Discovering Ease: How Small Actions Lead to Big Changes

Ever felt overwhelmed and craved inner peace and ease? Of course you have - that’s why you’re here! In this week’s episode, I share a heartfelt story from a road trip that led to an epiphany - a profound moment of deep ease, a cocktail of pure gratitude and an overwhelming sense of rightness.

My experiences have led me to understand the beauty and power in committing to finding more ease and joy in life. But the path isn't strewn with grand gestures or drastic changes. It's the small actions, the everyday practices like neutral noticing that can reset our nervous systems, allowing us to respond rather than react emotionally. It's about taking the time to pause, breathe, and recognizing that we deserve ease. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Overwhelming's optional podcast where each week, we find ways to gently rebel against the nonsense that overwhelming exhaustion are just the price you pay to have the life you want. If I said you could have more ease in your life, what comes up for you? Does this idea that ease is too lazy, there's not enough challenge, there's not enough satisfaction? Or does stuff come up about yeah, but that's not possible for me. My life just isn't set up that way. That's not how life is, heidi. Life is hard. You can't just have ease. What comes up for you Because it's really worth noticing? And then I would ask you how much of today is focused on trying actually to create more ease? So whether that's getting stuff done, making sure that you've fulfilled commitments to other people, stuff you do at home, life, admin, the moving around and cleaning and maintaining of the objects in your home, looking after other people, whatever's going on what are you doing in order to create more ease? And from there I just want to pop in with a reminder from inside my community where at the moment, we're getting together to go through my seven day audio course, overwhelmed to ease and discuss it and support each other going through it and the comment that I read this morning was I completely forgot that the overwhelm and the ease coexist. So I want to talk about that today, because I fundamentally believe that ease is always available to us and that it's worth thinking about what it means for you. It's worth thinking about what are you doing in order, what are you doing and why are you doing things? Because everything we do is in order to feel differently, in order to feel something like satisfaction, joy, ease, connection, whatever. And when we do it with a lack of awareness, because we're pushing in survival mode, pushing through overwhelming to exhaustion, we often don't get what we want, and then that's really frustrating. And then we go around in circles and then the frustration mounts up and then it kind of comes up out in this volcanic eruption at the people. We love this snappy grumpiness, this emotional, emotionally driven rather than thoughtfully prepared action or words from our mouth. You know when stuff comes out and you go. That's not what I meant to say. And then there's the apology and the shame and the regrets. It's just really messy, right.

Speaker 1: 2:39

So I want to bring some awareness to you about what ease means to you or what you're trying to get in the doing. And the reason for this is twofold Firstly, because I was reminded of that when I briefly popped into community this morning. I'd forgotten that the overwhelming ease coexist. And secondly, because I've just come back from a road trip and there was this moment on the road trip where I was completely taken aback by this deep, deep level of ease. It completely blew me away. I just tears just came and with it. It was the most extraordinary experience. There was this mixture of I could almost feel like grief and shame and doubt letting itself go, calming up, to just be immediately released. There's no dwelling in it, just like I'm here. I'm here, I'm here, and this is amazing.

Speaker 1: 3:38

And the ease, this and by ease I mean this sense of utter gratitude for being alive, for being here in this present moment, for everything, for this feeling of rightness, of being at home, of there being nothing wrong, of feeling at home in myself and the world, and the world being so much more beautiful than I've ever known before. So psychologists probably call this some sort of peak experience. I'm not really interested in that today. What I'm interested in is you and me and how we can create more feelings and moments of deep ease, because I believe that when we move from that place, that's that's we get more of it and that's what we're actually searching for. So, if I look back to all of the things I've done and all the pushing and the rushing and the pushing through over on the striving and the beliefs that I had to do that in order to get to what I want, that what I want, which I thought was an achievement goal, was actually because what I wanted was to feel this expanding sense of fullness and fulfillment and deep joy and oneness and rightness, just this rightness with the world, like everything's okay, there's nothing wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with the world.

Speaker 1: 5:02

At this moment in time, all I feel is ease, deep, deep ease. And the ease I'm talking about is the kind of ease you get when you feel it all the way through your body, and also that it's expansive in nature. So it's not just about you, it's about the sky and the birds and the ground and it and I don't know it could be anywhere, because this has happened to me before, but I just this was particularly exciting and it's reason, which is why I want to talk about it before I forget about it. So I'm going to just drop into the memory of it, to connect with it, to see if it resonates with you, because I believe it's a gift for me and by me sharing it, I believe it's a gift for you. So a few days ago and I have no idea what day this was I could probably work it out, but I don't care, because the whole purpose of going on a road trip was to forget what day it was Do not have the structures of normal life.

Speaker 1: 6:01

That's not because the structures of normal life are bad. It's because every now and again it's really nice to drop out of them. But for me, it's becoming more than nice. It's becoming a deliberate practice of shaking things up and seeing what happens when I dare to drop structures, structures that have supported me and continue to support me really well. So let's take days of the week.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Days of the week, you can get very bogged down. I could get very bogged down very easily. And it's Monday I have to get this done. Friday, I haven't got this done. Or it's Wednesday I'm half the way through the week and how am I getting? Like? It's really easy to get caught up in time where an actual fact Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday are just names. They're just names of moments in time and space that we've all agreed have meaning, and that's really useful because otherwise it would be absolutely hopeless. It would be absolutely hopeless. When would you meet people? When would you get stuff done? There'd be no deadlines. Structures are really really great, but it's also really nice. Sometimes.

Speaker 1: 7:00

I find more than nice, I find it really helpful practice to let go and not know what day it is, because then I experience things differently and that informs my adventure, my growing more and more fully into myself, having a more and more full life and by full I don't mean busy and overwhelmed, I mean quite the opposite. I mean rich, rich and more ease, more feeling at home in myself, allowing myself to be more and more myself. So I don't know what day this was, but here's what happened. I don't even know the bit before. Actually, this is what I'm dropping into this beautiful sky.

Speaker 1: 7:48

I'm high up in the Yorkshire Dales, which is in the north of England for those of you from elsewhere in the world, welcome to the podcast and the sky is big and wide and open because I'm so high up and there's beautiful, beautiful valleys below me, there's green, there's beautiful hills, there's trees in the valleys with rivers, there's sheep, there's birds, there's no traffic, there's just us. Stood by the edge of the road, gazing, absorbing the stillness, the silence, the wide open space, the beauty, the sheer beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. So the Yorkshire Dales have hills and valleys, greens and different colours, and then there are these beautiful things that are man-made, and they're the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. For me, a lot of it's just man-made. So sheep farming has been happening for a long time, so there's dry stone walls, and the ones in the Yorkshire Dales are different colour than elsewhere, so they're almost white and they're going in curves, striped curves across the landscape and in most of the fields there's something which I've just learned is a field barn which is a stone building and they're half derelicts. But there's something so beautiful about them, the way they create this pattern in the landscape and the little sheep further and further away dotted around, and then there's birds of prey in the sky and it's just breathtaking.

Speaker 1: 9:28

And we the funny thing is is that we stopped many, many times and got out of the car and gazed and absorbed the beauty, took photos and just were like wow. But this particular morning blew me away. It was like my heart exploded, but in a really good way, like an overflowing fullness, and then I just felt so much ease, just like everything is right with the world, and I didn't have words for it. It's just this deep whole body, more than my whole body, expanding out in every direction, this feeling of utter ease, everything being right, not really a lot of thought, just like wow, I'm so grateful to be here, I'm so glad to be alive. And at the same time tears came, because I'm very sensitive to beauty and often I just cry. I'm known to cry quite easily, I'm okay with that. But I also felt this letting go of grief and shame since quitting my job so five years of just, and I've let go of it. I was aware that it wasn't a letting go of all of it. It was just like, oh, there's some more and it's going. And it was more like I just, oh, there's some more going, rather than a feeling of it, a thinking of memories, of questioning actions and beliefs. It was no big deal, but it was physical, it was very, and then it passed and then there's just this ease. It was amazing. I hope my.

Speaker 1: 11:16

I'm not sure if my description is doing it justice, but this was really significant for me for many reasons, not least of which is do I have to go on a road trip to get that? Because if I do, that's not okay, is it? That's not the practice of the gentle rebel, the ease to allow more and more of that into my life all the time. So what, therefore? What is it about going on these road trips and if you've been listening to me for a while, you'll know this is the second road trip of this year, or that actually? No, it's kind of the third actually, because I don't have a mini one to the New Forest, which was also just incredible.

Speaker 1: 11:56

So what is it about the road trip? Well, I think part of it is the fact that we were all told we couldn't drive anywhere for a bit, and I found that deeply, deeply upsetting on many, many levels. It really upset me, and so the fact that I can now just drive like I can just drive and I can go somewhere beautiful, and the next thing would be to fly somewhere beautiful, but I haven't actually felt cool yet to fly somewhere. I've got plans on the horizon, but just the traveling to somewhere, somewhere new, somewhere that wakes my brain up with oh, this is different than I'm used to, which brings us back to this idea that the overwhelming, the ease coexist.

Speaker 1: 12:40

How do I know that? I know it from my own practice. I know it from working with other people and because, if you just think about it, if you just sit back for a moment and just think about all of the possible things you could look at or pay attention to right now and there are more than you can even describe so, at any point in the world, there are a gazillion things that you could pay attention to, and some of them add to your overwhelm and some of them add to your ease, and they are. There's always ease to be found. It's just that we have to practice finding the ease, and that's the gentle rebellion.

Speaker 1: 13:20

The practice of saying, okay, there's all of this stuff, there's all of this overwhelm, and pushing through it towards exhaustion has got me this far in my life. But I'm done with that, because I want the success, but I want my life back. I don't want to be grumpy with my family anymore. I don't want to be snappy with the dog. I don't want to feel like there's no space in my own life for me. I want it all. I want the meaningful, well paid work and I want to be able to switch off and be present with those I love and have space for me and to take good care of myself, to have energy, to sleep well, to eat well and to do all of those other fun things that are way back on a list that doesn't even come into my consciousness most of the time. So that deliberate adjustment from here's the overwhelm. Now I'm going to go searching for the ease that's Reben, yes, I would argue, because most people aren't doing it.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Most people are stuck in the overwhelm. I'm assuming I'm not going for most people as in a judgement, or I know about most people, but in general, the human mind is easily overwhelmed in order to keep us safe safe, but not necessarily happy. And for the people I work with myself, it's easy to get overwhelmed, really easy, and we're really good at it and we're really practiced at sacrificing the need to even go for a wee or have a drink of water or I don't know, just let go of tension in our jaw or our shoulders in order to just push on through. We're really, really good at it and it works. It's how you get successful. It's the traditional path to success.

Speaker 1: 15:07

But what if you can have it all? What if you can keep the success and improve it, make it work better for you, and have those delicious feelings of fulfillment, of ease, deep ease, where everything's just right, where you're still holding in one hand the gazillion things, opportunities you're to do, list and even the secret, invisible get better at list and all of the stuff you think you should be better at or should be doing all the shoulds, the ors. You can hold all of that and you can notice it. And then, at the same time, without having to deal with all of that, you can find moments of deep ease. That's really cool. That is gently rebellious because it doesn't require having to fiercely stand up for yourself and say I've had enough, I need all of these things to change, I need you to change, I need my workplace to change, my partner to change, I need the world to change so that I can feel at ease. It's gently rebellious to say no, I don't need to change the world, other people, stuff at work. I'm still going to find moments of ease regardless. I choose to feel at ease, regardless of what is happening around me. I choose to feel at ease, but it's not. It's not. I'm not saying that makes it easy, but to me that's where it starts. So where I am with it five years in, is that I'm finding deeper and deeper and more expansive feelings of ease.

Speaker 1: 16:46

So the road trips, to me, represent that ability to say at any one time there's so many things I could be paying attention to, and right now I'm going to choose to take a few days out of my life and go on a road trip, and by road trip I mean a relatively unstructured holiday as opposed to a structured holiday. That's all. That's all I really mean. So for us, it's about booking accommodation as we go and changing plans according to how we feel and the weather, because we get a lot of weather in this country, and who wants to stand in the rain when you could just get out from under the cloud? And I'm sure there's another metaphor there. But anyway, let's continue with this. So that's what it means to me.

Speaker 1: 17:30

So this is for me it's a spiritual practice actually, of saying what if I didn't know what time of day it is? What if I didn't know what day of the week it is? What if I can learn to wrap my business up and switch off and be fully present in the rest of my life. That's a very, very core element of my gentle rebellion. So the road trip is a real practice of that, because in many ways it would be easier although I would argue, lazier to say well, mine's the kind of business where I could do it as I go along.

Speaker 1: 18:04

So, therefore, I'll just check, I'll just check my emails, I'll just check how my clients are doing, I'll just pop into my community and just check, just check, just check. How's the just checking going for you? Because I'll tell you what, when I forget that just checking leads to overwhelm and is a really inefficient way of working and doesn't make me absolutely happy, oh my goodness, it's annoying because it becomes more and more addictive. I'll just check, I'll just check, I'll just check, and then really I'm not working, I'm just checking. It's pointless, pointless exercise, but very easy to do. But what if, instead, I develop habits of going oh, I just go find some ease, I'm just going to find some ease, I'm just going to find some ease, I'll just allow it.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Now, the really cool thing when you get into this that I found anyway is that ease isn't something you chase. I mean, it feels like it is. When I've done this, then I'll feel more at ease. But actually that's the trick, and although it can work and it does work to a certain extent it is tiresome because it means that to get ease you have to do a load of stuff. You can't have it now. Well, if the overwhelm needs coexist, well, you might have it now.

Speaker 1: 19:12

And also, if you get into a state of ease before doing something, you tend to have more clarity, more focus and be more connected to your heart and your body, which means if you're connected to your heart, you're going to be doing the things that really matter to you, so you're going to be working with purpose. And if you're connected to your birthday, if you're connected to your body, then you're going to be carrying things out in a way where you also look after yourself properly. So there's huge benefits in choosing to practice, looking for moments of ease. So for me, the road trip is the bigger practice of this, the let's remove structure and see what happens. And then what I'm noticing is I'm creating more feelings of freedom and ease in general. I still haven't got it suss the whole bringing it back with me but that's what I'm now up to, so that's my next level of my gentle rebellion is how can I bring the more expansive, even deeper feelings of ease into my life on a daily basis? So a good question for me today would be exactly that how can I have that feeling? And so this is what I did.

Speaker 1: 20:22

I paused in my kitchen, in the middle of China. You know, it's like you've been on holiday there's washing to be done, there's tons of stuff to do as well as work and everything. And I had an electrician coming round and he said, oh yeah, but then you come back home and back on with normal life. And I thought, yeah, but my life's not normal. Because I'm a gentle rebel, my life's not normal. I don't do that. I'm not. I didn't say this to him. I mean how rude it's like preaching to someone, but to myself I was saying, yeah, is that true? Am I walking into that concrete of overwhelm that's very common when you've been away and you come back, and I could fill that building up last night, actually this whole I need to do this, need to do this, and what? If so, why I'm not doing that? There's no reason for all of that to suddenly happen today. What's most important. So that's how I organized my day, what's most important.

Speaker 1: 21:12

But also I made space to really connect with that feeling, standing on top of the Yorkshire Dales, on top of the world, and I stood in my kitchen, both remembering that. Now there's a difference between remembering, so re embodying the feeling from memory, which is really, really helpful. But also then I also wanted more than that, because I don't want that, I want it all. So I then wanted a practice of just literally feeling that, but now, rooted in the now, and I was very fortunate because after the electrician went, the sun came out and it was flooding through the kitchen window and I've got my last sunflower I've bought in from the garden and that's so beautiful.

Speaker 1: 22:02

And then this little plant which, when I got home, was not very happy because it needed watering, so I've rescued that and I just looked, I don't know, did something happen? I just looked at the plant and the sunflower and the sunshine and felt the joy of being at home, of having a home to come back to, or feeling safe, of having landed safely, so all of the miles we've traveled safely, and sheer gratitude from my home for my life. And then I got that feeling again, that feeling that everything's okay here, as well as in the Yorkshire Dales, that I don't need to go away to have that feeling, but that they're going away and they're playing with the practice of messing around with structures of days of the week and the security of knowing where we're going to be each evening. That that enriches my practice of bringing more and more ease into my day to day life. So I just want to share that with you because once again, my road trip has allowed me an even higher level of freedom and ease, one that I really couldn't have imagined even six months ago. I think I'm really really aware this year of an major upleveling in my life.

Speaker 1: 23:20

So what I'd really like to say for those of you who have read my book because one of my what you call it testimonial things on Amazon says about reading the book and my book's very short because I removed most things from it, so you're just left with the bits that you'd want to keep. So it's really easy to read, that you could read one sentence a day, so it's basically the opposite of overwhelming. It's every sentence is rich and you could take one sentence a day and that would nourish you for that day and you keep it by your bedside and it enables you to remember that the overwhelm and the ease coexist and there is always more ease, more feeling at home in yourself, more rightness with the world available to you. But it takes tiny practices, because this review says something like read the book really fast and thought is that it? And then went back and realised it's the tiny, huge life changing practices.

Speaker 1: 24:20

It's the commitment to yourself first, the commitment to finding more space for yourself, more ease, more joy, to resisting your well trodden path of pushing through overwhelm in order to feel at home in your life, in order to hold everything together into exhaustion, into snappy, grumpy, volcanic reactions and weird stuff going on with your body, where you just think it's not, it's failing you again. There's an alternative route this gentle rebellion. But because it's gentle, it's not about making wild declarations to yourself. It requires instead this secret, this internal gentle. It's an inside out game. This gentle rebellion, this commitment to yourself. I am done with overwhelm, I am done with pushing myself to exhaustion, I am done with not feeling at home in my life. I'm going to find my way of doing things, but my invitation to you is keep it gentle by doing the smallest thing possible because, by definition, doing bigger things is going to be more overwhelming. So it's doing it.

Speaker 1: 25:30

It's the how how can you create more ease? Well, ease isn't allowing. It's not something you can push for. It's a. To me, it's doing the tiny things that have the huge impact, particularly over time. So, for example, doing the one minute mark, you might do it for a week and think that was great and then look for the next thing. But actually, coming back to my free audio, the links below this and doing it again and again and again, that's actually where the freedom lies. In the same way as getting up and meditating every day, the freedom comes from the continual practice, practicing a commitment to ease, to finding a different way to move through your day, through your life. It's tiny, everyday practices. They work.

Speaker 1: 26:20

I've been on this for years, Particularly since five years ago when I had to do things differently. There's nothing like imploding your life to make you do things differently, because burning out completely meant I had no choice but to find an alternative way and there was no way I was doing it the normal way again, because that was too costly, too painful, I lost too much of myself. I was not prepared to do that again. I had to find another way. Finding that other way has worked for me. It works for my clients. That's what this podcast is about Finding your way to have it all and having it all by going small. It's really, really important. It's the tiny steps.

Speaker 1: 27:07

You might not think spending one minute neutrally noticing how you feel will have any impact. It's not working. It's not working. I need to make big changes. I really invite you to come back to tiny, huge, life-changing practices, and today's one would be where can I allow more ease into my life today? So, yes, I've shared with you some huge, life-expanding, incredible moments of ease by going on a road trip with this deliberate practice, but for you, you don't have to do that. Honestly, I just invite you to start where you are. I mean, do that. Obviously, do what you want. It's your life.

Speaker 1: 27:51

But I didn't get to hear from doing big things. I got to hear from doing tiny things, from mainly letting go of the need to make huge, life-changing, wildly disruptive, transformational, like shifts, like huge ones, and because I didn't have the energy for them. Instead, just this commitment to myself. First, how am I feeling today? What do I need to look after myself? Where's my space today? Where can I squeeze a moment of ease in? How how can I do this in the easiest possible way? How can I allow myself to feel more joy? It's all a letting go, a how, a squeezing the ease in, a noticing that the ease and the overwhelm exists. A challenging belief that I have to do something in order to feel at home, in order to feel safe, in order to feel where it is, in order to feel more joy, in order to feel more health, and just saying, no, I want that. Now it already exists.

Speaker 1: 28:47

My natural state of being is one of perfection, is one of just having this incredible self-healing body, of having a brilliant mind, a heart that can guide me. But all of those three things need to work together and it seems to require more skills. So what are those skills? What do they look like? Well, for me, it's neutral noticing, which combines meditation, mindfulness and brings it together in this simple, one-minute practice. Notice, completely neutrally, how you feel in any moment. It resets my nervous system. It allows me to gradually, over time, be able to pause and respond instead of reacting in an emotional outburst. Not always, not always.

Speaker 1: 29:35

I'm not some perfect Buddhist monk person going on road trips, gazing at sheep in fields and always feeling like that. We had arguments on the road trip? Of course we did. There's two people. Two people have different ideas of what they want to do. We were at cross purposes some of the time. I was on a mission, on a road trip practice.

Speaker 1: 29:56

My partner hasn't done this this way. He's done it on his own, though, but this is a new thing. This is two people together. There's new things to learn about each other. That's the nature of a relationship. It's not about For me, it's not about I'm perfect and therefore follow me. It's about I'm majorly screwed up, despite all my knowledge. Here's what I found out. This is working for me. Does this resonate with you? Would you like to come along and try it with me? If you would like more ease, try this. It's there for you. Notice it, allow it in, because you deserve it. Right, I'm off to go and have a coffee, gaze out my garden again, absorb more ease and freedom and then do some more work, because I love my life, I love my work and this is what I choose to do. Thanks for being here. See you next week. Lots of love. Bye, for more resources to help you gently rebel. Please visit my website, wwwheidymarkcouk.