Mind of Snaps - Positivity Podcast | Ep. 56 - "What We Resist, Persists"

Welcome to "What We Resist, Persists" - the 56th Episode of the Mind of Snaps Positivity Podcast!

This is a special podcast series that is separate from the regular Mind of Snaps Podcast, with a new release (typically) posted every Monday for Patreon supporters!

It is my goal to create as much positive & encouraging content as I can during these intense, uncertain times we're faced with. 2020 was so much more than anyone expected it to be, and nobody should have to take it on alone. The only way I can continue to do so, is with your help.

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Hang in there, friends... we're all in this together.

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Jessy (Mind Of Snaps / SheSnaps)

www.MindofSnaps.com

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Transcript

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Good morning, my beautiful friends. I hope you had a wonderful weekend filled with peace and joy and super yummy snackies I feel like a common theme of these podcasts in the past couple of months has been me apologizing for being inconsistent, and feeling insanely grateful for the complete and total lack of shame I received from this community. So seriously, thank you. As you know, the election has been a complete shit show. And many of us in the US especially have found ourselves feeling like we're stuck in that movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It seems like every morning we wake up hoping this ordeal would be over. Only to find out we're still basically stuck in Election Day. I've found myself more attached to social media than I have been in a long time. But as of late, I've been doing at least slightly better at getting offline because I've recognized just how much it truly drains my energy. In addition to the election, I've been dealing with a bit of stuff in my personal life as well. I've got whatever this health issue is I'm currently facing with my tonsils because one still has not gone down. As a result, I have been capital T tired a lot. I'm also working on some big projects, one of which should be announced probably within a week or so. So hopefully some of my inconsistent behavior will make sense to you all soon. From a mindfulness perspective, I'm grateful for all of these experiences. It has been fascinating to watch my body react to all the added stress and the pressure of my current situation. I find myself feeling so exhausted by the end of the day, and frankly, sometimes by the middle of it. And recently I've recognized that one of the things that has made it harder for me to adapt to my current circumstances, has been resistance. I've been tired and even more achy than usual. Since I haven't been smoking weed because of my throat issues. It's become incredibly evident how much the pains of my daily life impact my energy levels. And I find myself spending too much of my time wishing things were different. wishing that I didn't have such unpleasant chronic pain, wishing that I could handle all of the stressful news of the world with more grace as I feel I usually can, wishing that some of the problems that my family and my friends are facing could just vanish. And as you can likely imagine, this has done a whole lot of nothing for me, wishing surprisingly doesn't do shit. It just adds to my exhaustion through these repetitive thought patterns that have been veering more towards stressful thinking lately. For the record, I'm okay. I'm still feeling peaceful underneath this. And I consider it a really helpful mindful exercise to recognize that I got caught up in unnecessary thinking again, resistance is essentially just the lack of acceptance, which is something that I'm sure you're aware I try to advocate for often. The longer we spend wishing things were different or hoping things will just change for us, the less likely it'll happen for us and the longer we will feel stuck. Resistance comes in many forms. And I think the antidote to resistance will always be acceptance. One example of how resistance has appeared in my life, in addition to the repetitive wishing and hoping for something else to happen, or for my pain to cease or for my energy levels to just magically increase again. Another way that a resistance has appeared is through procrastination. I know I know a lot of you can relate to that. Procrastination, even for folks who enjoy being active or busy, it can sneak up on you in weird ways. Like with this podcast, I love doing these podcasts. I love the opportunities I get each week to reflect on my life and the lessons that I feel fortunate to have been able to learn. This past week though, when it came to doing the podcast or to like putting the time aside to plan for it. I was just so stuck in my stress and exhaustion, but I kept pushing it off. I'll work on that a little later today. Right now I just need to chill. I'll work on it after dinner because I think I'm just hungry and I need to eat. I'll work on it tomorrow because now I'm feeling a bit tired from eating recently. And then the morning hit and things came up that were somewhat out of my control. And the podcast was pushed the next day instead. Each day that passed made it harder for me to sit down at my My laptop and start writing out a podcast, it became this impossible thing, but only because I was resisting it so heavily. If I had stopped and questioned those thoughts a bit, or reminded myself, hey, you like doing these, maybe go take a little walk or meditate and then try to sit down at your computer and write a bit. I think things could have gone differently. I'm sure plenty of you can relate to how this week went for me with the same task being pushed back over and over and over, until it became the thing that popped up into my mind and every moment of silence. Why don't you go do the podcast, my brain would ask? Well, because I'm tired or because I'm too stressed right now would be my reply. Every day, I didn't do the podcast, I still carried it with me, I wasn't able to get to the same level of peace in my life that I'm accustomed to, because I was bringing the stress of this undone task to the doorstep of each moment. This is why when I'm streaming, I like to remind people go do that thing you've been meaning to do rather than hanging out with us. Because once it's done, you can come back and hang out without this teeny tiny little rain cloud over your head, you can get that thing knocked out and then go back to living your life in the present moment. living in the now. For those of us working to become more compassionate, and mindful, resistance is something we will face often. Imagine a scenario from your recent life where you've noticed a recurring thought pattern, like anger or jealousy, the first step towards making a change to the patterns is to notice them. But then where do you go from there? For some folks, they noticed the angry thoughts and are basically just telling themselves, let it go. Or I don't want to be angry anymore, so I won't be. But without making a conscious choice of where to redirect their thoughts. All they're essentially doing is just adding more resistance to the mix. That was something I struggled with for a long time. But through acceptance, I was able to more easily shift from my resistance based patterns and move towards what I really wanted. Instead, I used to be so angry almost all the time. And that shift is exhausting. When I first started wanting to change my patterns, and my habits related to anger is a real challenge. Simply sitting there saying I don't want to be angry anymore. I'm tired of being angry, doesn't change anything. It would make me more frustrated that I hadn't learned how to fix it yet. What made the biggest difference was to choose a different pattern of thought to replace it, but to accept whatever it is, I'm feeling first. As an example, I remember having one moment back in our old house, where I noticed myself getting super agitated. I started getting frustrated that after all the work I had done, I was still dealing with these little outbursts of anger. I remember being in my kitchen slicing vegetables, and feeling the tension throughout all of my body. I don't even remember what I was so angry about but I did not like it. At first, it seemed like there was no way out. But I was just gonna keep getting angrier and angrier like I usually would in the past, I could feel myself gripping the knife with extreme tension and cutting the vegetables with way more force than was necessary. And I was opening and closing drawers like they had somehow offended me or like they owed me fucking money. I finally recognized what I was doing. And I stopped for a moment, took a few deep breaths, accepted that in that moment, I was feeling agitated, then I chose to refocus myself on gratitude. And gratitude, by the way, for those of you also dealing with anger specifically turned out to be the most powerful defense for me against getting caught in those angry patterns. I started looking down at the veggies I was cutting and feeling so grateful to have fresh produce to eat. I started to notice the beautiful color palette in front of my eyes. And think about how great all of those veggies were going to taste once my meal was done. Every time those angry thoughts would come up again. I would basically be saying internally, I see you anger. It's cool. You're here, but I'm going to be over here hanging out with my gratitude over this meal I'm making and slowly but surely the anger dissipated and all I was left with was immense gratitude. At that point, I even remember laughing to myself in my kitchen. a situation like that in the past could have derailed my whole damn day. But there I was laughing at myself for being for having been so upset only moments earlier, when I had so much to be grateful for So much to look forward to, I felt silly. But for one of the first times I didn't feel ashamed, the rest of the day went on at a lovely pace, and I had a wonderful day and night. Had I stayed in my resistance, my frustration over being angry or agitated, I would have had to carry that around for much more of my day. I know this, because that was my life for so long. Recently, I've been working with someone as they experience a really bad breakup. It's been an on and off thing between them and their acts, and it has been brutal to watch it, really wear them down. At one point, we all thought they were free of the relationship, they were starting to focus on themselves, again, things were looking up, they seemed to be happy again and ready for whatever comes next, then somehow contact between them and their ex was reinitiated. And the whole cycle began again, this relationship has been an especially toxic one. So watching them go back into it only to come out of it with the same understanding that the relationship would never work was tough, because now they had all these new reasons to be upset. One night, we were talking about it and trying to get this person to refocus themselves again, as they had been doing what they were unwilling to let go of their desire for things to have happened differently, we would remind them that the end result is the same regardless of whether they had broken their their their self imposed no contact rule again, either way, they now recognize yet again, that this was not the right relationship for them. So they could keep on moving forward as they had been previously. But this person was unwilling to let go of their anger towards themselves for talking to their ex again, they were unwilling to let go of their wishes for things to have gone differently. We kept hearing things like Oh, why did I talk to them? Again, I was doing so great. And if only I had walked away at the first red flag, we wouldn't be here. But how does that serve this person? How does that help in this present moment, especially when in the present moment they are free of that relationship? The answer is, it doesn't. It only keeps you stuck in those egoic thought patterns. Rather than enjoying the beauty of the present moment. This person spent almost the entire night agonizing over all the decisions that they should have or could have made. And as a result, they missed out on a beautiful moment right there in front of them. Fortunately, as the morning came, so to did a fresh perspective, they were able to recognize the way that resistance to what is was keeping them stuck in what they wished for. And they gradually began to reframe their thoughts and refocus themselves on things they could actually impact. The narrative around, the whole situation was changed. And as of last night, having a conversation with them again about the situation, they acknowledged that they had some painful moments ahead of them as they re processed this breakup. But they were ready. They knew again, that the only way out is through. And the only way you can go through something is to accept it in the first place. So this week, take some time to ask yourself what you might be resisting? What kinds of thoughts might you be having that are focused on wishing you had done something differently in the past, wishing your life was different wishing you were different, or putting off something you know you need to do? The reason I'm able to be recording this podcast for you today is because I finally accepted that right now I'm a person with lower energy than usual. But I still have energy. Maybe it's not what it once was, but I believe it will eventually return. And in the meantime, I know I still have the energy I need to do my work and care for myself. And the less time I spend on useless thinking, the more energy I can retain. What do you need to accept about your current circumstances? Do you need to accept that right now money is tight, but trust yourself to figure it out? Do you need to accept that your body is aging and doesn't have the same energy reserves that once did. Once you do you can create a new schedule or routine for yourself that takes into account what your body is actually capable of right now. rather than pushing yourself to try to be who you once were. Do you need to accept that you've made mistakes in the past and that it's okay. All that matters is what you do with the lessons you've learned. Do you need to accept that you've got work to do. And once you stop resisting it and get it done, you'll likely notice that was not as much of a daunting task as you may have thought. Whatever it is that you're resisting in your life, it's time to stop and accept it. It might not be pretty, it might not be ideal. But life rarely is the perfect thing we hope it will be for us. Life is messy and painful and challenging, but it is also insanely beautiful. The longer you stay stuck in your resistance, the more likely you are to miss the beauty of your existence. I'm grateful I finally got myself out of my own way and wrote this podcast, which turned out to not be the task my mind had been making it out to be. I feel freer now and I got to enjoy writing while looking out my window at this beautiful new day we have before us. So take a few deep breaths. accept yourself and your circumstances as what they are. And then ask yourself what can I do next? And then go do it. believe in you. Remember, friends, what we resist persists. free yourself from whatever you've been dragging around with you. You've got this. Now get out there and manifest dope shit.