Holding it All in Your Hands
Navigating the wave of constant expectation
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A friend of mine came to me the other day — naming off the things she felt like she had to accomplish and cross off her list that she’d quite literally never get done.
This friend of mine is a creative — a writer and the most competent, organized person I’ve possibly ever met. I’ve never seen her have a hair out of place, (except maybe when she’s cutting up the dance floor), let alone in the rhythms of her life (She would disagree with me, but I digress). The amount of conscious, concerted and intentional effort she puts into her life is incredible.
Impressive.
Just.. very her.
Her slight overwhelm and haute-voix wondering about how she was going to possibly fit in all the demands of her life into the 24hrs of a day (not including quality sleep, of course), had me reflecting on my own life and how I often feel in a similar boat.
Of course, I have this life’s level set to ‘extra-creative; extra-challenging,’ living wired as a tuned-in, switched on, AuDHD starseed. (I mean, I wouldn’t trade it for the world, honestly. Most days). As a result, the “not keeping up” feeling has been a pervasive theme for a long, long time. It’s something I’m working on continually. As the waves of instagram and external forces seem to be hitting the productivity button from all directions with the coming of spring, I had to lean into this late-stage capitalism pressure-cooker feeling. This isn’t something that just me or my highly-motivated darling friend are experiencing.
This is an everyone thing.
Iron Expectations
In order to unpick this feeling, I got out my trusty meditation cushion (aka, a throw pillow from the couch) and got into it. Sitting in meditation, breathing, feeling. This, ofc, resulted in me shedding some tears (no other way in my books), and what surfaced was this:
It wasn’t about a to-do list, or accomplishment, or completion.
It was about weight.
I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed by what I had to do on my list. It was that I was holding the belief that I had it do it all. I had this narrative that “If I don’t do it all, it won’t get done, and I’ll never be ______”. (For me, right now, that fill-in-the-blank is ‘successful’). But image we achieve our desired fill-in-the-blank. Does the feeling of expectation go away once we achieve what we once had as our gold star? I mean hell, our culture doesn’t really get celebration or achievement recognition. Are we just going to move the goalposts on ourselves when the once-distant task is complete?
Here’s the thing.
You can’t do it all.
You can’t.
It’s simply not possible.
So why are you killing yourself trying to become an octopus of accomplishment in a world that designed you to smell flowers and bake cakes and take naps?
Beneath the feeling of needing to do it all — what is the feeling underneath?
… If I don’t do it all myself, it won’t happen for me.
Why?
… Because I’m unsupported.
I don’t trust the universe.
I don’t feel like things will come together if I stop trying so hard.
This is how I felt.
For years.
Until very recently, actually.
I was in a place where, for so long, I was convinced the universe (and the Divine Mother Energy — the energy that gives us life) didn’t care about me.
That I was forgotten.
That I had slipped through the cracks.
And of course, as the universe loves to do, this was mirrored to me. And was what happened in life. I slipped through the cracks on government forms, on rebates, in health scans. I felt forgotten about in my family unit, and within my old social circle.
Generally, and holistically, I felt unsupported.
So I started believing I just had to work harder.
If I work harder, I told myself, then I’ll be in control. And things won’t be able to slip through the cracks. Because I’ll have hold of EVERYTHING.
To the surprise of no one, I didn’t succeed this way. I didn’t ‘rise’ to the proverbial ‘top’. I didn’t ‘make it,’ or ‘set myself free.’ Surprisingly, becoming a workaholic who never rested didn’t even get me a copper crown to place on top of my exhausted head. What it did give me, however, was complete burnout, a loss of joy, and a ruthless, 4-year journey of chronic illness.
I just couldn’t release the grip on what I was holding. I couldn’t put down what I was carrying.
I was trying, falling hard, and trying two times over.
And maybe you’ve heard this a million times; maybe it will land because this time it’s coming from me. Trying harder, when you have little (or often nothing to give, simply, holistically, and painfully truly, does. Not. Work.
When we’re trying to hold it all together, so that we make things happen for us, there’s no room to breathe. When we’re trying to hold all the questions and answers at once, there’s no room for magic happen. There’s no room for the universe to work.
Speaking as a complete control-freak anxious nerd, I’ve found two techniques that have helped me learn to let go.
Give up.
Give the universe (and yourself) room to breathe.
Giving Up
I have always, always, always, hated the words “letting go.”
I could never do it. I didn’t have access to that feeling, let alone the ability to just do it on demand. As a child, I was, however, quite pro at giving up. I was an expert quitter. A debutante at the ‘why-bother’ ball.
Over time, I began to make this whole towel-tossing habit work for me. When I talk about giving up, I no longer mean throw in the towel and go home. I mean, give it up. Give whatever you’re holding up to the universe. Take it off your shoulders. Take it off your back. Remove it, set it down, and give it up. You don’t have to hold it anymore. And if there’s a little voice inside of you that’s saying what if it all falls apart? What if I lose it all? Well, if you had to hold it together with all your beautiful energy and might, was it really meant to be there anyway?
The other part of giving up has to do with trust. I’ve racked my brain for another word that feels more accessible than trust, because for some of you, the only way you’ve ever experienced trust has been by being trustworthy. By being depended on. If you’re like me, you may have come from a place where others trust you — but it doesn’t seem so much to go the other way. It can make the feeling of trust a little inaccessible.
I’ve started thinking of it as “leaning in.”
Practice time.
To help illustrate this, go find a wall in your house, or better yet (ideally!!) a tree. I’m going to explain this example with a tree, because it resonates the best with me and is a practice I do often.
Put on some headphones (if you wish), and go sit down with your back to this tree. Lean in. Like, way in. Give this tree all the weight and strife you’ve been carrying. Let it roll off your shoulders. Imagine yourself fully supported by the universe, held up so gently by the deep, deep roots of this tree.
Stay here for as long as you like, giving the tree what feels heavy. Giving her what needs to be let go of. Giving her what it feels like you are tired of carrying. Feel the energy exchange start to happen between you and this tree. If you find yourself sitting there, feeling silly, see if you can lean in deeper still. Get quieter. get into it.
When we feel like things are too much to carry, it’s not because we’re not trying hard enough. It’s that we really are holding too much at once.
Give it up.
Room to Breathe
This one can be harder to practice, but is so, so, so important.
We need to give the universe room to breathe.
As a neuordivergent with a weird relationship with time, a starseed who’s not accustomed to an Earthly pace of life, and an *extreme* perfectionist (hi autism!), I often struggle with allowing the universe space to work — giving it room to breathe. When I make a painting, for example, the *absolute* hardest part is letting the coat / layer / section to dry before I paint overtop.
As someone with ADHD, this is an extra challenge for my brain — it means I have to shift my rigid mind from the hyperfocused task of one and switch to the focus of another, and then switch the focus back to one when the “time is right.” Truthfully, it’s exhausting. My usual workaround? Skip the waiting. Put the next layer on without allowing the time in between — 9 times out of 10 ruining the piece I’d painstakingly worked on for hours.
The universe needs time to work. When we are constantly checking the oven to see if the bread of life has risen, we’re doing as disservice to both ourselves and the energies at play — we’re not leaving them alone.
This practice can feel sooooo hard to embody. We’re literally living in a world that’s screaming at us not to slow down. Every app, advertisement and obnoxious late-stage capitalism motif is telling us that if we slow down, we’ll miss out. If we take our eyes of the prize, we’ll miss our opportunity. And if, god forbid, we take time off, then we will never, ever make it.
It’s pissing me off.
We’re not going to find peace, success, and happiness in the bullsh*t narratives of what the machine is pumping out to us. We are beautiful, conscious, intelligent spiritual beings. We are more capable than what the Big Bad Billboards say. We are resourceful. We find windows when doors are closed, and when there are no windows…we make them.
Were not going to find the answers we’ll looking for from the messages that are being constantly pumped into our bloodstreams à la cortisol and fear. We will, however, find them by pulling back, stepping away from it all, and getting quiet. And I don’t mean getting quiet as in, going into meditation in an effort to “get” something, like an answer. I mean, just, generally, getting quiet in your life. Go back to your regularly scheduled programming. Have a bath. Read a book. Go for a walk, without trying to constantly look for signs. Practice trusting the universe. Tell yourself she’s hard at work, and that things will come. Give the universe room to breathe.
One of my favourite ways to do this (no joke), is by lying down on the ground, on my belly, facedown. Fully prostrating on the floor. And then, like I’m imagining all my worries, or questions, or needs being trickled down into the earth, I surrender them all. I give them all up. I let myself breathe, letting the universe breathe with me.
It feels amazing.
Everyday, I’m finding myself inundated with emails, recommendations, tips, tricks, and things I should be doing to help me on my way. Most of them, truthfully, have good tidbits of advice — I try to be pretty strict with who and what I give my energy to — but it still becomes too much.
Why?
We’re literally living in a system that’s designed to make us feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and like there’s something wrong with us. It makes us buy stuff. Sensory seek. Consume.
There isn’t anything about you that needs to be fixed.
I’m telling you right now.
No matter where you on in your journey, no matter how ‘behind’ you feel, there is. Nothing. Wrong. With. You.
Not one little bitty bit.
We are living in a system that wants you to think there is. When you do, you will be more susceptible to advertising. To spending money trying to “right” those wrongs. to “fix” yourself.
Take some days without apps, get into nature, stop trying to make everything happen all at once.
And remember — I write these articles because they come from what I’m feeling in the moment and what I feel inspired and guided to share. Which means that, in this moment, I need this advice as much as you do. You are not alone.
You never are.
Nature does not hurry. And yet everything is always accomplished.
-Lao Tzu
xo ❤
Kate
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