Hello!
Is there something that is on your list, and it just keeps on not getting done?
Perhaps it’s something you REALLY want to do, and you keep on not doing it!
And perhaps, if you were to listen to yourself around how you feel when you think of doing it, you might notice some uncomfortable feelings in your gut or your stomach or your solar plexus, or even your heart!
And if so, how do you respond to yourself?
Do you believe harsh inner voices that arise?
Or do you try to force and push yourself into taking action? Perhaps you ‘should’ yourself?
In situations like these, The Willingness Practice can really help.
The first thing you can do is, either with an empathy buddy, or in your journal, or in your own consciousness, ask yourself,
“Am I willing do to this?”
That might include imagining the outcome of when you’ve done that, and asking yourself, “Am I willing for that outcome to happen?”
And then listening honestly to the answer.
If you’ve been putting that action off for a while, it’s likely that the answer will be, “yee….s” – I call that a ‘thinky yes’ – it means you think you’re willing, but your body is telling you that you’re not fully willing.
A thinky yes comes from your head.
You’ll generally find that your body isn’t really involved, and you’ll hear that in the tone and timbre of your voice.
So, if you get a thinky yes, the next thing you can do is ask yourself,
“Why not? What am I afraid of? What am I protecting myself from?”
The first answers you get you might find are more outer reasons.
You might be concerned that you don’t have the time.
You might feel scared about some financial cost.
And each time you connect with something that you feel a concern or fear in relation to, I invite you to listen to that with empathy and compassion.
That might be from your Inner Loving Mother, the Divine Mother, your own empathic self, or however else you give yourself empathy.
For example,
“Oh sweetheart, I really hear that you’re concerned that doing this is going to take you lots of time.”
“I really understand how scared you feel when you imagine how much money it might cost.”
As you continue asking yourself why you’re not willing at the moment, you might find that the answers deepen.
You might be scared when you imagine being less present with your children, or that people might judge you, or that you might get hurt.
As you go deeper, the more likely it is that these fears are from your past.
And again, you can meet them with absolute unconditional love.
“I so hear that you’re scared that if you take this step, you’ll get judged, and it will hurt.”
As the fears get heard, at some point we might feel a pull towards the next step.
Usually that’s because we feel a sense of relief, a sigh, or a relaxing of our body.
The fears and concerns have been met with loving compassion.
The next step is more thinky.
You might invite in your Inner Loving Father, the Divine Father, or whatever archetype or part of you represents encouragement, support, and logical thinking.
In this part, you might receive reassurance about how you can meet your needs for both doing this thing AND being present with your children.
You might come up with ideas and solutions and different ways of thinking about taking the action.
The important thing is that this ‘thinky’ phase comes after the compassionate phase.
Once you’ve gone through both phases, you can then ask yourself again,
“Am I willing?”
And again, listen honestly for the answer.
A true “YES” will resound through your body.
And if you do have one of those now, you might feel a bit burst of energy. You might notice a big smile on your face. Or you might ask yourself what plans you need to put into action.
Or, you might still find that it’s not a true yes.
And in this case, it’s still a really helpful thing.
Because it’s deeply honest.
You’re probably not going to be judging yourself for not taking action because you understand that you’re scared.
You’re probably not going to force yourself to take action, as that doesn’t often go well.
You may need to do some deeper digging.
At this point I’ll often go to an Inner Loving Presence Process, because usually it means that there’s some deeper healing from the past that needs to be heard and healed before I’m willing to take action.
What I love about this approach is that it’s so honest.
It’s a whole body approach.
It values the body as much as the mind.
It’s about radical self compassion.
And I’ve found that when I DO find a willingness to take action, where I hadn’t before, there’s SO much life energy and flow, and that Life’s flow joins in to support the action-taking.
To me, this is a very different approach to responding to ‘procrastination’ (I don’t even use the term – I call it ‘protection’!
I wonder if this resonates for you?
And yes, this is all included in The Wonder of Willingness Course, which is open, and the first Zoom calls start on SUNDAY.
You can find out more HERE.
Love,
Marion