What you can do when your mind is pushing you forward against the will of your body

Last week I had a few deadlines and I was getting pretty stressed. I realized that my mind was forcing me to continue working hard to get everything done, while my body was screaming for a break. As I kept moving through my to-do list, the gap between the willing of my mind and needs of my body grew, and so did the stress I was feeling. Here’s how you can notice the stressful gap between your mind and your body and what you can do about it to regain some ease.

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So this is one way that you can practice living an expansive lifestyle.

You know your mind, your thoughts, can both think about the past and regrets, and can think about the future and hopes and anticipations.

And it can be in the present. Your body is here right now. And so sometimes when we listen to our belief systems and to past stories that we have, our future hopes, we’re not really listening and fully present and mindful to what’s happening right now. Whereas when you start communicating with your body, and you ask your body, you kind of tap in and ask, “How am I feeling right now? What’s right for me?” Then you get answers that are accurate for right now, versus based on some past struggle or challenge or belief or any future hopes that you are trying to will to happen the way you want them to be. In a sense, you get something very clear, clean, and accurate to where you are now.

And so the reason that I’m bringing this up is because last week I was really, really busy. I had a deadline, I had a speaking event, and I was kind of getting stressed. And I realized suddenly, I paid attention that my being was being split and that there was a gap that was starting to form between me willing something, and with my mind, thinking this is what I have to do and I have to do this and this and this and I cannot stop. And my body was beginning to feel like, this is too much for me. I need a break.

And at the beginning, I wasn’t listening to it, but later on I was talking to a friend and I realized, wow, I experienced the gap that was growing wider and wider, kind of when you’re standing with one leg on the bridge of a lake and and one is on the boat and you know the boat is going away from the bridge and your legs are just separated more and more and more.

I was feeling this gap, but I wasn’t totally aware of it until I spoke to my friend. And suddenly it was like, wow, I remember that gap starting small and then just growing and growing in my mind, willing me to continue when my body was saying in the moment, stop, take a break. And the truth is I could’ve gone out to the deck and sat there for 10 minutes and breathed in and breathed out quietly and kind of blended with the trees around me and listened to the birds and the winds, and boy would I have aligned back together again my body that was giving me a really strong message that was accurate in my mind, that was just pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing.

So the way to experience an expensive lifestyle and have an expensive moment is to pay attention to your thoughts and your mind, but also to your body. And you do that just by simply asking your body right now, how are you feeling? What do you need?

And the more you do it, the more you’ll pay attention that your body is giving you messages that are accurate and telling you what you need right now. And then you move to, okay, what can I do about it? And you’ll discover that it takes a minute or two or five or 10 to give your body what it needs. Maybe it needs some water. Maybe it needs to read a poem. Maybe it needs to take a power nap for 20 minutes, which I love to do and I wake up a new person. Maybe you need to dance to a song for five minutes. Maybe you need to go out for a walk. Maybe you need to call a friend.

There are endless things that you can do to listen to your body that’s in the present moment and knows what you need. And then you’ll be much more efficient and effective as you move forward, instead of doing what I was doing, which was just increasing the gap between what I was trying to will with my power to have happen under stress and my body that was saying, stop. I can’t do this anymore.

So try this out and see how you can listen to your body and both do what you need to do, because we still need to live life and we have tasks and we have duties. But if you take breaks and you listen to your body, and you start communicating with your body, you’ll have a much more expansive perspective on your entire being and what’s right for you. And the result is that you’ll be much more efficient and effective with your time and with everything you’re trying to achieve.

Blessings.