If I could name the one driving force that I had in me a decade ago, it was freedom. At that time in my life I was a mother of a 2-year-old, finally pregnant after many years of fertility challenges and working a very demanding corporate job. I was away from my son way more than I wanted to be, I was tethered to my office (way way before Covid flexibility) and my boss’s whims, and I was so sick of working so hard physically and emotionally to be able to have babies. So at that point in my life freedom was the exact opposite to how I felt I was living.
I achieved all the freedom I had defined that I was after and spoiler alert – it still wasn’t the magic bullet. I quit working entirely for many years, had the freedom to go back to school, the freedom to build my health coaching business at my own pace, freedom from fertility treatments and freedom to pick my kids up from school every day, freedom to take a nap in the middle of the day if I need to, freedom to pay for groceries at Whole Foods whenever I wanted to and on and on.
I thought freedom had lived up to everything the 33-year-old me who was tied to her corporate desk. But I still felt wildly unsettled. Then about 5 years ago when I got really serious about my wellness journey my one burning desire was freedom from stress and anxiety. I just wanted pure plain and simple peace.
I think about everything my health and wellness focus has motivated me to do and peace is always at the center of it:
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I cold plunge mostly for the benefits of strengthening the nervous system and mental fortitude
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I eat healthy to feel my best and have my most energy to enjoy my days and be able to feel fully present for all that my day throws at me
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I exercise to feel at peace with my physical body and to relieve stress
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I have dedicated my habits to creating a good sleep routine so I can wake up refreshed and feeling a heart of peace instead of irritation and exhaustion
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I have done all the latest and greatest blood and hormone testing to create as healthy a baseline as possible to feel consistently good and for the future me to have as few health regrets as possible
I could go on but you get the point. It is why in working with my clients it is never just about achieving a physical goal – it is about what you imagine reaching that goal will do for you.
Creating peace is like a Mother Teresa type of goal. Not something I am trying to accomplish by the end of the year! It will probably take a little longer than that. I have this visual in my head of an onion that comes home with the papery, messy outer skin and after peeling off each layer you get to a smoother, shinier, more pearlescent layer. I am constantly shedding layers.
The layer I have really honed in on lately is controlling the monkey mind. I can remember as a child being a worry wort, thinking of the worst possible outcome, often feeling like I always had the glass-is-half-empty perspective. And so over time I have little by little worked on this. But right now it is “The Work” by Byron Katie that is helping me unlock the next level of peace.
Her work says that if we do not question our thoughts we automatically attach to them, buy into them and often those thoughts are pure junk that causes all sorts of unnecessary upheaval and stress. She has a process called “The Work” which is asking yourself 4 questions and sometimes more to help you remove your commentary and just simply see reality. Seeing reality exactly as it is, with no definition of something being good or bad, is arguably the definition of peace. Peace does not mean you do not have stress or bad people or things happen to you. It is not having the mental internal battle around those instances but instead just being able to take action.
Here’s a recent example where doing “The Work” has a profound effect on my stress and annoyance.
Situation A: My husband has been traveling every week for the past couple months. This is way more than usual. A lot of the travel is for work. And a lot of the travel is for golf. I felt that his amount and uptick in travel was really making life harder for me and the kids at home. So watch how using BK’s method I was able to release the stress around this situation:
My thought: If my husband is going to take on this much travel he better make sure he is on his “A” game when he is home to give me and the kids the time and effort and attention to make up for everything he is putting into these other priorities. (So in my head this means coming home with energy and presence to be able to engage with his kids and me and not be a zombie on his phone on the couch. This internal dialogue was driving me crazy as it was making me overanalyze his every move once he was home, I was feeling all sorts of annoyance and resentment toward him, and it was all taking away from my own energy and focus because I was too focused on him and his doings.)
So I used the BK method. These are the questions you ask yourself.
Is it true (meaning is the thought I have above true): Yes
Is it absolutely true: No. Honestly, when I really ask myself if my thought above is total fact, it is not. It is just what I have told myself should happen. It is not some universal truth.
How does this thought make me feel: Resentul, annoyed, like a nagging wife, that we are sloppy seconds to all of his other priorities
Who would I be without this thought: Peaceful!! Lighter, able to focus on what I need in that moment.
In addition to the 4 core questions, BK also has some additional ones to shed more light on the situation. This is called turning it around. So this means that I would take my thought and see if any of the opposites of it are true. For example, “My husband shouldn’t come home on his ‘A’ game.” And yes, that can be as true as he should. It is not my job to define what he should or shouldn’t do. That is his business. And my reaction is my business. Either way it is his life and his choice how he comes home.
Another way to turn it around, which is most often one of the most helpful questions in all of this for me, is to turn it around on yourself. So, “I should be on my ‘A’ game when at home and with the kids.” And yes, that is totally true!! When we are judging someone else, we are mirroring what we feel inside. Whatever we judge in another just highlights something we need to resolve with ourselves. And all of the attention I was putting on grading my husband’s performance at home was taking away from my being on my ‘A’ game. Aren’t I just insane?!?!Honestly, it is just insanity and makes me laugh to write this out. But before doing “The Work” on this situation I was so sure I was in the right.
So in this particular instance, doing this work completely changed my perspective. Number one a reminder to always let my spouse be and show up exactly the way he wants to. I don’t have to agree with it. But I do have to accept it as reality before I can do anything productive with it. And then number 2 focus on myself and my needs if I am feeling something unsettling.
So after doing this work, I was able to in a loving, and not resentful, tone let him know how I was feeling the travel was affecting home life. In the end it is then his choice how he schedules work and golf trips but I have voiced my needs. My only need here was to voice my perspective.
And then I was able to turn the focus on and say OK, so what do I need to do for myself and the house and kids to be able to feel on my “A” game to be able to be my best even if my husband is gone a ton right now. I tapped into really being proactive with my calendar, scheduling my own personal priorities, saying ‘no’ to things when necessary, getting more help from our nanny and neighborhood babysitters, and prioritizing good sleep and good eating to feel my best. And all the sudden I went from being a resentful, nagging wife to feeling like boss woman who is able to accept things exactly as they are right now and be open to what I need to do to be my best self in current circumstances.
And actually you know what this work does for me? It gives me freedom and peace. Maybe they are one and the same.
I have just really really been focused on calming my mind, my thoughts, my anxieties over the last 3-6 months. A lot of it has to do with not drinking hardly at all anymore. I went from a nightly wine drinker to having just a handful of drinks since July. More on this at another time. But the greatest thing I am gaining with this alcohol pause right now is mental and emotional clarity – seeing how much my thoughts affect my relationships, my parenting, my business, just the joy in everyday life.
BK has a lot of great books, a podcast, a website that walks you through the process. After doing a lot of work on myself I have come back to this method as it provides a tangible practice to retrain you from just buying into all of your stress and gives a method to follow that is easily always at your fingertips. I will often during the day when I have a negative reaction to a person or situation pull up a notes document in my phone, spend 2 mins doing the above exercise and immediately be relieved. This method can work through so many limiting beliefs around inner child, shadow work. It is a simplified version of what so many therapy practices are built around. It is simply teaching you to not believe what your mind is telling you. We don’t always need to know why we thought this or who engrained the thought into us. We can often just identify that that thought causes us stress and we do not have to get swept up into it. Without your stressful stories, there is no stress according to BK. There are just things to do, to work through.
