Let go of the tension in your body. Let go of the need to act, do, achieve, accomplish. Just for a few minutes hide under the duvet and curl up. Let go of pressure and expectation. Give yourself permission to be. And see what happens.
This came to me the other day as I collapsed on my bed and succumbed to the symptoms of food poisoning. It was a message I needed to hear, and I’m glad I had the foresight to write it down.
In the end, I didn’t have much choice but to let go, but it got me thinking – how often do we actually give ourselves permission to stop making an effort?
Everything about effort makes you strain at the sinews. It is about physical and mental exertion, strenuous attempts to get things done, a struggle, an expenditure of energy. Its origins are in the old French verb esforcier – to force.
Effort is about pushing against life, trying to mould it into what we want it to be. Effort is about wanting to make things happen rather than allowing things to happen. Effort is prized by modern culture: everything is focused on effort from the moment you start school to the moment you retire from work.
And how little we value effortlessness – those things that are easy, that require little effort, that flow, that are undemanding. We call it child’s play, a piece of cake, no sweat; in other words, our language doesn’t take lack of effort that seriously and there’s even the suggestion it might be construed as laziness.
So what is that we’re telling ourselves here? That nothing is worth doing unless there is effort involved?
Perhaps we are overvaluing productivity, making money, achievement – all masculine power qualities – and undervaluing feminine power qualities such as creativity, nurturing, relatedness, connection, flow – which come about through a state of being rather than doing.
In my new state of acceptance that the universe is unfolding as it should, there’s clearly a lesson for me here in being forced to slow down, rest, do nothing, yield – and start valuing effortlessness as much as effort.
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