Releasing the Weight of the World: Practical Steps to Presence, Power, and Peace | James Ainsworth

In this episode of Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, James explores what it’s like to carry the “weight of the world” on your shoulders—literally and emotionally. Drawing from his own experience of tight shoulders, neck and upper back, he unpacks the silent pressure of ancestral and family expectations: growing up on a multi-generational farm, feeling the duty to take over, and fearing the consequences of saying no. If you’ve ever felt torn between legacy and your own path, this conversation will meet you where you are.

James speaks candidly about the perfectionism and performance that often mask deeper fears of rejection and abandonment. He shares how simply speaking it out loud—whether into a mic, with a friend, in therapy, or even to the trees on a walk—can release tension and create space for honesty. You’ll also learn a three-minute “step into your power” visualisation you can do today: (1) embody worthiness and self-love, (2) see your fullest potential, and (3) bridge the gap between who you are and who you’re becoming. From there, he offers practical ways to train presence—moving attention from the head into the body—so you can connect more deeply with yourself and, naturally, with others.

The episode closes with grounded encouragement: progress over perfection, tiny steps over heroic leaps, and the liberating role of forgiveness—for others and yourself. If your shoulder tension, resentment, or fatigue are hinting that something needs to change, consider this your invitation to realign with purpose. This is a compassionate, practical guide for men navigating career, relationships, and identity amid generational patterns.

If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a mate, leave a review, and subscribe for more weekly insights on men’s mental health, modern masculinity, and purpose. Follow along on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn for updates, tools, and upcoming guests.

Transcript

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In this episode, I talk about the weight of the world on your shoulders and having ancestral and family expectations. We look at several ways to really step into your power, including speaking it out loud. I talk about a three minute step into your power visualization you can do right now, and I talk about training yourself to be present and how presence is the key. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in. In today's episode, I want to talk about holding the weight of the world on your shoulders. So for me, I've always had really, really tight shoulders. Tight upper back neck. And so there's this sense that when I'm able to connect to this part of myself, there's this feeling of holding the weight of the world on my shoulders. So just to give you some context for me, this comes from. This comes from a few things, and the first thing is it comes from the need to prove and impress myself to my parents, especially my father. I've grown up on a farm and. My dad's obviously a farmer. His dad was a farmer, his dad was a farmer, and so on and so on. And so there's this, this feeling of needing to be the next in line to take over the farm. This need to prove that I'm worthy of running the farm. For me to pass this on to my son and their son and so and so on and so on, and it feels like this ancestral kind of pattern, this ancestral line of even though you might not want to, you take over the farm, you do it because it's almost like you are meant to do it. And underneath that, there's this fear of disappointing, this fear of disappointing your parents because you say, no, taking over the farms, not for me. Now, I'm not saying that's like my parents, but it feels the pressure of having this line, this ancestral line. Sometimes feels a lot for me to hold onto and there's this deep sense of what happens if I don't? Am I gonna disappoint them? Are they going to reject me? Are they going to leave abandon me? Are they going to say, cut me off completely? And then this deeper feeling of disappointing your ancestral line, fervor up your granddad, your great-granddad, and so on and so on and so on. And so there feels like a lot of pressure to to, to hold onto. And I feel like this isn't just me. There's a lot of people in, maybe not the same situation, but there's a lot of people who hold on to have hold onto weight in their shoulders because they're holding, they're holding onto the world. Maybe it's within a, a family. It could be a job. You could be a single parent and you feel the stress of having to. Either bring this young one up or this stress and this, this tightness of running a family business when you don't want to. And within that there's this feeling of resentment, this feeling of. Deep lost sadness because what, what if, what if you cut the line completely, all them people, uh, that your ancestors who ran the farm beforehand, what are they gonna think of you? How are they gonna think of you? And connected to my tightness in my shoulders is a sensation in my chest of proving my own self worth of appro, proving my, being enough, of proving my love, of performing, of wanting to impress it's need to to be this perfect person. Not for me, for everybody else. And so there's this, this sense underneath this of, um, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of fear of disappointment. And the reason, reason I'm talking about all this is because maybe you can, maybe you can relate. Maybe you can relate to this. Maybe you can kind of see yourself where I currently am or, and see that the stresses and the pressure and the the need to prove and impress that you are maybe doing. And now, even though it was on a podcast and I'm talking to myself to a screen, I'm noticing just by talking about it, it's a sense of, ah. And I'm trying my best not to go bl onto a podcast episode, but I feel like I need to give you a bit of context of what's going on for me so that you can relate. Maybe you can relate to this and the indication for me that the fact that I'm able to talk about this now out loud and people might listen to this. It's like talking, so talking is a great way of releasing, whether that's talking therapy or talking to a friend, or even talking out outside, out loud in a, in a woodland, which I do quite often, so if I'm feeling something going on, I'll go to the woodland and I'll just talk out loud. The, the woodland, the trees, the animals can hear what I'm saying. And I think sometimes as human beings, we put too much pressure on ourselves to be that perfect version, to be that version that other people want us to be. And in doing so. We forget about ourselves. We di disconnect from ourselves. We can't stop, we can't say no, but we, deep down we know it. Saying no would be honoring our own truth. I. So if this does relate to you, what, what can you start to do? Or try in order to start to change. Start to change your habitual patterns. Habitual habits. The first thing is practice. Practice getting into your own power. So this might be a nice visualization that you can do first thing in the morning. It only takes two or three minutes, and this might be an idea of putting on some nice, either light music or motivational music. And just for the first minute, just imagine yourself in your own power. You feel worthy. You are good enough, you are loved. You are the most amazing version of yourself, and you'll sit there for a minute visualizing this, this part of you, and just, just feel where in your body do you feel that? It could be your heart, it could be in your, um, belly button, area, stomach. It could be in your shoulders. And then for the second minute, I want you to imagine you stepping into your com, your potential. You might see yourself as holding an amazing job or having done all the work. You feel like you are in this incredible relationship. And then finally, for the third minute, I want you just to feel the difference between your heart, your, your most powerful version and your potential, and seeing if you can bridge the gap between them both. And see, just become aware of your own body. How do, how do you feel? Are you more operate? And then you can do this every time you feel yourself shift out of your power. Do this visualization, this meditation again, and keep doing it, and doing it and doing it. Another thing that I'm currently practicing myself here in this moment is presence. So, so quite often I am, I will fully admit that I get into my head, and so there's this idea that I want, I, no, I want to be more present. I am more present, and so it's using every day, every moment is an opportunity to bring yourself back into the present moment. And obviously for the first, I don't know, so many months, or maybe first year, it might just be little bits and bobs here and there throughout the day, but then you become more and more aware, so you become more and more present. And it's not about perfection, it's about continual progress. And so like one thing I've started doing at this moment in time is when I'm going running with a client, we go two or three dams a week. I will bring, I'll pull myself back into my body. So when I'm in my, when I know I'm in my body and not my head, I know I'm present. And it's that ability to know that as soon as I see, notice myself in my head, I'll pull myself back into my body. A nice simple technique or a visualization you can do is you can sit down quietly with some music and you can visualize. You're always in your head. You could either just allow yourself to deep, take a few nice deep breaths, and then to move yourself slowly down into your body. Maybe you go to your heart, maybe you go to your solar plexus, which your belly button area. Maybe you go into your shoulders, maybe you go into wherever you are in your body and just keep practicing that. If you're not so good at visualization, maybe you can allow yourself to feel, so maybe you notice you, you're feeling yourself in your head, and you can naturally just feel what it feels like to be in your heart space or other parts of the body. So I'm very visual. I'm not so good when it comes to. The feeling side of things I can feel, but I'm 10 times better at visualizing, so I use visualizing for things like this. Yeah, and this practice being present throughout a day. Another thing you can do is learn to connect with others by firstly connecting with yourself. So if you so quite often welcome to realize myself is that if I find it hard to connect with other people truly and deeply, then it's because I'm not truly and deeply connected to myself. When you become connected to deep, truly, and deeply to yourself, it's so much easier to connect to other people. So it's that idea or realization that connecting to yourself first, becoming present in yourself first, bringing your power back to yourself first are all the most important things you can do because then you're able to connect to other people. It always begins with t. So maybe you want to become present in a conversation with somebody, and this is something I'm practicing. Again, these are all things that I'm practicing, which is why I'm talking about them. So when you wanna talk to that person or you notice that you are, you feared off. Being present with that person, then bring yourself back into your body, become present in your body like we're talking about with a, with presence. And then I, I, how I see it myself, I will see myself first, and then I can easily see that other person. So I'll give you a quick example of what I mean. So the other day. I was working on my dad's farm. I do, I work on my dad's farm twice a week at this moment in time. So I'm stepping into my purpose and that'll be another one in them in it. And he owns it is composting a wood chip. And so we garden gardeners bring in waste cuttings from the gardens to the site and they, uh, pay us 20 pound a load. And there was this guy who was overweight and I would naturally see him as a, uh, a, a fat guard. And this is me being, uh, honest here. I'd see him as a fat gardener and rather than seeing him a fat garden, and I decided to connect to myself, connect to myself, bring myself back into my body, took a few deep breaths in my own heart space, and then my whole perception of him changed. I could see the soft tender part of him. I could, I could feel the love for that being rather than it's, it is, it is just an our man outside myself. I saw him as something different. I saw him as he truly was. I. This next one is more of an attribute. Rather than a set way that you can change things, and that is to have the strength to know that regardless of what you go through and have been through, that you can keep moving on, you can keep moving forward, that you can overcome. Whatever adversity, life froze at you, and knowing that you can step in, you can always step in to your most powerful version of yourself. And that's as simple as using the, one of the, the first things I talked about, stepping into your power. And it's in life. Life can throw at you some, some nasty stuff. But the more that I've, for my own realization, for my own, uh, life, know that regardless of what life throws at me. I can still keep taking the steps forward. It hasn't got to be lots of steps. It could just be one little small step. The last 10 years I've been doing, I've continually done personal and spiritual development, and I understand that it might take time, but you can change your life completely for the better. Sometimes you might be looking off, change it instantly and everything changes. But for the majority of the time, it's just tiny little steps and taking each day as it comes, and maybe it involves forgiving people for what they have done in your life. Maybe it involves forgiving yourself. Yeah, I can wholeheartedly. There's been times when I've had to forgive others and there's been times when I've had to forgive myself. And quite often the reason we hold the weight in our shoulders, or the reason I've realized I hold weight in my shoulders is because there's something in my life that needs to change, whether that's what I'm doing with my work or purpose, whether that's a relationship. Whether that's money, whatever it is, and just, just here now chatting about it is already like a massive big lift for my own self. So I can always chat to friends. You can chat to, uh. A therapist or a healer, you can even, if you want, you can send me a message, an email, talking about what you're going through. cause quite often when you start to talk about it, that is always the first step in releasing it. And we keep it to ourselves. We almost create this block. And we see this block as something in our way that's immovable. We can't move it. But when you hear others going through it, when you are able to speak about it, it becomes movable. And the final thing I wanna talk about is it's discover discovering your own purpose. cause quite often if we're in a job or doing something which we're struggling, or we just have resistance against it, or we hate doing it, maybe that's not a thing for you. Maybe it's, it's about stepping into a new version of yourself, version of where you were doing something that you love to do. We get told, especially if you are, if you are into art, into sports or into creative stuff, you get told, oh, you can't do that. Get a real job, and people laugh at you. And so we don't wanna do it because we don't want pe, we don't want people to reject us. But maybe you are meant to be an artist. Maybe you're meant to be an author. Maybe you are meant to be a world class sportsman or woman. Maybe you're meant to be a creative. Never has there been a time where there's so many creatives creating, uh, a great work life balance for themselves. People always, I don't know why, but I keep hearing it. But people always say, if you want to discover what you're meant to be doing, what do you, what do you enjoy the most? What brings you the most joy? What could he do every day and be excited about it? This is my realization that I love doing. I love growing. I love doing personal spiritual development. In fact, I'm obsessed with it, but I love doing it. It's a bit so by being able to, being able to do all this like on the podcast with regards to coaching, speaking retreats, maybe in the future. It gives you this idea that, yes, I love doing this and I can do this for a living, that people want to hear what I have to say. So let's have a quick recap of what we talked about in this short episode. Firstly, I talked about holding the weight to the world on your shoulders and how I add sensations in my shoulders and also in my chest. We responded to. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, always trying to be that perfect version of ourselves. And then we looked at ways of how you can start to release the sensation, to release the weight of the world on your shoulders, to release that sense of rejection that you may have. And the first one was about talking. And I obviously mentioned about how I'm talking out loud on this podcast now and being heard. So there's different ways you could either go into, uh, therapy and have a talking therapy or go see a healer. You could go into nature. And we talked about these kind of things. We also looked at bringing yourself back into your own power. So like I did a, you can do a short three minute meditation, then it's about becoming present. So learning to be present and allowing yourself to connect to yourself first. That way when you are present, you're able to connect people more deeply. And we finished off with strength and how having the strength. To do things. We all have this ability. We are all, we all have the strength to overcome adversity and take in the small little steps. It's just about doing it. Thanks for tuning in to Man a Quest. Find meaning if today's conversation sparked something in you, take a moment to reflect, then take a step. Remember, real growth comes from action, not just insight. If you found value in this episode, share it with a friend. Leave her a review, or reach out and let me know what resonated. Your feedback helps shape the journey we are on together. For more conversations like this, make sure to subscribe and stay connected. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn for updates, tools, and upcoming guests. Remember. It's not about having the answers. It's about daring to look.