It’s Time To Grow: Learning To Make Room For Your “No”

I often like to say that all growth has a gas pedal AND a brake pedal. 

What I mean when I say this is that most emotional growth is not a linear, straight line. Nor does it follow standard rules of time. 

Emotional growth is a non-linear process that has starts and stops, side turns, detours and even sometimes can just seem to stall. 

Yet everything that happens along the way is crucial and has to happen exactly the way that it happens, in order for you to find your way back to your spirit, you know, the “who” you were supposed to be when you were born.

Way back before the world got ahold of you and said “do this, do that, don’t go there, why would you want that, feel this way, don’t feel this way and so on”. 

To be sure, some of these messages are helpful along the way, for a functioning society, however, many of them end up having a gigantic effect on our ability to stay connected to our heart, and to our vulnerability. Most of all, though, to our needs and feelings.

And this is usually the point at which people find their way to my work, asking me to help guide them back to their aliveness, back to their heart.

One of the concepts that I believe is  so difficult for people to grasp, along this journey, is that most everything happens for an important reason, whether we are aware of that reason or not.

I do not believe in coincidences. I gave those up a very long time ago. 

That said, it can be difficult at times, to ascribe to the idea that every experience that happens in your process, is essential and brought to you, as another opportunity to find your way back home to yourself. 

Especially if you’ve lost connection with emotional support inside.

This can be really, really hard to believe, in the midst of difficulty and conflict, discouragement, disappointment and the sense that you are stuck in an endless loop of despair. This is usually a sign that you’re in a place of impasse.

I believe that the place of impasse is a very important and essential part of your growth process. It is the in between place where you cannot go back to the old ways, yet the only ways you have at your disposal to cope emotionally with what is going on either are not working as well or are not at your disposal. Nor do you have enough supports yet to have a different response.

Impasse is like a mountain climbing base camp for your soul; its the place where your emotional molecules are adjusting to the depth and intensity of the emotional experiences around you. 

Without going through impasse, you would plunge into emotional experiences that would overwhelm you and be destructive for your growth. You’d fall into the death zone without a tether to keep you alive.

Impasse allows you the time and opportunity to grow more emotional supports for taking the next step into your emotional experiences. 

Impasse is a very sacred experience of “no”.

When you can learn how to support your “no” for taking another step towards growth, this process creates the support inside to allow the next step to organically happen whenever it is in your highest good to move.

We cannot get there, if we cannot be here.

And what is beautiful about this process is that moving forward towards something because it is organically time and we are deeply drawn to it, is a very different and energizing experience than moving forward towards something in order to get away from something else.

So, that’s what today’s experiment is about: learning how to bring support to the places in your life where you might feel stuck or idling in neutral. This place of impasse is how your own beautiful spirit is protecting you from moving forward before it’s time.

For this experiment, here are the steps:

• Find a quiet space in which you can center yourself and take a few moments to bring awareness to what is happening inside of you.
  
• As you do this, allow a time in your life where you felt “stuck” or like “nothing was happening” to come into your awareness. (People, job, hope, dream, etc…)
  
• Notice as you’re doing this, how you ‘relate’ this experience inside of you. Do you feel hardness or tension towards this person or thing? Do you feel resentful? Do you feel curious? Compassionate? Just notice how you regard this experience inside of you. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to be with this.
  
• Then I want you to imagine that there is a benevolent spirit in the universe, that appreciates the necessity of this place of impasse in your life and is with you in this place at all times. 
  
• When you feel ready, you might inhale deeply, imagining that you are drawing in this supportive breath from the universe, to this raw and tender experience inside of you. 
  
• Understand, that as you take in support for being in this place of no movement, you are readying yourself to take a next step when it’s the next best thing to happen for you.
  
• Take all the time there that you need. As you feel ready to leave this space and this place, imagine setting up some kind of symbol to honor this place inside. And as you feel ready to return to the outside world, begin to do so by first coming back through your body, etc., etc., etc.