Have you ever felt powerless?

Like no matter how much you try to use your mind to stand up and overcome, it’s like nothing changes.

And to take it a step further…. have you watched how you react in your life when those moments of feeling weak, less than, or powerless creep in?

You know what I’m talking about. 

Those moments that follow where you go out and try to prove to yourself and the world that you are in fact powerful. You are in fact worthy. Your life in fact means something.

At these moments, we find ourselves in a loop. Our internal dialogue tries to convince us of our weakness. And then to rebel against it, we respond as if to say, ‘I’ll show you’. 

We run out into our lives and double down on proving this voice within us to be wrong. And as we do, we project our shit onto other people. 

Someone offers us constructive feedback, and we experience it as if we stepped into a war zone.

Someone genuinely criticizes us and we fall apart. We don’t know how to tend to ourselves well enough to work through this without this loop of fighting and proving. 

Because at our core, we are convinced that much of us is powerless, and that if we do not prove and armor up, it means further proof of our weakness.

What makes this worse and can piss us off even more is that deep down, we know this is utter bullshit. 

Deep down we know of a potential that feels more like us than any message of weakness. Deep down we have tasted and felt that place where we know our real self exists.

And, it feels like it’s wedged under a rock. 

Our old stories and tapes in our head maintain a constant assault to try to convince us that our deeper potential is a lie. 

In the moments where you are connected into this place beyond fear, guilt, and perceived limitation, you feel courage and confidence in yourself and life. 

Overall, your life is a testament of your courage and willingness to do the hard shit. But when it comes to surfacing this deeper potential, and living beyond this loop of feeling powerless, you are stuck.

When you are tapped into your deeper potential, you simply know your gifts and value. And from this place, your life feels balanced.

Worry melts away

Needing to prove anything to others falls away

You know your truth.

…at least in those moments.

Then, inevitably these moments end, and we feel to have lost this special connection. The connection where we trust ourselves and our capacity to navigate life’s tough conversations.

Money

Sexuality

Mortality

Love

Parenting

Intimacy

There are certainly more…. 

To the extent you feel disempowered in any/all of these threads of existence, surfaces a chance to know and empower yourself in new ways. 

Through any of these places of feeling disempowered, we surface your deeper potential, while releasing the lies that keep you from it.

You’ve felt this deeper potential. 

The hard part, the ‘work’, is taking off the masks that hide you.

Living in these masks absorbs so much energy, time, health, and money. Whether It’s burning yourself at both ends in an ongoing treadmill of having enough.

Or it’s in the constant seeking of that next compliment and validation so you can feel like you are worth something to the world.

There are more and more examples where we can find ourselves lost in this place of trying to feel that, at the core, we are enough. My life is enough. I feel good about who I am.

Two questions that stir a lot for my clients…

When do you reach enough?

And what does enough feel like in your body?

This can be viewed through the lens of enough money, love, accolades, and being known.

It surprises most people I work with when they initially hear this, because they have been chasing enough for so long, that the destination was not clear.

Even with that being so, this is where the struggle can surface. Because this conversation will surface a deeper dialogue. A dialogue about what they have really been chasing. 

What makes this conversation accessible is that they have each reached a place where what used to fulfill and energize them, no longer does in the way it used to.

And they begin searching for more.

Here’s the rub.

Often what happens, and this was my case on multiple accounts, when we feel that sense that something is still missing, but don’t know where to turn, we often take one of two paths…

Double down on what is already known and done well — Hoping that fills the hole. Launch the next business, double your revenue, get the next leadership role, improve your physical appearance.

Or..

Throw spaghetti at the wall to see what will fix that hole you feel — Leave your marriage. Have an affair. Change your products and services. Move to another location. Go on a vacation. Go on a retreat. Start yoga. Start meditating. 

I note those not as a judgment or general statement about being right or wrong. I’m not saying to stay in a broken marriage. Or negate the value of meditation. 

What I am pointing to is that when we feel that hole, that rut that feels to be present in multiple areas of life, a part of us begins to panic.

And being the problem solver that you are, you go into fix it mode. That’s a spade calling out a spade (IE: I’ve done it too).

And when these strategies begin to show little to no long-term, deep change, in comes our feelings of being powerless. We feel powerless because our courage and willingness to go after the hard sh*t that has served us well, isn’t cutting it. 

It’s not working the way it always has.

The feelings of being in a rut, of feeling powerless to change our circumstances come when the old ways of doing things cease to work.

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, we can’t think our way through this one. That deeper yearning for more in our life. More meaning. More fulfillment. More ease. 

…Must be navigated on the level of feeling. 

To get to the other side of the bridge, where you are living from that deeper potential you are starving to create your life from, we must let go of trying to problem solve in the ways we have in the past.

We begin this journey by getting to the core of the feelings you have right now about your life.

We go further into this by connecting into that deeper potential you feel and long to express.

From there, we step into a process of releasing what you are holding onto. The old fears you hold onto about are you good enough to see your way through this.

The old guilt that you continue to crucify yourself with.

The old judgements that try and tell you to be fu**ing grateful for what you have and to stop being greedy.

When we move you through this, we surface that deeper part of you that you yearn to feel.

Whether you walk this journey alone or connect with someone like me to walk alongside you, offering a map of the territory… remember these two notes above all…

Your unrelenting attachment to old ways of problem solving will hold you back.

You can not think your way into the next level you are craving!

Be well,

Matt