December 3, 2024 • 34 mins
There are two ways we can approach our creative life — that is, anything we want to make or create in this world.
The first is to fight for what we think we want.
The second is to open and receive what has always been rightfully ours.
I have used both ways in my life and both ways work, to one extent or another. Neither is bad or wrong. On today’s episode, I’ll talk about why I moved from approach #1 to approach #2 and what has surprised me about the second option.
Fun side note: listen in real time to what happens when I do this as I’m recording this episode! I came with an intention for what I wanted to say, and something totally different unfolded.
What if creativity is happening for you and you don’t have to force it forward?
What would it take for you to open to what is trying to happen for you?
Here’s the book I mention several times in the episode: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You've got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cover it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, Write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and I'm coming to
you on a Tuesday, right after a busy holiday weekend,
or at least those of us who are here in
the US. We just celebrated Thanksgiving weekend, so it was
a long weekend for us and our family. Our kids
have been out of their normal routine and we planned
a lot of really you know, fun activities and events
(00:51):
to make the holiday weekend I guess magical and special
for them, as parents tend to do. Last week, on Tuesday,
we drove to Chattanooga to meet up with some of
Matt's friends at the aquarium that's there, and the kids
had a great time doing that. Then we had let's see.
On Thursday, we had a big meal together with friends
at my mother in law's brand new house. Next door,
(01:12):
which is so exciting. I've talked about that on and
off here on the show, but I want to share
this moment that I had while I was standing over
at her house, which is quite literally right next door
to us. If you're just catching up here, or if
you're new to the podcast, you should know that a
little over two years ago, we bought a very dilapidated
house next door to us, a nineteen fifties ranch that
(01:34):
needed a lot of love and a lot of work.
Our friend John had been living in the house. He
was ninety four years old, I think when he passed,
and had been living in the house for I don't know,
but since before we were here, so for a very
long time, and hadn't really been able to take great
care of it, just because of his age and his condition,
and so the house needed a lot of love. We
(01:54):
reached out to the people who owned it asked if
they would be willing to sell. They said yes, and
it was It's just one of those things that happened
where it all happened very quickly. I don't know if
you've had something like that happen in your life, where
seems like the doors just kind of fly open, in
front of you, and there's zero resistance, Like everything went
perfectly exactly as it should. There were no issues on inspections,
(02:14):
no issues on closings. And then all of a sudden,
we have this house that my mother in law has
renovated to make it a really beautiful space for herself
and then also built an addition onto the back where
we are going to homeschool our kids. So that's kind
of a longer story for another time. I don't have
time to tell the entire thing right now, but I've
talked about this on and off a bunch on the show,
(02:36):
and I just wanted to give the update that the
house is finished. It's completely renovated. She's moved in. She
moved in at the beginning of November and has just
very quickly made the space so warm and inviting and
totally her own. It just feels like her and it's
like this beautiful, modern space, but she's brought her kind
of more like eclectic farmhouse style taste into it, and
(02:58):
so it's like so warm, but also like really open
and beautiful and clean, and it's just such a special
place to get to spend Thanksgiving, to spend the holiday.
So we spent our time over there next door. And
the story that I was going to tell is this
moment that Matt and I had while we were standing
in the living room and remembering, I don't know, three
years ago, maybe where the two of us were standing
(03:21):
in the garage that used to be the garage which
now has become the addition in the back of the house.
We were standing in that garage and Matt and I
both looked at each other and it was like we
had this weird moment where both of us had the
same kind of thought the same time, where we were like,
we should turn this into a school, we should make
this space something special for our kids. And here's why
(03:42):
that moment was so significant for us. As we were
standing in the living room realizing like, oh my gosh,
we did it, I mean not really, we did it,
Like we did it, and she did it. My mother
in law played a major, major role, and we could
not have done it without her. But the reason that
felt so significant is because of so much of what
I've talked about on this show show is the feeling
like you have this creative vision, you know what you
(04:03):
want to make in the world, you set off to
make it. You invest in yourself and invest in the project,
and give your all to something and take the bed
on yourself, and then things don't go the way that
you hoped that they would go, and you aren't able
to manifest in the physical world the thing that you
dreamed of in your in your mind and your heart
and your soul. And so many of us have had
(04:24):
those experiences that are really disappointing and can be really
hard to come back from, and we've had a few
years of that kind of experience, and so it was
such a sweet moment on Thanksgiving for us to be
standing in that house and go like, oh, my gosh,
we dreamed of this three years ago. We dreamed of this.
We stood there together and both of us got chills
and we're like, oh, something, something meaningful, is happening here.
(04:46):
And sure enough we set off to you know, to
set things into motion. And for whatever reason, even though
we haven't been able to physically manifest the other parts
of the dream, I guess we were able to physically manifest
this part of the dream. And again, my mother in
law is a huge player in that there's no way
that this house would exist if it weren't for her.
(05:08):
It's mostly been her investment, and for us it's just
been more sweat equity and not even me really. I mean,
I guess I've done some things, but it's mostly Matt
who's managed the process. So it was such a special
moment to just be there on Thanksgiving Day, standing in
front of the fireplace, friends coming over, family in the house,
soaking it all in, soaking in the beauty of the space,
(05:29):
and realizing like, oh my gosh, this was something that
we dreamed of three years ago, and here it is.
We're standing inside of the physical manifestation of that dream.
And it was a reminder for me and an anecdote
to what you've heard me talk about if you listened
to the conversation a couple of weeks ago with me
and Meredith, where I talked about that feeling or that
insecurity of being ineffectual, of not being able to bring
(05:53):
into fruition the thing that I have in my mind
or in my heart, that fear that like what if
I can't do it, what if I'm not enough, what
if I can't really bring this thing to pass. It
was just such a cool reminder that like I did
not just by myself, you know, It wasn't me, but
it was like a dream that I had that with
this effort of so many different people and with the
(06:14):
investment of so many different people, that we brought it
to fruition together and really with a lot of like
intangible support. You know, maybe this is something that I
want to stop and linger on for just a second,
because this isn't what I was planning on talking about today.
But I do think this is really important to talk
about the difference between thinking that we have to independently
on our own manifest a thing versus being open to
(06:38):
what wants to be manifested through us. There's a really
different energy to these two things, and I see this
show up. I think the way that I'm most familiar
with this energy is through book writing, because I've written
a handful of books on my own, and I've also
coached and helped so many other people to write books,
which is exactly this process that I'm talking about. Having
(06:58):
a dream that's in your it's in your heart, it's
in your soul, it's in your spirit. You know you
want to do this thing. You're like, I know I
have a message. I know I have a story to tell.
I know I have something I want to say, but
to bring that from your mind, from your body, from
your spirit into fruition, to bring it onto the page
is an incredible uphill battle is what it feels like
(07:19):
a lot of the way. And sometimes when you get
the thing on the page, it doesn't read like you
thought it was going to read. It doesn't read like
your dream, doesn't feel like the thing that you wanted
to make. And so I've watched people engage in this
battle with their creativity, and I've done this too myself
a thousand times. I still do it every time I
sit down to write a book, engage in this battle.
(07:41):
And Stephen Pressfield talks about the resistance, the capital are resistance.
He personifies this energy that you come up against when
you try to make something, and I think this is
a really important part of the conversation that there is
this does exist. I've experienced it, I've watched other people
experience it. Anytime you try to make something manifest, you
(08:02):
bump up against capital r resistance, against this seemingly challenging
force that's pushing against you as you're trying to do
the thing that you want to do. And the way
I like to think about the resistance, and I talk
about this and write your story in the book. I
like to think about the resistance as the X factor
that actually helps you to achieve your goal. So some
(08:24):
people come at the resistance it's an evil force. It's
working against me. I have to attack. I have to
take down the resistance so that I can become successful,
so that I can achieve the outcome, so that I
can be victorious at the end of the day. And
what I'm talking about is a slight two degree shift.
And I think Stephen Pressfield would actually agree with this, which,
(08:47):
by the way, if you've not read Stephen Pressfield's book
The War of Art, you absolutely need to add that
to your list. And it's one of those books that
I read and reread every single year because it should
be like a creative person's bible. And when I say
a creative person, I mean everybody. Like anytime you want
to do something that you've never done before, you should
read and reread The War of Art. It's a phenomenal book.
(09:08):
So add that one to your list, and I'll put
a link to that in the show notes below. But
when you come up against resistance, I think Stephen Pressfield
would agree with me. You can either treat this like
this is some evil force that's up against you and
you've got to attack viciously the force in order to
become victorious, or slight two degrees shift, you can approach
the resistance with a sense like this is the force
(09:31):
that's going to help me win the day. If it
were not for this X factor, I would never be
strong enough. I would never become the kind of person
who could achieve the victory that I want to achieve.
And the example that I give and write your story
is like a push up. Okay, a push up without
gravity is not a push up. Nobody's muscles would grow
if they were doing a push up in a gravity
(09:52):
free environment. So gravity can seem like this evil force
that you're up against, or gravity is just the law
of the land. Gravity just exists. Gravity is just there,
and we can use gravity to our advantage to do
something like a push up so that we get strong
enough to do other things that we'd like to do,
Like I don't know physical activities that we'd like to do,
(10:14):
so we use gravity to our advantage. It's gravity is just,
you know, a law of nature, and we can use
gravity to our advantage. So when we're approaching our creative projects,
we can either approach them like there's this evil force
out there that's trying to stop me from doing the
thing that I want to do, and I'm up against
the battle of this, you know, the other people in
this process, you know, up against the battle of like
(10:36):
the forces at work against me, the heavenly forces or
dark forces or whatever. You know. However you want to
think of it, you can think of it like I've
got a scale of some possible wall or run up
this impossible hill in order to achieve this thing. And
the way this comes out a lot of times with
book writing and that creative process is people who are like,
I'm going to be so disciplined, I'm going to sit
down every day for three hours a day, and I'm
(10:57):
going to write this book and I'm going to conquer
you know, this goal in my life in twenty twenty five,
it's gonna be the year I write my book. And
I watch almost all of those people. It's not every
single time, but most of the time those people who
come at it with that energy peter out and run
out of steam really quickly. Because when you come at
(11:18):
your creative work like it's a fight that you have
to win. You not only set yourself up for this
kind of impossible battle, but you also, in my opinion,
are missing what the creative work is trying to do
for you, like what it's there to teach you. And
so again two degrees shift. Instead of coming at it
like this is a fight I have to win this thing,
(11:38):
you could come to your creative work with a slight
bit of openness, like just a little bit of openness
that what is trying to be made right now doesn't
need me to fight for it. It's fighting for itself,
and it wants to be made through me. And as
I'm saying this, it's like I'm saying these words and
(11:59):
preaching them to myself quite literally, because when I think
of the difference between the way that this house next
door my mother in law's house, which the extent to
which this house will change our lives is infinite, Having
her next door changes our lives in terms of companionship
and friendship. We love our relationship with her and love
(12:21):
her so much. She also loves our kids and has
the sweetest relationship with them, and so it changes the
dynamic there. It lightens the load and the burden of
caring for two young toddlers, and she just has this
really sweet relationship with them. So there's so much joy
in getting to watch her build that relationship even further,
and so having her next door brings all this lightness.
(12:43):
And how did we get there? How did we get
this dream come true? Is it because I fought for
it at every turn? And you know, no matter what happened,
I overcame the obstacles and I made this happen no
matter what.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
No.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I stood in her what's now her house else was
a garage. I stood in the garage with my husband
and we both looked at ourselves and said this should
be a school. And that was the start of it.
That was the start of everything that has cascaded from there.
And to be honest, when I think about the process,
I haven't really done a lot. I've stayed really open
(13:18):
and excited and really joyful about the possibilities. I have
encouraged my husband along the way, who's done much more
work than I have. He managed the entire build process.
I encouraged my mother in law when she had moments
of you know, like, oh, do I take this risk?
On myself. Do I invest in this property?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Do I really make this what I want it to be?
Should I turn this into my forever home? So I've
had a lot of conversations with her about that and
just held space for her going through that process. But
other than that, I haven't really done a lot. And
this has become such a beautiful thing and now such
a massive part of our lives because I've just stayed
(13:56):
open to the possibilities because of nothing that I've done,
because it's just unfolded in front of me. And I
guess the question that I want to ask myself, and
I want to ask you too, is could it be
possible that you could do nothing and all of your
dreams could still come true? And I guess the question
(14:21):
that I want to ask myself and I want to
ask you too, is could it be possible that you
could do nothing and all of your dreams could still
come true? Could it be possible that you could do
nothing or next to nothing, that you could do only
things that feel easeful to you, only things that feel fun,
only things that feel light, only things that really feel
pleasurable to you, and that things could still go your way,
(14:43):
That things could still work out, that things could still
unfold in such a way where your life would be
better than it was before. And I know your objection,
because it would be my objection too, is like, yeah, yeah, well,
life doesn't work that way. Life has really a lot
of challenges that it throws in our path. And you know,
life is hard, life is difficult. Whatever you want to say,
there's obviously some truth to that, and I've lived a
(15:04):
lot of that truth in the last four years of
my life. And also I have to wonder what of
the challenges and difficulties in our lives. Which of those, like,
if you were to list them all out, here's the
challenges that I've faced in the last year or two years,
or five years, if you were to list out all
of your challenges, I have to wonder what part of
(15:25):
those challenges have been self made versus inflicted upon you.
And this is something that I've really been meditating on.
This is not what I was going to talk about
today on the episode at all, but this is where
it's taking me. So this is what we're going to
talk about. This is something I've been meditating about a lot.
The difficult things happen and I'm asked to face these challenges,
(15:46):
like let's just choose you know, losing my dad as
an example. I'm asked to face these challenges that are real.
You know, the challenge of losing someone that you love
and such a pivotal figure in your life is a
real challenge. And what part of that challenge is self
inflicted versus Actually, let me ask this question in a
different way. When those challenges arise for me, how can
(16:10):
I lighten the load of the challenge? And I think
one of the ways that we can lighten the load
of any challenge that comes into our life is to
stop resisting it. If Stephen Pressfield says that in any
creative project, anytime you try to do something new, you're
going to face something called the capital our resistance. It's personified,
it's outside of ourselves. But when the resistance comes, is
(16:30):
there a way for us to face resistance without resisting
the resistance? Does this makes sense? This is the two
degree shift that I'm talking about here. Is there a
way for us to face these challenges without so much resistance,
without the kicking and screaming, without the drama behind it?
And listen, I'm a bit of a drama queen. I
see this in my daughter, my four year old daughter,
(16:52):
and it makes me giggle because this is me too.
And sometimes it drives my husband crazy, and I watch
he has an allergic reaction to drama, and his friends
told me that when I first met him, Matt's friends
were like, Matt has an allergic reaction to drama. And
I was like, Oh, this is going to be an
interesting partnership then, because I kind of love the drama.
I don't know if you're into astrology at all, but
(17:14):
I'm a Gemini. Is my sun sign, but my rising sign,
my ascendant sign is Leo, and many astrologists will say
that your ascendant sign plays a really big role in
your life, maybe as big of a role as your
sun sign does. So typical, you know, kind of like
magazine astrology would focus on your sun sign, but your
moon sign and your ascendant sign played just as big
(17:36):
of a role, is what most astrologists would say. In
your personality type and how you experience the world, Well,
my rising sign is a Leo, and Leo is a
fire sign, and Leo's my daughter is a Leo. That's
her sun sign. Leo's love the attention they love the drama.
They kind of like to stir it up a little
bit for themselves because it's just kind of fun. They
want to just swim in the drama. They like it.
(17:57):
And this is me. I like the drama. So I
definitely see myself and the more conscious and aware that
I become, the more aware I am of the ways
in which I stir up drama in my own life.
But one thing that I've noticed, especially recently, is that
when I can drop the drama around certain things, when
I can depersonalize stuff that has happened to me. For example,
(18:18):
you know, the best example of depersonalization is really this
business venture that Matt and I tried to do. That
when I think about the resistance to this business venture,
I mean, the resistance was massive. So if the resistance
is the X factor, if it's the gravity I'm pushing against.
This experience of coming up against this resistance capital r
resistance in the last four years of my life has
(18:40):
changed me fundamentally. I am a different person. On the
other side, I'm stronger, I'm better for it. I have
a greater capacity to receive. I have wisened up, I've
become less naive. I've become more wise to the world
and to people and how people work, And if I
were to do something like this again, I would definitely
do one hundred things different. So I've changed so dramatically
(19:04):
because of this experience and because of my encounter with
the Resistance. But one of the ways that I've made
this process a lot more challenging for myself than it
needed to be is by over dramatizing it, by making
it personal, by making up a narrative in my head
where I said to myself, this is happening to me,
It's being done to me. Even there were even people
(19:24):
in the process who I felt like were coming at us.
There was a whole drama around people in the community
who who didn't want this thing to be built the
way that we wanted to build it, and it felt
very personal at the time, and I made a big
drama out of it. You know, It's like, these people
are coming at us and they don't even understand and
(19:45):
they don't get us, and they don't understand our intentions. Well,
when I could drop the drama and drop the personalization
around it and just let it be fine that people
just disagree with us, People don't see it the way
that we see it. It's not personal at all. Then
actually the feeling of being engaged with the resistance changed tone,
(20:06):
it changed resonance. So now no longer is it this
personal thing that's happening to me and at me. But
it's like a workout. It's like a workout that I'm in,
and that's what the resistance is for. Again, So it's
like this law of the universe, this force that's at
work in the world anyway. Like gravity, Gravity just is
a thing. Gravity's not personal. Gravity's not coming at you.
(20:29):
Gravity doesn't want you to fail. Gravity is a force
that you're pushing against in order to grow. And if
we can see the resistance like this in any creative process,
it's a force that just exists. It's not personal at all.
And if you can see the resistance this way that
you face in your creative process, then maybe it doesn't
matter if the thing that you wanted to make manifest
(20:52):
turns out exactly like you wanted it to, or maybe
it doesn't come out at all. Maybe you aren't able
to finish, you know, like we were with our project,
or maybe you do you finish and the finished product
is like, Oh, that wasn't what I was hoping. In fact,
it's like an extreme disappointment to me because maybe the
physical thing doesn't matter nearly as much as the experience
of entering into a relationship with that resistance. So the
(21:15):
question that I would have for us, for myself, and
for you would be what is my relationship to the resistance?
Am I treating the resistance like it's an enemy that
I have to defeat? That's one way to approach it.
It's one way that I've watched bring a lot of
misery to a lot of people, myself included. Am I
(21:37):
treating the resistance like it is a law of the
universe that I can use to my advantage? Just like gravity,
If the resistance is the law of the universe, then
we don't get to choose if we want to engage
with it or not. It's just there. You don't get
to decide if you want to engage with gravity or not.
Now you get to decide if you want to, you know,
I don't know, like jump off of a cliff into
(21:57):
some water or something like that. You get to choose
how risky you want to be with the gravity. You
get to choose if you want to do a push up,
but you don't really get to choose if you want
to engage with gravity or not. Gravity just exists, and
the resistance is the same. So the question is, how
do I want to be in a relationship to the resistance.
Do I want to come at the resistance like it's
my enemy, or do I want to come at the
(22:18):
resistance like it's my friend and it's something that I
can actually use to my advantage. And when we do this,
when we come at the resistance with just a tiny
bit more openness, like just a little bit like a
like a sprinkle of openness to it, like, oh, this
thing actually could be my friend. This disappointment that I
am meeting, this loss in my life, this confusion, this despair,
(22:42):
this dark knight of the soul, this feeling like I
hate my job, or I'm in a toxic relationship that
I don't know how to turn the tides on, or
I really need to set a boundary here, but I
don't know how to do that. These areas of resistance
that we bump up against can begin to become the
most fruitful areas of our life instead of an area
(23:03):
of extreme frustration and despair, and I think it's important
to reiterate. I know I've said this, but I want
to reiterate that I'm absolutely preaching to the choir here
because I've been in a lot of frustration and despair
over the course of the last four years. And you know,
the more that I dig into this story, the more
that I talk about it here on the show. This
is so much of what I've done here is just
(23:25):
processing it out loud, which has been so healing and
helpful for me. And the more that I do that,
and the more that I talk to other people about
it and get feedback and you know, have other people
kind of illuminate parts of the story that I couldn't
see before. The more that I do that, the more
I'm able to see these parts of myself that just
simply weren't illuminated to me before. Think about this, like
(23:53):
if I had never gone on this journey, if I
had never said yes to this process, if I had
played it safe instead, because a lot of the narrative
in my head has been like I took this big
risk and it didn't go the way that we wanted
it to go, and now we're in this place where
we're having to dig out of this big hole. I
shouldn't have done this. If I could go back, I
would do it all over again, and I would just
(24:13):
you know, like not go as far out on a
limb or not sort of swim as far as far
out as we did, because now we're having to play
damage control. And so I've had this narrative running in
my head that's like, oh, we shouldn't have done this.
We made this huge mistake. If I hadn't done this,
if I hadn't gone down this path, if I hadn't
said yes to this massive risk that I took with
(24:34):
my husband, I never would have learned all of these
things that I've learned about myself, like this conversation with
Meredith that I had two weeks ago on the show,
and the conversations that led up to our meeting. I
never would have had those conversations, and I never would
have been aware of the patterns that were operating inside
of me, that were limiting me, that were keeping me stuck.
(24:56):
And we get so focused on bringing something into the
physical that we we don't think about the value of
something like that, the value of just seeing ourselves more clearly,
seeing our shadows, seeing the patterns, you know, the consciousness
that we can bring to those patterns, those woundings, those
ways of operating that we learned to use, and to
(25:18):
the ways we learn to work in the world that
are no longer serving us. When we can come face
to face with those things and really see them for
what they are, then we have all the power back.
Now we can do whatever we want. You know, Now
we have true choice and true freedom. And then the
openness that I'm talking about, that two percent openness comes
(25:39):
and now something can be made manifest through me and
I don't have to try to muscle it into place,
and I don't have to be in a battle with it,
and I don't have to try to force anything to happen.
I just can be open and things can happen through me.
Things can happen around me, Things can happen because I
was open enough to believe that they might be possible.
And I don't have to be the one who's planning
(26:00):
every single detail down to the you know, down to
the letter. And I think this is the one shift.
This is not at all what I plan on talking
about today, but it's a really beautiful thing to focus on. Nonetheless,
and it'll all be in perfect timing. But the point
that I want to linger on is this. You can
(26:21):
either come at your creative work, whatever that creative work
looks like, like it's a fight. You can come at
it like you have to attack the resistance and overcome
it and become victorious. Or you can use the resistance
like it's your friend. You can come to befriend the
resistance and see that the resistance is not personal. It
(26:42):
doesn't hate you, It isn't how to get you, it's
not out to take you down. It's not an evil force.
The resistance is a law of nature, and it's a
lot of nature that you can use to your advantage
when you're willing to become friendly with it. I'm very
new to this way of seeing things. My entire life
has been about being disciplined enough to achieve the things
that I wanted to achieve, and that worked really well
(27:04):
for me for a really long time. Most of what
I've accomplished in my life has come because I've just
been super disciplined. I have a memory of meeting with
a nutritional coach back in I don't know, probably two
thousand and five, six, seven, eight, somewhere in there. I
was having a lot of food allergies at the time.
This is before anyone was even really talking about food allergies.
But I was having a lot of autoimmune issues, food allergies,
(27:28):
just problems with my health. And so I met with
this woman who was so helpful, and she was a
coach to me for several months and really helped me
get my health back on track. Well, when I was
meeting with her, she had me start keeping a food journal,
and I'll never forget she told me. She put me
on a strict elimination diet and said that we would
(27:48):
eliminate all these potentially inflammatory foods and then we would
slowly reintroduce the inflammatory foods. So we cut out all
of your usual suspects. It was like basically a Whole
Thirty diet, but I don't even think the Whole thirty
had come out at this point. But it was like
no meat, no alcohol, no coffee, no sugar, no gluten,
no dairy, no, I don't know whatever, the peanuts like,
(28:12):
you know, the seven or eight most inflammatory foods. So
she puts me on this strict elimination diet and she
gives me a food journal and she tells me to
journal everything that I eat for like ten days, and
then we met again. So when we come back together,
I show her my food journal and she's reading through
it and she's like, wait, did you write down everything
that you ate here? And I'm like yeah, and she's like,
(28:34):
you didn't cheat on the diet once. I'm like no,
She's like, not one time in ten days. You didn't cheat.
I'm like no, I'm like, this is what you told
me to do. You told me to do this diet,
and I did the diet. Like I'm like, I'm confused,
Like you're seeming like you were expecting me to cheat,
but I'm like, this is the diet you told me
to do, and I just did the diet anyway. I
(28:55):
tell that story, she was just so shocked because she's like,
I've worked with so many patients and none of them
have ever done the diet the way that I told
them to do the diet, And to me, it was
like a no brainer. I'm like, well, if I'm paying
you and if we're going to do this thing, then
I'm going to do it the right way. So I
can't think of why I would deviate from this diet
that you gave me, And that is a beautiful picture
(29:15):
of how I saw myself and how I saw the
world and how I interacted with the world. I was
just insanely disciplined about how I ate, about how I
took care of my body, about my exercise, about my
daily routine. Now, I was messed up in a hundred
different ways. I'm not saying that I was perfect. I'm
saying I was very rigid around how I approached the
(29:35):
shoulds and shouldn'tce of my life. And most of what
I achieved in my life for all of my twenties
and a good portion of my thirties was done that way,
just by doubling down and using sheer willpower. And somewhere
along the way that stopped working for me. Actually, I
can tell you exactly where it stopped working for me.
It stopped working for me when I got pregnant with Nella.
(29:56):
And what a grace that it stopped working for me,
because I have everything in my life that I have
now because I stopped being so rigid and disciplined. Now,
I think there's a place for discipline, there's a place
for even like boundaries, which is actually funny enough. What
I was going to talk about today, I was going
to talk about restriction and boundaries, which maybe I'll talk
about that next week, because I do think there's a
(30:16):
place for having good boundaries. But what I've learned in
the past decade of my life is about going with
a flow. It's about surrendering to where my life is
trying to take me. And it's not even been quite
a decade because I got pregnant with Nella. In let's see,
I got pregnant in November of twenty nineteen, so it
(30:36):
hasn't even been it's been half a decade. It hasn't
even been a decade. November of twenty nineteen, I get
pregnant with Nella, and all of my rigidity around food
falls apart. Because I was pregnant. The food cravings came
on strong, like strong, strong, strong, stronger than anything I've
ever experienced, and like my willpower just completely fell apart.
(30:57):
You can ask Matt, we would be on a walk
in our neighborhood and I would like duck into a
gas station, food mar and PM whatever those things are,
and like grab an ice cream bar and just like
eat the ice cream bar on our walk after we
had just eaten a huge lunch, which is not really
that absurd, but is absurd if you had known me
(31:17):
before that. I would get out at night a bag
of chocolate chips and a container of peanut butter or
almond butter, and I would literally like fill a spoon
with chocolate chips and dip no sorry, fill the spoon
with peanut butter, and then dip the spoon into the
bag of chocolate chips. This is disgusting kind of on
a couple of different levels. But I just took over
(31:38):
the bag of chocolate chips. It was just mine because
it's filled with peanut butter. But I would just dip
the spoon in there and like just eat straight chocolate
chips and peanut butter. So the willpower that worked for
me at one point broke down around the time I
got pregnant with my daughter. And that's just one example
with food. But the other example would be with my work.
When I gave birth to Charlie, which was in December
(32:00):
of twenty twenty one, I came back from my maternity
leave after giving birth to Charlie and literally deleted my
entire email inbox. I deleted like over five thousand emails,
which the Alley of twenty nineteen never in a billion
years would have done that. You know what I would
have done. I would have been like, here we go,
diving right in. We're going to respond every single one
of these emails. I'm going to go through every single one, handpicked,
(32:21):
one by one, make sure everyone gets a response. Ali
of twenty twenty one was like, Nope, not happening, don't
have the energy for that. We're going to select all delete.
If people need to get in touch with me, I'm
sure that they'll reach out again. So the will power
that used to work for me began to unravel as
my kids entered the world. And thank God for my kids,
because if I was still operating under that same protocol,
(32:44):
I wouldn't have access to what I have access today.
I wouldn't be able to live the life that I'm
living today. So thank God for the ways that our
coping strategies come unraveled, and the way that resistance forces
us to rise to the occasion and become someone different.
The resistance is your friend. That's what I want you
to leave with today. The resistance is your friend. It
is not a force that's working against you. It's not
(33:06):
an evil force. It is a friendly force. It is
at the very least, it's benign. It's neutral. It's just gravity.
It just exists in the world. It's a law of
the universe, and you can choose whether you want to
use this force to your advantage or not. I know you.
I don't really know you, but I do know you
because you're here and you're listening to this, and we're
(33:26):
forty minutes into the podcast and you're still listening. So
I know you, and I know that you're the type
of person who really wants to evolve and unfold into
everything that you're capable of being. And the only way
for us to really do that is to let go
of the control, let go of that tight grip, let
(33:46):
go of the version of ourselves that was like I'm
not going to eat a single thing I'm not supposed
to eat, and just open a little bit to what
might be possible if we can let life in my
might be possible, if you can let it all fall
apart the way that it's trying to fall apart, What
might be possible if you can let it all come
(34:07):
together the way my mother in law's house came together
next door, without any effort, without anything required from me.
What might be possible? And that's the question that I'll
leave you with today. What might be possible if you
stopped fighting so hard and started accepting and receiving what
wants to come through for you. What might be possible
(34:27):
if you stopped arguing with your life, fighting with your life,
fighting with the resistance, and you started to work with
the resistance to create something new, something beautiful, something special
for you. Meditate on that, and I will see you
next week on the Write Your Story podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You've got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down and cover it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, Write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and I'm coming to
you on a Tuesday, right after a busy holiday weekend,
or at least those of us who are here in
the US. We just celebrated Thanksgiving weekend, so it was
a long weekend for us and our family. Our kids
have been out of their normal routine and we planned
a lot of really you know, fun activities and events
(00:51):
to make the holiday weekend I guess magical and special
for them, as parents tend to do. Last week, on Tuesday,
we drove to Chattanooga to meet up with some of
Matt's friends at the aquarium that's there, and the kids
had a great time doing that. Then we had let's see.
On Thursday, we had a big meal together with friends
at my mother in law's brand new house. Next door,
(01:12):
which is so exciting. I've talked about that on and
off here on the show, but I want to share
this moment that I had while I was standing over
at her house, which is quite literally right next door
to us. If you're just catching up here, or if
you're new to the podcast, you should know that a
little over two years ago, we bought a very dilapidated
house next door to us, a nineteen fifties ranch that
(01:34):
needed a lot of love and a lot of work.
Our friend John had been living in the house. He
was ninety four years old, I think when he passed,
and had been living in the house for I don't know,
but since before we were here, so for a very
long time, and hadn't really been able to take great
care of it, just because of his age and his condition,
and so the house needed a lot of love. We
(01:54):
reached out to the people who owned it asked if
they would be willing to sell. They said yes, and
it was It's just one of those things that happened
where it all happened very quickly. I don't know if
you've had something like that happen in your life, where
seems like the doors just kind of fly open, in
front of you, and there's zero resistance, Like everything went
perfectly exactly as it should. There were no issues on inspections,
(02:14):
no issues on closings. And then all of a sudden,
we have this house that my mother in law has
renovated to make it a really beautiful space for herself
and then also built an addition onto the back where
we are going to homeschool our kids. So that's kind
of a longer story for another time. I don't have
time to tell the entire thing right now, but I've
talked about this on and off a bunch on the show,
(02:36):
and I just wanted to give the update that the
house is finished. It's completely renovated. She's moved in. She
moved in at the beginning of November and has just
very quickly made the space so warm and inviting and
totally her own. It just feels like her and it's
like this beautiful, modern space, but she's brought her kind
of more like eclectic farmhouse style taste into it, and
(02:58):
so it's like so warm, but also like really open
and beautiful and clean, and it's just such a special
place to get to spend Thanksgiving, to spend the holiday.
So we spent our time over there next door. And
the story that I was going to tell is this
moment that Matt and I had while we were standing
in the living room and remembering, I don't know, three
years ago, maybe where the two of us were standing
(03:21):
in the garage that used to be the garage which
now has become the addition in the back of the house.
We were standing in that garage and Matt and I
both looked at each other and it was like we
had this weird moment where both of us had the
same kind of thought the same time, where we were like,
we should turn this into a school, we should make
this space something special for our kids. And here's why
(03:42):
that moment was so significant for us. As we were
standing in the living room realizing like, oh my gosh,
we did it, I mean not really, we did it,
Like we did it, and she did it. My mother
in law played a major, major role, and we could
not have done it without her. But the reason that
felt so significant is because of so much of what
I've talked about on this show show is the feeling
like you have this creative vision, you know what you
(04:03):
want to make in the world, you set off to
make it. You invest in yourself and invest in the project,
and give your all to something and take the bed
on yourself, and then things don't go the way that
you hoped that they would go, and you aren't able
to manifest in the physical world the thing that you
dreamed of in your in your mind and your heart
and your soul. And so many of us have had
(04:24):
those experiences that are really disappointing and can be really
hard to come back from, and we've had a few
years of that kind of experience, and so it was
such a sweet moment on Thanksgiving for us to be
standing in that house and go like, oh, my gosh,
we dreamed of this three years ago. We dreamed of this.
We stood there together and both of us got chills
and we're like, oh, something, something meaningful, is happening here.
(04:46):
And sure enough we set off to you know, to
set things into motion. And for whatever reason, even though
we haven't been able to physically manifest the other parts
of the dream, I guess we were able to physically manifest
this part of the dream. And again, my mother in
law is a huge player in that there's no way
that this house would exist if it weren't for her.
(05:08):
It's mostly been her investment, and for us it's just
been more sweat equity and not even me really. I mean,
I guess I've done some things, but it's mostly Matt
who's managed the process. So it was such a special
moment to just be there on Thanksgiving Day, standing in
front of the fireplace, friends coming over, family in the house,
soaking it all in, soaking in the beauty of the space,
(05:29):
and realizing like, oh my gosh, this was something that
we dreamed of three years ago, and here it is.
We're standing inside of the physical manifestation of that dream.
And it was a reminder for me and an anecdote
to what you've heard me talk about if you listened
to the conversation a couple of weeks ago with me
and Meredith, where I talked about that feeling or that
insecurity of being ineffectual, of not being able to bring
(05:53):
into fruition the thing that I have in my mind
or in my heart, that fear that like what if
I can't do it, what if I'm not enough, what
if I can't really bring this thing to pass. It
was just such a cool reminder that like I did
not just by myself, you know, It wasn't me, but
it was like a dream that I had that with
this effort of so many different people and with the
(06:14):
investment of so many different people, that we brought it
to fruition together and really with a lot of like
intangible support. You know, maybe this is something that I
want to stop and linger on for just a second,
because this isn't what I was planning on talking about today.
But I do think this is really important to talk
about the difference between thinking that we have to independently
on our own manifest a thing versus being open to
(06:38):
what wants to be manifested through us. There's a really
different energy to these two things, and I see this
show up. I think the way that I'm most familiar
with this energy is through book writing, because I've written
a handful of books on my own, and I've also
coached and helped so many other people to write books,
which is exactly this process that I'm talking about. Having
(06:58):
a dream that's in your it's in your heart, it's
in your soul, it's in your spirit. You know you
want to do this thing. You're like, I know I
have a message. I know I have a story to tell.
I know I have something I want to say, but
to bring that from your mind, from your body, from
your spirit into fruition, to bring it onto the page
is an incredible uphill battle is what it feels like
(07:19):
a lot of the way. And sometimes when you get
the thing on the page, it doesn't read like you
thought it was going to read. It doesn't read like
your dream, doesn't feel like the thing that you wanted
to make. And so I've watched people engage in this
battle with their creativity, and I've done this too myself
a thousand times. I still do it every time I
sit down to write a book, engage in this battle.
(07:41):
And Stephen Pressfield talks about the resistance, the capital are resistance.
He personifies this energy that you come up against when
you try to make something, and I think this is
a really important part of the conversation that there is
this does exist. I've experienced it, I've watched other people
experience it. Anytime you try to make something manifest, you
(08:02):
bump up against capital r resistance, against this seemingly challenging
force that's pushing against you as you're trying to do
the thing that you want to do. And the way
I like to think about the resistance, and I talk
about this and write your story in the book. I
like to think about the resistance as the X factor
that actually helps you to achieve your goal. So some
(08:24):
people come at the resistance it's an evil force. It's
working against me. I have to attack. I have to
take down the resistance so that I can become successful,
so that I can achieve the outcome, so that I
can be victorious at the end of the day. And
what I'm talking about is a slight two degree shift.
And I think Stephen Pressfield would actually agree with this, which,
(08:47):
by the way, if you've not read Stephen Pressfield's book
The War of Art, you absolutely need to add that
to your list. And it's one of those books that
I read and reread every single year because it should
be like a creative person's bible. And when I say
a creative person, I mean everybody. Like anytime you want
to do something that you've never done before, you should
read and reread The War of Art. It's a phenomenal book.
(09:08):
So add that one to your list, and I'll put
a link to that in the show notes below. But
when you come up against resistance, I think Stephen Pressfield
would agree with me. You can either treat this like
this is some evil force that's up against you and
you've got to attack viciously the force in order to
become victorious, or slight two degrees shift, you can approach
the resistance with a sense like this is the force
(09:31):
that's going to help me win the day. If it
were not for this X factor, I would never be
strong enough. I would never become the kind of person
who could achieve the victory that I want to achieve.
And the example that I give and write your story
is like a push up. Okay, a push up without
gravity is not a push up. Nobody's muscles would grow
if they were doing a push up in a gravity
(09:52):
free environment. So gravity can seem like this evil force
that you're up against, or gravity is just the law
of the land. Gravity just exists. Gravity is just there,
and we can use gravity to our advantage to do
something like a push up so that we get strong
enough to do other things that we'd like to do,
Like I don't know physical activities that we'd like to do,
(10:14):
so we use gravity to our advantage. It's gravity is just,
you know, a law of nature, and we can use
gravity to our advantage. So when we're approaching our creative projects,
we can either approach them like there's this evil force
out there that's trying to stop me from doing the
thing that I want to do, and I'm up against
the battle of this, you know, the other people in
this process, you know, up against the battle of like
(10:36):
the forces at work against me, the heavenly forces or
dark forces or whatever. You know. However you want to
think of it, you can think of it like I've
got a scale of some possible wall or run up
this impossible hill in order to achieve this thing. And
the way this comes out a lot of times with
book writing and that creative process is people who are like,
I'm going to be so disciplined, I'm going to sit
down every day for three hours a day, and I'm
(10:57):
going to write this book and I'm going to conquer
you know, this goal in my life in twenty twenty five,
it's gonna be the year I write my book. And
I watch almost all of those people. It's not every
single time, but most of the time those people who
come at it with that energy peter out and run
out of steam really quickly. Because when you come at
(11:18):
your creative work like it's a fight that you have
to win. You not only set yourself up for this
kind of impossible battle, but you also, in my opinion,
are missing what the creative work is trying to do
for you, like what it's there to teach you. And
so again two degrees shift. Instead of coming at it
like this is a fight I have to win this thing,
(11:38):
you could come to your creative work with a slight
bit of openness, like just a little bit of openness
that what is trying to be made right now doesn't
need me to fight for it. It's fighting for itself,
and it wants to be made through me. And as
I'm saying this, it's like I'm saying these words and
(11:59):
preaching them to myself quite literally, because when I think
of the difference between the way that this house next
door my mother in law's house, which the extent to
which this house will change our lives is infinite, Having
her next door changes our lives in terms of companionship
and friendship. We love our relationship with her and love
(12:21):
her so much. She also loves our kids and has
the sweetest relationship with them, and so it changes the
dynamic there. It lightens the load and the burden of
caring for two young toddlers, and she just has this
really sweet relationship with them. So there's so much joy
in getting to watch her build that relationship even further,
and so having her next door brings all this lightness.
(12:43):
And how did we get there? How did we get
this dream come true? Is it because I fought for
it at every turn? And you know, no matter what happened,
I overcame the obstacles and I made this happen no
matter what.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
No.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I stood in her what's now her house else was
a garage. I stood in the garage with my husband
and we both looked at ourselves and said this should
be a school. And that was the start of it.
That was the start of everything that has cascaded from there.
And to be honest, when I think about the process,
I haven't really done a lot. I've stayed really open
(13:18):
and excited and really joyful about the possibilities. I have
encouraged my husband along the way, who's done much more
work than I have. He managed the entire build process.
I encouraged my mother in law when she had moments
of you know, like, oh, do I take this risk?
On myself. Do I invest in this property?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Do I really make this what I want it to be?
Should I turn this into my forever home? So I've
had a lot of conversations with her about that and
just held space for her going through that process. But
other than that, I haven't really done a lot. And
this has become such a beautiful thing and now such
a massive part of our lives because I've just stayed
(13:56):
open to the possibilities because of nothing that I've done,
because it's just unfolded in front of me. And I
guess the question that I want to ask myself, and
I want to ask you too, is could it be
possible that you could do nothing and all of your
dreams could still come true? And I guess the question
(14:21):
that I want to ask myself and I want to
ask you too, is could it be possible that you
could do nothing and all of your dreams could still
come true? Could it be possible that you could do
nothing or next to nothing, that you could do only
things that feel easeful to you, only things that feel fun,
only things that feel light, only things that really feel
pleasurable to you, and that things could still go your way,
(14:43):
That things could still work out, that things could still
unfold in such a way where your life would be
better than it was before. And I know your objection,
because it would be my objection too, is like, yeah, yeah, well,
life doesn't work that way. Life has really a lot
of challenges that it throws in our path. And you know,
life is hard, life is difficult. Whatever you want to say,
there's obviously some truth to that, and I've lived a
(15:04):
lot of that truth in the last four years of
my life. And also I have to wonder what of
the challenges and difficulties in our lives. Which of those, like,
if you were to list them all out, here's the
challenges that I've faced in the last year or two years,
or five years, if you were to list out all
of your challenges, I have to wonder what part of
(15:25):
those challenges have been self made versus inflicted upon you.
And this is something that I've really been meditating on.
This is not what I was going to talk about
today on the episode at all, but this is where
it's taking me. So this is what we're going to
talk about. This is something I've been meditating about a lot.
The difficult things happen and I'm asked to face these challenges,
(15:46):
like let's just choose you know, losing my dad as
an example. I'm asked to face these challenges that are real.
You know, the challenge of losing someone that you love
and such a pivotal figure in your life is a
real challenge. And what part of that challenge is self
inflicted versus Actually, let me ask this question in a
different way. When those challenges arise for me, how can
(16:10):
I lighten the load of the challenge? And I think
one of the ways that we can lighten the load
of any challenge that comes into our life is to
stop resisting it. If Stephen Pressfield says that in any
creative project, anytime you try to do something new, you're
going to face something called the capital our resistance. It's personified,
it's outside of ourselves. But when the resistance comes, is
(16:30):
there a way for us to face resistance without resisting
the resistance? Does this makes sense? This is the two
degree shift that I'm talking about here. Is there a
way for us to face these challenges without so much resistance,
without the kicking and screaming, without the drama behind it?
And listen, I'm a bit of a drama queen. I
see this in my daughter, my four year old daughter,
(16:52):
and it makes me giggle because this is me too.
And sometimes it drives my husband crazy, and I watch
he has an allergic reaction to drama, and his friends
told me that when I first met him, Matt's friends
were like, Matt has an allergic reaction to drama. And
I was like, Oh, this is going to be an
interesting partnership then, because I kind of love the drama.
I don't know if you're into astrology at all, but
(17:14):
I'm a Gemini. Is my sun sign, but my rising sign,
my ascendant sign is Leo, and many astrologists will say
that your ascendant sign plays a really big role in
your life, maybe as big of a role as your
sun sign does. So typical, you know, kind of like
magazine astrology would focus on your sun sign, but your
moon sign and your ascendant sign played just as big
(17:36):
of a role, is what most astrologists would say. In
your personality type and how you experience the world, Well,
my rising sign is a Leo, and Leo is a
fire sign, and Leo's my daughter is a Leo. That's
her sun sign. Leo's love the attention they love the drama.
They kind of like to stir it up a little
bit for themselves because it's just kind of fun. They
want to just swim in the drama. They like it.
(17:57):
And this is me. I like the drama. So I
definitely see myself and the more conscious and aware that
I become, the more aware I am of the ways
in which I stir up drama in my own life.
But one thing that I've noticed, especially recently, is that
when I can drop the drama around certain things, when
I can depersonalize stuff that has happened to me. For example,
(18:18):
you know, the best example of depersonalization is really this
business venture that Matt and I tried to do. That
when I think about the resistance to this business venture,
I mean, the resistance was massive. So if the resistance
is the X factor, if it's the gravity I'm pushing against.
This experience of coming up against this resistance capital r
resistance in the last four years of my life has
(18:40):
changed me fundamentally. I am a different person. On the
other side, I'm stronger, I'm better for it. I have
a greater capacity to receive. I have wisened up, I've
become less naive. I've become more wise to the world
and to people and how people work, And if I
were to do something like this again, I would definitely
do one hundred things different. So I've changed so dramatically
(19:04):
because of this experience and because of my encounter with
the Resistance. But one of the ways that I've made
this process a lot more challenging for myself than it
needed to be is by over dramatizing it, by making
it personal, by making up a narrative in my head
where I said to myself, this is happening to me,
It's being done to me. Even there were even people
(19:24):
in the process who I felt like were coming at us.
There was a whole drama around people in the community
who who didn't want this thing to be built the
way that we wanted to build it, and it felt
very personal at the time, and I made a big
drama out of it. You know, It's like, these people
are coming at us and they don't even understand and
(19:45):
they don't get us, and they don't understand our intentions. Well,
when I could drop the drama and drop the personalization
around it and just let it be fine that people
just disagree with us, People don't see it the way
that we see it. It's not personal at all. Then
actually the feeling of being engaged with the resistance changed tone,
(20:06):
it changed resonance. So now no longer is it this
personal thing that's happening to me and at me. But
it's like a workout. It's like a workout that I'm in,
and that's what the resistance is for. Again, So it's
like this law of the universe, this force that's at
work in the world anyway. Like gravity, Gravity just is
a thing. Gravity's not personal. Gravity's not coming at you.
(20:29):
Gravity doesn't want you to fail. Gravity is a force
that you're pushing against in order to grow. And if
we can see the resistance like this in any creative process,
it's a force that just exists. It's not personal at all.
And if you can see the resistance this way that
you face in your creative process, then maybe it doesn't
matter if the thing that you wanted to make manifest
(20:52):
turns out exactly like you wanted it to, or maybe
it doesn't come out at all. Maybe you aren't able
to finish, you know, like we were with our project,
or maybe you do you finish and the finished product
is like, Oh, that wasn't what I was hoping. In fact,
it's like an extreme disappointment to me because maybe the
physical thing doesn't matter nearly as much as the experience
of entering into a relationship with that resistance. So the
(21:15):
question that I would have for us, for myself, and
for you would be what is my relationship to the resistance?
Am I treating the resistance like it's an enemy that
I have to defeat? That's one way to approach it.
It's one way that I've watched bring a lot of
misery to a lot of people, myself included. Am I
(21:37):
treating the resistance like it is a law of the
universe that I can use to my advantage? Just like gravity,
If the resistance is the law of the universe, then
we don't get to choose if we want to engage
with it or not. It's just there. You don't get
to decide if you want to engage with gravity or not.
Now you get to decide if you want to, you know,
I don't know, like jump off of a cliff into
(21:57):
some water or something like that. You get to choose
how risky you want to be with the gravity. You
get to choose if you want to do a push up,
but you don't really get to choose if you want
to engage with gravity or not. Gravity just exists, and
the resistance is the same. So the question is, how
do I want to be in a relationship to the resistance.
Do I want to come at the resistance like it's
my enemy, or do I want to come at the
(22:18):
resistance like it's my friend and it's something that I
can actually use to my advantage. And when we do this,
when we come at the resistance with just a tiny
bit more openness, like just a little bit like a
like a sprinkle of openness to it, like, oh, this
thing actually could be my friend. This disappointment that I
am meeting, this loss in my life, this confusion, this despair,
(22:42):
this dark knight of the soul, this feeling like I
hate my job, or I'm in a toxic relationship that
I don't know how to turn the tides on, or
I really need to set a boundary here, but I
don't know how to do that. These areas of resistance
that we bump up against can begin to become the
most fruitful areas of our life instead of an area
(23:03):
of extreme frustration and despair, and I think it's important
to reiterate. I know I've said this, but I want
to reiterate that I'm absolutely preaching to the choir here
because I've been in a lot of frustration and despair
over the course of the last four years. And you know,
the more that I dig into this story, the more
that I talk about it here on the show. This
is so much of what I've done here is just
(23:25):
processing it out loud, which has been so healing and
helpful for me. And the more that I do that,
and the more that I talk to other people about
it and get feedback and you know, have other people
kind of illuminate parts of the story that I couldn't
see before. The more that I do that, the more
I'm able to see these parts of myself that just
simply weren't illuminated to me before. Think about this, like
(23:53):
if I had never gone on this journey, if I
had never said yes to this process, if I had
played it safe instead, because a lot of the narrative
in my head has been like I took this big
risk and it didn't go the way that we wanted
it to go, and now we're in this place where
we're having to dig out of this big hole. I
shouldn't have done this. If I could go back, I
would do it all over again, and I would just
(24:13):
you know, like not go as far out on a
limb or not sort of swim as far as far
out as we did, because now we're having to play
damage control. And so I've had this narrative running in
my head that's like, oh, we shouldn't have done this.
We made this huge mistake. If I hadn't done this,
if I hadn't gone down this path, if I hadn't
said yes to this massive risk that I took with
(24:34):
my husband, I never would have learned all of these
things that I've learned about myself, like this conversation with
Meredith that I had two weeks ago on the show,
and the conversations that led up to our meeting. I
never would have had those conversations, and I never would
have been aware of the patterns that were operating inside
of me, that were limiting me, that were keeping me stuck.
(24:56):
And we get so focused on bringing something into the
physical that we we don't think about the value of
something like that, the value of just seeing ourselves more clearly,
seeing our shadows, seeing the patterns, you know, the consciousness
that we can bring to those patterns, those woundings, those
ways of operating that we learned to use, and to
(25:18):
the ways we learn to work in the world that
are no longer serving us. When we can come face
to face with those things and really see them for
what they are, then we have all the power back.
Now we can do whatever we want. You know, Now
we have true choice and true freedom. And then the
openness that I'm talking about, that two percent openness comes
(25:39):
and now something can be made manifest through me and
I don't have to try to muscle it into place,
and I don't have to be in a battle with it,
and I don't have to try to force anything to happen.
I just can be open and things can happen through me.
Things can happen around me, Things can happen because I
was open enough to believe that they might be possible.
And I don't have to be the one who's planning
(26:00):
every single detail down to the you know, down to
the letter. And I think this is the one shift.
This is not at all what I plan on talking
about today, but it's a really beautiful thing to focus on. Nonetheless,
and it'll all be in perfect timing. But the point
that I want to linger on is this. You can
(26:21):
either come at your creative work, whatever that creative work
looks like, like it's a fight. You can come at
it like you have to attack the resistance and overcome
it and become victorious. Or you can use the resistance
like it's your friend. You can come to befriend the
resistance and see that the resistance is not personal. It
(26:42):
doesn't hate you, It isn't how to get you, it's
not out to take you down. It's not an evil force.
The resistance is a law of nature, and it's a
lot of nature that you can use to your advantage
when you're willing to become friendly with it. I'm very
new to this way of seeing things. My entire life
has been about being disciplined enough to achieve the things
that I wanted to achieve, and that worked really well
(27:04):
for me for a really long time. Most of what
I've accomplished in my life has come because I've just
been super disciplined. I have a memory of meeting with
a nutritional coach back in I don't know, probably two
thousand and five, six, seven, eight, somewhere in there. I
was having a lot of food allergies at the time.
This is before anyone was even really talking about food allergies.
But I was having a lot of autoimmune issues, food allergies,
(27:28):
just problems with my health. And so I met with
this woman who was so helpful, and she was a
coach to me for several months and really helped me
get my health back on track. Well, when I was
meeting with her, she had me start keeping a food journal,
and I'll never forget she told me. She put me
on a strict elimination diet and said that we would
(27:48):
eliminate all these potentially inflammatory foods and then we would
slowly reintroduce the inflammatory foods. So we cut out all
of your usual suspects. It was like basically a Whole
Thirty diet, but I don't even think the Whole thirty
had come out at this point. But it was like
no meat, no alcohol, no coffee, no sugar, no gluten,
no dairy, no, I don't know whatever, the peanuts like,
(28:12):
you know, the seven or eight most inflammatory foods. So
she puts me on this strict elimination diet and she
gives me a food journal and she tells me to
journal everything that I eat for like ten days, and
then we met again. So when we come back together,
I show her my food journal and she's reading through
it and she's like, wait, did you write down everything
that you ate here? And I'm like yeah, and she's like,
(28:34):
you didn't cheat on the diet once. I'm like no,
She's like, not one time in ten days. You didn't cheat.
I'm like no, I'm like, this is what you told
me to do. You told me to do this diet,
and I did the diet. Like I'm like, I'm confused,
Like you're seeming like you were expecting me to cheat,
but I'm like, this is the diet you told me
to do, and I just did the diet anyway. I
(28:55):
tell that story, she was just so shocked because she's like,
I've worked with so many patients and none of them
have ever done the diet the way that I told
them to do the diet, And to me, it was
like a no brainer. I'm like, well, if I'm paying
you and if we're going to do this thing, then
I'm going to do it the right way. So I
can't think of why I would deviate from this diet
that you gave me, And that is a beautiful picture
(29:15):
of how I saw myself and how I saw the
world and how I interacted with the world. I was
just insanely disciplined about how I ate, about how I
took care of my body, about my exercise, about my
daily routine. Now, I was messed up in a hundred
different ways. I'm not saying that I was perfect. I'm
saying I was very rigid around how I approached the
(29:35):
shoulds and shouldn'tce of my life. And most of what
I achieved in my life for all of my twenties
and a good portion of my thirties was done that way,
just by doubling down and using sheer willpower. And somewhere
along the way that stopped working for me. Actually, I
can tell you exactly where it stopped working for me.
It stopped working for me when I got pregnant with Nella.
(29:56):
And what a grace that it stopped working for me,
because I have everything in my life that I have
now because I stopped being so rigid and disciplined. Now,
I think there's a place for discipline, there's a place
for even like boundaries, which is actually funny enough. What
I was going to talk about today, I was going
to talk about restriction and boundaries, which maybe I'll talk
about that next week, because I do think there's a
(30:16):
place for having good boundaries. But what I've learned in
the past decade of my life is about going with
a flow. It's about surrendering to where my life is
trying to take me. And it's not even been quite
a decade because I got pregnant with Nella. In let's see,
I got pregnant in November of twenty nineteen, so it
(30:36):
hasn't even been it's been half a decade. It hasn't
even been a decade. November of twenty nineteen, I get
pregnant with Nella, and all of my rigidity around food
falls apart. Because I was pregnant. The food cravings came
on strong, like strong, strong, strong, stronger than anything I've
ever experienced, and like my willpower just completely fell apart.
(30:57):
You can ask Matt, we would be on a walk
in our neighborhood and I would like duck into a
gas station, food mar and PM whatever those things are,
and like grab an ice cream bar and just like
eat the ice cream bar on our walk after we
had just eaten a huge lunch, which is not really
that absurd, but is absurd if you had known me
(31:17):
before that. I would get out at night a bag
of chocolate chips and a container of peanut butter or
almond butter, and I would literally like fill a spoon
with chocolate chips and dip no sorry, fill the spoon
with peanut butter, and then dip the spoon into the
bag of chocolate chips. This is disgusting kind of on
a couple of different levels. But I just took over
(31:38):
the bag of chocolate chips. It was just mine because
it's filled with peanut butter. But I would just dip
the spoon in there and like just eat straight chocolate
chips and peanut butter. So the willpower that worked for
me at one point broke down around the time I
got pregnant with my daughter. And that's just one example
with food. But the other example would be with my work.
When I gave birth to Charlie, which was in December
(32:00):
of twenty twenty one, I came back from my maternity
leave after giving birth to Charlie and literally deleted my
entire email inbox. I deleted like over five thousand emails,
which the Alley of twenty nineteen never in a billion
years would have done that. You know what I would
have done. I would have been like, here we go,
diving right in. We're going to respond every single one
of these emails. I'm going to go through every single one, handpicked,
(32:21):
one by one, make sure everyone gets a response. Ali
of twenty twenty one was like, Nope, not happening, don't
have the energy for that. We're going to select all delete.
If people need to get in touch with me, I'm
sure that they'll reach out again. So the will power
that used to work for me began to unravel as
my kids entered the world. And thank God for my kids,
because if I was still operating under that same protocol,
(32:44):
I wouldn't have access to what I have access today.
I wouldn't be able to live the life that I'm
living today. So thank God for the ways that our
coping strategies come unraveled, and the way that resistance forces
us to rise to the occasion and become someone different.
The resistance is your friend. That's what I want you
to leave with today. The resistance is your friend. It
is not a force that's working against you. It's not
(33:06):
an evil force. It is a friendly force. It is
at the very least, it's benign. It's neutral. It's just gravity.
It just exists in the world. It's a law of
the universe, and you can choose whether you want to
use this force to your advantage or not. I know you.
I don't really know you, but I do know you
because you're here and you're listening to this, and we're
(33:26):
forty minutes into the podcast and you're still listening. So
I know you, and I know that you're the type
of person who really wants to evolve and unfold into
everything that you're capable of being. And the only way
for us to really do that is to let go
of the control, let go of that tight grip, let
(33:46):
go of the version of ourselves that was like I'm
not going to eat a single thing I'm not supposed
to eat, and just open a little bit to what
might be possible if we can let life in my
might be possible, if you can let it all fall
apart the way that it's trying to fall apart, What
might be possible if you can let it all come
(34:07):
together the way my mother in law's house came together
next door, without any effort, without anything required from me.
What might be possible? And that's the question that I'll
leave you with today. What might be possible if you
stopped fighting so hard and started accepting and receiving what
wants to come through for you. What might be possible
(34:27):
if you stopped arguing with your life, fighting with your life,
fighting with the resistance, and you started to work with
the resistance to create something new, something beautiful, something special
for you. Meditate on that, and I will see you
next week on the Write Your Story podcast.
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