Struggling in Quicksand
We all know what it's like to struggle with difficult thoughts and feelings. We've done it many times in our lives. It comes naturally to us. It's a bit like falling into quicksand. When you fall into quicksand, every instinct in your body tells you to struggle. But what happens if you struggle? You've seen those old cowboy films, right?
The the the bad cowboy, the one with the black hat falls into the quicksand, and he struggles. And the more he struggles, the faster he sinks until there's just a black hat left floating on the top. But that's not what the good cowboy does, right? The one with the white hat, when he falls into the quicksand, he doesn't struggle. He lies back and stretches out. If you lie back and stretch out in quicksand, your body weight is distributed over a large surface area, so you can float.
So you lie back, and you stretch out, and you whistle for your horse to rescue you. Now, struggling in quicksand comes naturally and instinctively. It goes against all of our instincts to lie back and stretch out and float. Notice then that floating in quicksand is a lot less physical effort than struggling, but psychologically it's very tricky to do.
And it's the same when it comes to dropping the struggle with our own thoughts and feelings. It's actually a lot less physical effort when we stop struggling with them, but psychologically, it's very tricky to do. So what does dropping the struggle with thoughts and feelings actually mean? Well, it means making room for them. It means allowing them to be present.
Without investing any energy and fighting with them. Remember the struggle switch? It's like switching off the struggle, which, letting those thoughts and feelings flow through you instead of trying to push them away or squish them down or fight them off or suppress them with drugs or alcohol or whatever it is. So it's this very different way of responding. We're making room for them. We're allowing them to be present, And we're just not investing even the tiniest bit of energy in fighting with them.
All our energy is going into doing things that make life meaningful. So just to be clear, it's not a way to get rid of these thoughts and feelings. It's a way of making peace with them stepping out of the battle with, so that you can do the things that are meaningful and important in your life. Regardless of whether those thoughts and feelings are present.
So in the next clip, I'm gonna take you through an exercise that will help you to understand physically what it's actually like to drop that struggle.