Ease doesn't always mean easy.
Recently, I joined a running group.
This group is legit. They’re fast. A hell of a lot faster than me. Most of them are running Boston tomorrow and I haven’t even qualified for it.
But I decided to run with them anyway knowing they were faster than me. I wanted to challenge myself. I was able to hang with them for a while, but eventually I fell back.
It was kind of awesome.
And it kind of sucked.
It got me thinking about the relationship between ease and challenge.
It’s easy to get ease mixed up with easy.
Ease is not just about doing things that are easy or things feeling good all the time. It’s about going into challenges with confidence and growing from them.
We can do this by building a relationship with ourselves, mental talk that helps us do the hard things, and staying connected to our bodies.
As crazy and backward as it sounds, ease is found in the challenges.
It’s found in our ability to do the things that kind of suck. The things that are hard.
That doesn’t mean that ease comes from plunging yourself into discomfort.
It comes from reaching deep down inside and discerning when the juice is worth the squeeze.
When you’re faced with a challenge, pay attention to whether you feel called to take it on, even if it seems kind of hard. Are you curious about it? What’s going on inside you that is causing you to resist it? Where can you become your own advocate?
Distinguish between whether that discomfort is going to help you grow and create more ease or whether the discomfort comes from ignoring what’s going on inside of you.
Tune into your discomfort. Tune into the things that feel challenging.
Could that challenge create more ease for you?
Could it help you grow and bring you more ease?
You can create more wellbeing, more peace, more ease, more nights when you put your head on your pillow and you feel good because of the way you navigated your challenge.
XO,
Sarah
PS: Want more help navigating the challenges and getting ease from them? Apply for my Epic
