Have you noticed how there’s a natural tension between the different roles you play in your life?
How many women struggle to be a wonderful homemaker and business person, a caring daughter as well as a traveller of the world? How many men feel they need to be the good provider yet dream of a life adventure that takes them far from the responsibilities of home or a secure job?
Playing many different roles simultaneously on the world’s stage can lead to overwhelm. You can be left wondering who you are to the point of freezing in your tracks, putting your life on hold and doing nothing – until you have the money, your children are grown up; your elderly parents no longer need you. The problem with this approach is that we have one life and no second chances. Months of stretching in different directions turn to years, turn to decades.
Start from a simpler place
The only sane way forward is to stop battling and accept reality, by acknowledging the tensions each role brings. Stop ‘trying’ to perfect each one simultaneously; there can be no perfect balance between all these roles at the same time; the peace comes from a deeper place within yourself.
If we’re aiming to raise the ‘success’ bar all the time, going for bigger and bigger challenges that are potentially exhausting, it’s worth starting from a simple place of acceptance and contentment, going with the moment and moving gracefully over one foot or three foot hurdles to help prepare you for the challenge.
Look at your hands
Pause a moment and stretch out one of your hands. Look at your hand with the palm uppermost and stretch all five digits of that hand as far out as is comfortable, really watching, feeling, moving your fingers and thumb. Get a sense of the space between each finger and the energy shifting out to very tips of the fingers. When you are doing this, the energy through your hand is flowing freely from the core of your palm. It’s strong and aligned. Experience that as you move fingers back and forward.
Now try bending each finger in turn towards the centre of your palm, and see what happens to the stretch. Notice how comfortable is it to isolate one finger and stretch out the others? Maybe when your thumb moves in towards the palm, the stretch is still reasonable. As you bend your ring finger or middle finger, for example, I suspect it’s not quite so easy to keep the other four digits fully stretched out – you will be bringing in some tension; the energy’s no longer flowing so free.
Consider your hand as a symbol for the whole of you and your life. If you want to have hands that are flexible, then clearly you need to exercise each part, regularly stretching to the edge and then relaxing without bending too far backwards. Each and every part of your hand needs to work as a complete system, each respecting the integrity of the whole.
In my book ‘Live Life. Love Work’, I explore ways in which you can manage your energy in order to get less tension and greater contentment. So that you retain the integrity of your whole self.
