Yielding Under Pressure

In Episode 4 of the Pressed to Purpose series, Dr. Alice Ward-Johnson explores one of the hardest lessons pressure can teach us: yielding.

Every person under pressure faces a choice. Some people shatter. Others become emotionally hard. But there is a third response that leads to growth and transformation: yielding. 

In this episode, Dr. Johnson shares how surrender can be a sign of strength under pressure.

Through personal stories about losing her mother, battling infertility, enduring miscarriages, and learning to “trust the process,” she explains how yielding can bring peace even in crushing seasons of life.

This episode will help you:

• Identify your response under pressure
• Understand the difference between yielding and giving up
• Stop exhausting yourself trying to control outcomes
• Learn how surrender can create peace, flexibility, and growth
• Recognize that pressure can reveal strength you didn’t know you had

If you are in a difficult season right now, this conversation will remind you that pressure does not always come to destroy you. Sometimes it comes to transform you.

This is Episode 4 in the ongoing Pressed to Purpose series, where we explore how life’s pressure can shape purpose, resilience, and personal transformation.

#PressedToPurpose #MindsetShift #PersonalGrowth #Yielding #TrustTheProcess #EmotionalResilience #Purpose #Mindset #Transformation #FulcrumMindset

🎧 New episodes are released every Tuesday by 4 AM.

If you’d like deeper support, you’re invited to join the Fulcrum Mindset Skool Community. There, you’ll find courses, guided reflections, live meetups, and a supportive group focused on real transformation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Every person under pressure faces a choice to yield or to break. Some people fall apart. They think this is too heavy or I'm too weak for this. This is too much. But there's a third option that you should consider to yield. Yielding is staying flexible under the pressure. You know, I was working a job years ago and I was frustrated by some computer problems on this job and the lack of immediate support of somebody trying to help me so I can get the job done. And I had an old coworker teach me a lesson that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. He'd say TTP, and I'm like, dude, what does that mean? He says all the time, trust the process. He was going to help me, but he had to go through a process to help me. From that point forward, I took that little computer lesson that he taught me at that time and I applied it to my life. Sometimes we have to trust the process. And that's what yielding makes me think of. Sometimes we just have to TTP. We got to be like bamboo that bends but doesn't break. This is how you gotta go through your crushing season. People break under pressure in two ways. They either harden or it fall apart. But neither of these helps you grow through depressing experience. They keep you stuck. You might find yourself saying, I'll never trust anybody again. I'm never taking risks like that again. You build these emotional walls, or maybe you shut down. And while this seems like you're protecting yourself, you are imprisoning yourself. You survive, but you don't thrive. You have built walls that keep paying out, but these same walls don't let love in. Some people choose the shattered response, that shattered response, like you becoming hard. Maybe you're crying a lot. Maybe you say hurtful things to the people closest to you. Maybe you have chronic anger or bitterness. You're pushing people away who are trying to help you. The same pressure can also create treasure. The difference is how you choose to respond. Yielding is that third option. In this case, you stay flexible under pressure. You acknowledge the pain without being destroyed by the pain. Yielding is saying, I don't like this, but I'll flow with the process. Yielding is not giving up. Yielding is letting go. It's an active surrender. Because giving up is like passive resignation. It keeps you stuck in a mindset that is hard to shift. You know you've given up if you've ever said something like, I quit, or this is too hard and I'm done trying. Yielding sounds more like I'm learning that I can't control how this turns out, but what I can control is my response to this. Yielding requires more strength, not less, because you commit to flexibility and acceptance of the outcome. Let's look at Jesus. In Matthew 26, 39, he says, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Jesus shows us how to handle the crushing. When he was in Gethsemane, his crushing place, he was honest about not wanting the cross, but he yielded to his crushing experience. He didn't want that pain, but he chose to surrender. He chose to yield. So you see, yielding is the ultimate strength. I vividly remember praying this prayer. One was on the way to my mother's house after getting the call that they were trying to resuscitate her. I couldn't believe that on that drive I was praying that prayer. But I knew I had to yield at that moment to whatever God was doing in that season. And then the other time was when I was battling infertility. After my mother died, I got my two tied or I had done tubal ligation. I thought to myself, you know, I already got four kids. I was already married and had decided that, you know, I had enough kids at that point. Well, that marriage ended. And I ended up getting married again to a younger man, my current husband of 18 years. And when we met, he didn't have any kids. I had four, but he had none. And I had some weird idea that in order for him to truly love me, I had to give him a child. I know, sounds crazy. Maybe you've been there. So I got a tubal reversal surgery. After healing, we tried to conceive for a long time. I really wanted to give him a child. But I would get pregnant and I would lose baby after baby after baby. And if you've ever been in this position, you know how devastating each miscarriage is, not only to your body, but also to your mind. And after having lost a few babies, I decided that I would yield. I vividly remember saying to myself, I'm letting go. I recognized that only God could control the outcome of this situation. I had to choose my response in that moment. This was one of my most crushing seasons. I just had to let go. I learned that this response kept my mind at peace and it allowed me to consider other possibilities that God had for our lives. And boy, did he show up. Two beautiful babies since that time. Not of my own that I burnt, but they have been my babies for a long time now. He taught me so many lessons from this experience. So let me ask you, what are you fighting that you need to yield? Is it an outcome like me? I wanted to give my husband a child so bad. In my mind, I needed to be pregnant. Are you insisting on specific results in your situation? Are you trying to control the response of people? Is it a timeline? Are you demanding that something happens faster than it is happening? Or is it the process itself? You're fighting how hard or how difficult this process is. And let me hold your hand while I say this. Fighting exhausts you. But yielding, yielding can actually energize you. Maybe you're thinking to yourself, this has to end a specific way. I was thinking to myself, pregnant or having a child was the only outcome. I wasn't thinking about miscarriages. Didn't like it, wasn't happy about it. Is it people? You want them to respond differently. Maybe you're saying to yourself, she's my mom. Why wouldn't she love me like I want to be loved? Or he's my dad. Why didn't he save me or come for me the way I was expecting? Is it the timeline? This hard season should be over by now. I should be pregnant by now. I should be successful by now. I should have a job by now. Or is it the process? Maybe you're working on a PhD or you're starting a business and you're thinking, this shouldn't be this hard. Listen, fighting what you can't control only drains your energy. Your constant resistance creates exhaustion, anxiety, maybe even strain relationships, and spiritual distance. When you yield, you free up your energy for what you can control. Let me tell you about the peace that comes from surrender. Listen, resistance exhausts you, where yielding energizes you. There's a big difference between letting go and giving up. So stop demanding specific outcomes. Focus on your response, not other people's responses. Surrender outcomes while staying faithful in the process. Ask, how can I grow through this? Identify your pattern under pressure. Do you get hard under the pressing? Do you fall apart and shatter? Or are you a fighter? You're fighting the process. Recognize what you've been resisting. Then choose one area to practice yielding. It can be the entire situation or just one area of the situation. Yielding isn't denying your feelings. They are real. You still have them. Before you go, I need you to remember this. Culture says fight everything, control everything. We are tired, but the strongest people know when to yield. Yielding takes more courage than fighting. I know it can be hard to make this shift, but I just need you to try it. Practice one small surrender at a time. If other people are involved, you just might shock them with your new response. Next week, we're going to discuss the oil.