Better Health: Three *More* Ways You're Getting in Your Own Way

In Part 1 of Ways You're Getting In Your Own Way, I talked about the predicament people face in making changes in their lives. They say they feel stuck in life, not moving or committing to anything that seems important to them. I call this: Not Showing Up.

To summarize, Not Showing Up is when you want to do something and you don't do it. Not showing up is a big problem, especially when you really care about what you want to change.

Here are more ways people don't show up.

4. You Think Uncertainty is Dangerous

Change contains uncertainty, uncertainty is scary, and we avoid it like the plague. Our caveman minds have not evolved much from the days on the plains where the threat of lions and tigers existed. So when you're about to do something you've never done before, your mind starts throwing up red flags all over the place. We learned to stay away from unfamiliar places because we didn't know whether there was a threat of lions and tigers.

Now even in our modern world, we fear change and uncertainty. The quest for control and certainty may seem irresistible and compelling at the moment. But over time, it is entirely futile, perpetuates worry, and keeps you stuck. Your current situation may not be great, but it is familiar. People either stay in their rut or retreat back to it with any sign of trouble. Or they leap into discomfort and change, like jumping into frigid waters from a cliff 40 feet high.

I suggest a different path.

If you think about all the significant events in your life, you'll see that they were tough to do, and you will see that there's uncertainty in each of them.

What if the price of possibility is making friends with uncertainty? If you could stop at any moment and choose the path that offers the opportunity of moving forward in your life, or the path of certainty that loops you right back to where you are now, which would you choose? In choosing uncertainty, you might go places unknown to you, but it's the only path that may get you unstuck from where you are now.

5. You’re Ignoring the Roses

You've heard the saying, "stop and smell the roses." It's a popular phrase and often used for someone too busy to enjoy life. But how do we do that in real life?

The other day I was walking across a pedestrian bridge at the beautiful Lake Union Park here in Seattle. It was a cold and rainy day, and the wood planks across the bridge were slippery. A woman, probably 30ish, with a large tote bag, was walking at a swift pace in front of me. She was talking on her cell phone and trying to light a cigarette simultaneously. She took one step on that wet bridge, and her feet came right out from under her. Quicker than you can say, "plop," she was on her ass. She lost her cigarette, her cell phone almost landed in the lake, and half the length of the right side of her body got drenched. That poor woman was just trying to do too many things at one time.

Okay, so doing too many things won't generally cause bodily harm, like in the case of cigarette girl. But we miss something when we move too quickly. We don't see important things because we look from a particular vantage point.

Do you ever find yourself totally lost in thought so that you lose track of time? An excellent example of this is when you drive to work and don't even remember how you got there. You might be thinking about the past ("That dinner party last night was so uptight!") or the future ("I hope I get that project finished today."). When on autopilot, you miss out on the beauty that life has to offer in the present moment.

You may be so focused on chasing happiness in the future that you miss opportunities to experience joy in the present. In this case, you stay in a constant state of searching: "If only I could find a better moment, then I could really be in it." Our beliefs about what our lives are supposed to look like keep us in a constant state of rejecting what is happening now.

We also believe that the thoughts, feelings, and body sensations we are experiencing are somehow dangerous. When we feel something unpleasant we tend to think that we are the unpleasant state. (I feel bad; therefore, I AM bad). This is a threat to how we want to see ourselves, so we avoid it at all costs.

Instead, simply notice what's going on around you. Stop trying to do too much. Stop searching for something different. Just be in the now, and you will discover something incredible: Yourself.

6. You See Unpleasant Situations as Obstacles

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my mom taught me how to shuffle playing cards. I had learned how to do the basic shuffle, but I wanted to know how to do the bridge riffle - that thing where you flip the cards back the other direction, into an arc, and they fall one-by-one in a perfect pile in your hands. I was very sensitive as a kid and had to do things perfectly the first time. So when I couldn't do the bridge right away, I got extremely discouraged. I remember taking the deck of cards to my bedroom and swearing that I wouldn't come out until I had mastered the bridge shuffle perfectly. I scurried off to my room, crying and resisting help from my poor mom. I sat in my room shuffling for hours. I remember a similar experience when I learned how to swim and ride a bike. My poor parents.

It took a lot of trial and error, but I finally learned the bridge riffle that day. My friends thought I was the shit. Of course, I wanted to play cards all the time to show off my skillzzzzz.

From a young age, I was holding myself to unrealistic standards. For that reason, I hated the process of learning. I wanted to skip over the learning part and just know, and I wanted to skip the journey and get right to the destination.

Recall some things that you do now that were once difficult to do. Like when you learned to read, do arithmetic, drive a car, bake something, or fix something that broke. Consider the steps involved in all those tasks. 

Let's apply this to moments where the discomfort was more emotional. Remember the first time you learned to love, share, care, give, and forgive. Imagine if you had never learned to do these things.

Life is made up of small moments like these. Things you do and want out of life often start as seemingly difficult or impossible tasks. Consider these moments as opportunities to practice letting go of your urge to stop trying or become frustrated with yourself. Instead, open up to difficulty now and then.

Pain is part of living well. When you shut down to pain, you shut down to life. When you Show Up in life, you must open up to pain in all its forms. To have it all, you must be willing to have it all - the good, the bad, and the sometimes ugly. You can embrace the fears and anxieties that have kept you stuck for so long. It's about facing your life - what you care about - while practicing staying with your discomfort just as it is. This is probably the kindest thing you can do for yourself.