What holds you back?
This morning I met on Zoom for an hour with my life coach. For the last many months, we’ve been—I’ve been—focused on what it means to live my life “at cause” in contrast to “at effect,” which I’ve done, unknowingly, most of my life.
Today I was in one of those muddles when my defenses are up, and I’m really hard on myself.
Do you ever experience this?
I feel as if I’m on a seesaw of this or that—and I am a Libra, and a four on the enneagram so I’ve learned to recognize when I get in this unproductive head, heart, and emotional space.
In my weekly check-in before we connected, I’d made a list of everything I had accomplished from my focus buckets, which was surprisingly quite a lot of #DidDo projects and tasks, but still short of my expectation and hopes, which will be a future post about realistic capacity.
As we talked, I felt and observed myself spiraling into a lot of words, story, and frustration at myself. Blah, blah, blah. One of the weekly questions prior to meeting that I complete is: “What I didn't get to... And what I'd like to do about it...” I’d noted yet again: my new website completed and live. I wrote I’d get something scrappy up, dedicating a block of time this weekend. It’s literally been a recurring response for months. Months! I recognize that there is a block in me, and I allow other things to take precedence. I question the age old distinction of where is my yes, and my no, which includes my knowing. Truth is, I already have a beautiful website that I haven’t posted on for regularly for years, yet this—this!—new one is as I look to the future, open the present of my life, and how it’s showing up.
start of Kenai River ice jam, December 2022
What happens when you freeze up from too many obligations, stress, lack of focus, or a deliberate yes, and no?
When is necessary and valuable to pause or stop, and at alternate times to go with the flow?
Where’s the ice jam in your life, and what or who is the cause and purpose of it?
“What’s holding you back?”
After an hour, we wrapped up our call, me feeling no closer to understanding—I want clarity!—about where I’m truly heading in my life at this time. We revisited life changing decisions I’d made over the past few years, and how I arrived here, today. Gayle asked me, “What’s holding you back?” and we had a good convo about that—I know how to disrupt the gap, choose the biggest area of impact, and shift that. Yet, this had a different quality to it. As we spoke, I felt a hush, and looked down to my journal while making notes to myself. Gayle is used to this, and sometimes she writes as I speak what’s coming to me. Today, I wrote as she spoke and held space for me. We ended our session with VMA - I name where I experienced Value, what was Missing, and what I want to be Acknowledged for. Then she reflects an acknowledgement to me.
As I spoke into the V, a lightning bolt aha struck me. “I’m the one that’s holding me back.” I felt it viscerally. Then, a thought—maybe it’s a lie that we only move as fast as the slowest part of ourselves. I spoke this aloud, Gayle smiled at me through the screen, then said, something to the effect, “that may be almost the most at cause statement I’ve heard someone I’m coaching say. “I’m the one that’s holding me back.” We ended our session, and I took a deep breath. I wanted to work on this website, finish designing it with content, add a few past blog posts, and go live.
“I’m the one that’s holding me back.”
Today I’ve been inspired to finish a first iteration of this website. Why is it important to launch? I’m trademarking a name, so there’s a whole soupy mix of to-do, must-do, for that process, even as I’m living the questions, as Rilke advises. And its momentum for the next, and to connect.
This is my first post on this new website (I’ve written a thousand as a comms pro for more than decade, more than 100 on my previous website, and at one time I blogged for the Houston Chronicle. Yes indeed, I most definitely am the one holding me back—how liberating it is to realize this truth!). The way the story goes in my over-active mind: I’m intuitive with software, except (excuses!) I am quite familiar with WordPress, and built my eNewFields website there, and SquareSpace is requiring new learning and a growth mindset. So, aloha! I’m getting out of my own way, not holding myself back, setting landmines, distractions, and going to launch this, however scrappy it is in the start. No holds barred.
Welcome to Open the Present ™ - I look forward to beginning a conversation, offering honest reflections, and exploring what doors want to open through all the ideas and thoughts that swirl in my heart, mind, and soul. I particularly like to pose questions, so here’s one for you:
What is something—a decision, conversation, action—that weighs on you, that you may be postponing?
Can you identify one action you could take to declare and fulfill, with an “I can, I will, I am” - instead of acting from manage and control, want, lack, or grinding through it, and slogging it out? When will you do this?
I offer you blessings from my home and lodge alongside the Kenai River, in the last days of Autumn, where it’s about zero degrees, moose seek food as does the stray cat who leaves tracks in areas I’ve cleared this week after 28” of new snow. Each night I’ve shoveled my way to the river, tonight I’m nesting in my treehouse room with a keyboard, monitor, mouse, and good tunes, doing my jam of learning, exposing my struggling and grateful heart, and beginning to feel a sense of accomplishment!
May we support each other, recognize with gentleness our own excuses, defense mechanisms, and ways we refuse to risk, dream, dare, and do.
Love,
Pegge