I’ve achieved things, for sure. But always, the fear & self-doubt feelings have been keeping me tethered. A rope tied to me at one end, and a metal pole dug deep into the earth at the other. I might see a beautiful balloon of an idea I want to skip off and chase, but I can only follow it so far before I reach the end of the rope and am pulled back down to the ground with a bump.
That’s what it’s like, a sharp jolt, a crash, a reminder of why I can’t do this, why it’s not for me, why I won’t get anywhere, why it’s incredibly scary to do and so probably safer not to try. Of course these things are felt in the body, the body and mind are one after all.
In the past I’ve pushed and pushed and pushed through these experiences, these feelings. Willed myself onwards. Been, honestly, quite unkind to myself to get back onto the work, back pushing, back trying, back doing. This is how we’re taught to do things after all. Nobody is telling us to take a beat, to listen to what’s going on inside, to connect to our bodies and breath and work to soothe our nervous systems.
Nobody tells us that.
Apart from me. I’m telling us that now.
Our nervous systems matter a lot. In business, in creativity, in life.
And when these things happen – the fear, the anxiety, the self-doubt, the getting caught in old patterns of thinking and believing – our nervous systems are becoming activated. We move more and more into sympathetic nervous system activation, the parasympathetic becoming less and less online.
What does this mean? Well, when we’re in sympathetic dominated activation we are not in a place that is conducive to
Creativity
Empathy
Problem solving
Planning for the future
Seeing the bigger picture
Creating change
We’re not in a place that is conducive to self-love, to re-wiring our thoughts and changing our beliefs. We just physiologically aren’t.
You can see how this might be challenging for us when we’re trying to work on our creative projects, or move forwards with our businesses right?
When we read an email and immediately want to stop our work and start scrolling on Instagram, or don’t want to take a break and instead keep frantically looking for things to do but not really focusing on any of them.
We need to notice that something has happened, we need to pause and we need to do something to soothe ourselves. To regulate our nervous systems.
And we need to do this because if we don’t, the worlds of business and creativity will be dominated by those people who don’t have as much stuff going on under the surface – the people who haven’t experienced as much trauma in their lives and generationally, the people who don’t struggle with mental and physical health, the people who don’t have chronic health conditions, the people who are neurotypical and the world will continue to look exactly the same.
Can we push through and ignore? Yeah, of course we can. We’re all pretty good at that, society gives us decent training in it. Eventually, though, doing this will impact us. Maybe it’s a physical illness or injury, maybe it’s our mental health suffering, maybe we burnout, maybe the work we do isn’t that good.
So, what can we do to soothe and regulate our nervous systems? Different things work for different people, in different circumstances. This is one of the things we’ll work on together in 1:1 coaching – helping you to find ways to regulate your nervous system. Building up your own toolkit.
Here are a few different things you might like to try though:
Breathing, noticing your breath and paying special attention to the exhale
Putting on a song that really gets you moving and dancing like nobody’s watching (honestly, nobody at all)
Going out for a walk and observing nature
Want to work together to develop your toolkit for creating nervous system stability in your work and life? Leaving you to feel confident in pursuing your creative & business goals & ambitions. I’m a trauma sensitive holistic coach & yoga teacher working with creatives, heart-led business owners & quiet rebels.
My coaching is led by you and your needs. It draws on my lived experience, work as a creative practitioner & my training & practices as a holistic coach & trauma sensitive yoga teacher. Find out more here. Book a free curiosity call here.