, spill-your-guts, oversharing end of the spectrum.
But “faking it” and stuffing down my feelings was something I accidentally fell into after becoming a coach in 2014.
In my busiest seasons of work I would have upwards of 20-30 coaching sessions a week, all of which required me to turn my feelings and experience off, so I could show up fully and stay present for my clients.
And at some point, this “off” switch became an auto-pilot feature for the rest of my life...
I stopped sharing what was going on with me, or how I was really feeling a lot of the time.
I showed up to lunch with friends, dinner with family, or a steamy date night with a focus on the other person and how they were doing and how can I help?
I also felt a distinct pressure to have all of my shit together all of the time, because how could I assist another person if I was in the midst of my own messy humanness??
I stopped being a full human, and became a way-over-full-time coach.
This habit gained even more traction during a time where I was getting pretty much everything I ever wanted, achieving success and financial freedom, and I felt like I should just be really happy and grateful all the time.
Admitting that I was struggling or complaining about anything I was going through felt insensitive and unfair. Better to keep all my insecurities, vulnerabilities, and messiness locked away and out of sight. At least until I could figure everything out and get all my ducks in a row and be “perfect”, y’know? (As if that’s a thing that can ever actually happen!)
All of this resulted in a very lonely, sad, isolating experience.
Especially for individuals in helping or healing professions, I’ve discovered that this is a slippery slope to slide into -- feeling like it’s your job to take care of everyone, even when you’re off the clock.
And as someone operating from a traditionally codependent blueprint, this “I have to be fine and okay so I can show up for everyone else,” mentality was a familiar, unconscious dynamic for me to start acting out all over the place (without even realizing it).
I had to re-learn how to stop pretending I was fine when I really wasn’t, to admit when and where I was hurting, and let down the walls that I didn’t even realize were there.
It was extremely uncomfortable.
Like I said, I’ll be sharing more about this realization and the subsequent changes I had to make when I launch my new podcast project in the coming months.
For now, I’ll just say that putting your humanity aside for any reason is not a long-term strategy for prosperity. Who woulda thunk, right? Lolz.
3. Obligation
Okay so this is one of those:
“WOW I had to learn this the really fucking hard way, and it took me so long to finally see it clearly, and Jesus Christo if I can assist even one human from avoiding the excruciating pitfalls that come with subscribing to a life of OBLIGATION then I will go to my grave rallying against that bulllllshittttt.”
To put it bluntly: Obligation is a poison.
Consistently forcing yourself to do something, anything, if it’s misaligned with your values, contrary to your true desires, and/or in opposition to your highest good (simply because you feel like you “have to” do it) is a long-term recipe for all-around disaster.
For a long time I prided myself on my ability to power through things and keep every single commitment I made, no exceptions.
I was CAPTAIN MEETS-EXPECTATIONS-AND-ALWAYS-FOLLOWS-THROUGH. I was a gold-start employee and good little girl who knew the assignment.
I had “grit”, as they say. I could fake-it-til-you-make-it and phone-it-in with the best of them.
I thought doing so made me a good, reliable, valuable person.
In reality, it just made me an exhausted, resentful, liar.
I would perpetuate and nurture long-expired friendships and dysfunctional relationship dynamics simply because I felt like I had no choice. (And honestly, I was too chicken-shit to admit that nope, I don’t wanna do this anymore.)
I would persist with projects that felt “off”, and try to keep up with commitments despite it feeling like a slogging, uphill battle. (It was just a slogging, uphill battle I had gotten used to, so it felt sadly “normal” to be drained, frustrated, and at my wit’s end much of the time.)
I worshipped at the Church of Obligation, to the detriment of my own health and sanity.
Ultimately, I had to uncork all my bottled up resentment and faulty decision-making and admit:
Nope. I don’t wanna go to that thing. Or take that meeting. Or hit that deadline.
I can’t continue to nurse this threadbare connection at the cost of my personal peace.
Nope, nope, nope. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Lots of hard conversations. Because acting out of obligation was no longer an option.
I cannot stress this hard-learned sentiment enough: Your life-force is yours and no one else’s.
And if you feel obligated to show up for people or things that are compromising your well-being or depleting the fuck outta you, for any reason, I invite you to question what the effing eff is going on there.
Where did you learn that?
Who modeled this practice for you?
And what is life going to look like in the next five, ten, or twenty years if you keep that shit up?
When something becomes intolerable or stops feeling true to nurture and pursue -- I have learned to PAY ATTENTION TO THAT.
I’ve learned to slow down. Go inward. And make moves from a space of deep truth and knowing, versus being pulled around by external expectations.
Which, to be 100% clear, is not a popular decision to begin enacting in your life…
Our world runs on individuals who are willing to be manipulated by pressures of obligation and submit to the lie of “you have to”, in order to maintain the status quo.
I’m here for the women who have had enough.
Because I’ve learned from my personal experience that none of these unhelpful habits and patterns are particularly “popular” to reject and shed.
In choosing to slow down…
In refusing to fake it any longer…
In breaking up with obligation and have-to’s…
I’ve disappointed people, lost friends, had my heart broken, had strangers get angry with me, and seen loved ones try to manipulate me in creative, backwards ways.
I’ve said no to shiny opportunities, and big pay-days, and comfort zones, and an entire life I had built that no longer made sense for me.
None of it has been particularly fun or easy.
BUT GAHT DAMMIT. As a result?
I’VE NEVER BEEN MORE FULLY FUCKING ALIVE.
My life looks nothing like I ever thought it would. (And, as these things tend to go, it’s better than I ever could have predicted or imagined.)
But I had to be willing to shed a lot of who I thought I was “supposed to be”, and what I thought I “should be doing”, to uncover the freedom and power I get to experience now.
If you are in a process of shedding painful patterns in pursuit of freedom and power (and Soul-level alignment with that which is truly meant for you)…
I’m leading a live call in a few weeks on exactly that process.
It’s brand new magic and it’s gonna be spicy. And so fun. And it’ll blast some shit wide open for those in attendance.
This is a TRANSFORMATIONAL TRAINING -- meaning it’s designed to facilitate big shifts, just from being on the call.
This is an early invitation (we’re just opening up pre-registration!) but if you feel the pull?
I trust that THIS IS FOR YOU.
Click here to join me on Wednesday, October 20th.
I would truly love to see you there. And I am loving the conversations that are getting started from you being here.
If these themes are resonating — operating from you truth, landing back in you body and being guided by her wisdom, and doing life exquisitely on your terms — then please let me know in the comments!
And join BAD X WOMAN with me in a few weeks. It’s my first live call since May!
I’m excited to share more, and to visit new depths with you.
This is only the beginning…