Adventures in Being Triggered Post #7: I still know what I need to do. It's still not happening. (More on what to do when you are emotionally triggered.)

As I said yesterday, pushing is a highly effective way of getting things done, and I am risking that deeply, profoundly smiled upon nonpushing is even better.

Here is why this risk is so worthy to me.  

Pushing to get things done—pushing, period—implies the use of force. Which implies pain. In other words, our norm of getting things done is painful.

Which means that one of our normal beliefs is that life has to hurt. In order for life to happen, it has to hurt.

Here, I offer Byron Katie’s superbly brilliant Question #1 of her process, The Work: Is it true?

Is it true that life has to hurt? Is it true that getting things done must involve at least some pain?

I say, no.  

Life does not have to hurt. Getting things done does not have to be painful.

Generally, when we do things from a space of hurting we are acting from an emotional trigger.

If we are willing to see, to be with, ourselves and our frightened inner children (the trigger) that will emerge when we refrain from pushing, forcing, even a little of the way through even just a few moments: if we will hold the marrow-deep uncertainty and fright gently, sweetly, approvingly:

Then, like a single star, a moment whose conscious expression of the uncertainty and fright will manifest as the just right thing at the just right time. The perfect touch of whimsy, the perfect one-liner, the impossible basket made at the buzzer. And then more stars. More and more of them lighting the night sky. Events too splendid to have been planned.  

Here is the gift of a day, a life, lived from nonpain.

If we will refrain from our perhaps reflexive but still unnatural urge to push, to force: then our creativity will unfurl. Our gift is our creativity. Our gift is alignment with the flow of Life.

We won’t get things done. Things will be done through us. We’ll say more and more of amazing feats, “It just sort of happened.”

Our capacity for feeling good—our capacity for love—will have increased dramatically.  

I do believe operating from nonpushing and nonforce will become recognized as a far more viable way of living.

Let it be known that Leslie said it now!  

I’m putting everything on living that way now, too.