How To Stop Holding Yourself Back
What happens when we're holding ourselves back?
It’s a maddening feeling, right?
Perhaps you’re doing all the “right things” and yet you still find yourself making barely any forward progress. What’s worse is that the progress you do make feels like a draining slog.
The good news is…
We can discover a lot about what's going on behind the scenes when we take the body’s point of view into account.
I'll put it in perspective for you.
There's a client of mine that I've been working with, who is looking to grow her business. She set an ambitious goal for herself of doubling her revenue year over year. And she has made great progress so far, but at this point she has hit a ceiling. She's at a point where she feels like she's quite literally holding herself back: a lot of self sabotage, a lot of inner critic, a lot of procrastination on the important things.
She was surprised to find out that her body actually had a lot to say about this particular situation.
Keep in mind that the body and mind are fundamentally connected. And the primary function underneath all of this — regardless of the goals we set for ourselves, regardless of how many likes we get on Facebook, regardless of any of the little things that we might care about in the world — what the body is primarily concerned with is safety, security, and survival.
That comes first.
When we're looking at a lot of these unconscious patterns, they start to make a lot more sense from the perspective of safety, survival and security. After all the unconscious is fundamentally embodied. What that means is…
Those little unconscious patterns that run the show in the background day after day are made manifest in the body.
Let's consider what's going on when someone is actually holding themselves back…
One of the most common signs is that they have a significant forward head position, leading to a lot of tension along the neck and back. Their body is — quite literally — holding back.
The idioms don’t stop there.
These people often find that they’re getting ahead of themselves. At times it’s like they can’t quite keep up with themselves, as if they were rushing headlong - at the risk of falling flat on their faces.
Of course the body would brace against that!
What's happening here is that the body's getting a sense that they're trying to do something beyond their current capacity. They're trying to take action when they don't have the adequate support in place. And we've got to keep in mind again that if the body senses a threat, it's going to put the brakes on as a protective measure.
Why?
The body and the unconscious are conservative.
They don’t take wild risks very easily.
This tension along the back of the body is a really easy telltale cue for you.
Here’s a gut-check for you.
Take a moment to tune into what you notice about your body..
How tall do you feel?
How easy does your breath come?
How much space do you take up?
Now…
Think about the goals you have for yourself.
Wherever it is that you feel like you're holding yourself back. Perhaps it’s a revenue goal you have for your business. Maybe it’s a change you want to make in a stuck habit that isn’t working for you any more.
As you think about it, notice in that moment…
What happens to your posture?
What happens to your alignment as you think about that vision you have set for yourself? How does the sense of space you take up change? What happens to your breathing?
Odds are good that if you feel like you consistently hold yourself back, then you probably collapse somewhere within yourself. And you may also find that you brace some muscles as a result. In order to keep you safe and upright your body has to engage these muscles.
The back of the body is screaming signals at you.
See, the front body is primarily oriented toward the “doing” parts of yourself:
Where you’re going…
What you’re up to or looking forward to…
What you’re focused on…
Culturally speaking, we have a huge emphasis on the “doing” parts of our lives, right?
The back of the body on the other hand is all about “resourcing.” It's the stuff that supports your doing:
Your friends, family, teachers, and guides…
Your faith and cultural heritage…
Your evolutionary lineage as a human being, a part of the living world…
These are the forces that can surge you forward.
When you lose touch with those, it's very difficult to do things effectively, right? It's hard to act in an effective way when you're disconnected from your sense of support.
You've seen those people who, despite their best efforts are just perpetually slumped forward. It's like they're always needing to catch themselves, or run headlong to keep up with themselves. And for folks like that it's only a matter of time before they fall flat on their face.
That is not a good way to be.
That's where we get burnout and overwhelm coming into play.
And it’s so easily avoidable if you just can find a way to reconnect to your sense of support.
Now, this is challenging for a lot of people because again, culturally speaking, we're so consumed with this “doing” side. And for a lot of people it can be seen as a sign of weakness to connect to a sense of support. There's a sense of guilt around it - or laziness, It feels a little too self-indulgent to give ourselves a break.
We don't have our own backs.
This is especially true for high-performers and high-achievers, the people that are doing and striving and reaching for all of this stuff in front of them. It's easy to lose sight of how to have your own back.
Whenever you catch yourself with that creeping tension along the back, here’s what to do…
Here’s how to find more support for your goals.
Let’s clear one option off the table…
It certainly isn’t a matter of doing more of the same, right?
Sure, you could try harder, you could push yourself further, you could willpower your way through it. However, I’m willing to bet that you recognize at this point: that’s a short-lived strategy without much shelf-life.
Instead, I’d like to share a few simple ways to reconnect to your internal sense of support.
That way you’re better able to leverage your talents - so you can get more done in less time with greater ease.
Think again about that challenge that you’re up against, that goal that has you holding yourself back.
1) Ask yourself, “Why am I not worse off?”
When most people run into a challenge, they throw up their hands and ask,
“Why is this such a mess right now?”
It’s not a very constructive line of inquiry. You'll think of a zillion reasons, right? Instead what you can do is ask the inverse, which is: why am I not worse off?
If I look at my business, for example, I've got a pretty lofty goal set for myself at this point, and I'm not there yet. But I can ask myself, “why am I not worse off?”
Right away I begin to find supporting resources:
There are about 13,000 people who may see this when I post it,
I have a handful of private clients that I love working with at this point,
I have a team of teachers and mentors and guides I could call on for support,
I have an inspiring group of friends and peers and colleagues that I can bounce ideas around with,
Low overhead on my business by and large,
What you start to do when you ask a question like that is you orient yourself to the untapped resources within your environment. You stop looking for the gaps, the problems, and all of the insufficiencies. You reconnect to a sense of awareness of what you have available to work with.
A quick point of clarification…
This isn’t merely to come up with gratitude journal. By all means, be grateful for those things.
But what you're looking for with this is what hidden levers you can start to pull in your environment. What are the immediate things in your situation that you can start to leverage more effectively? Who can you rely on? What can you make better use of?
You cultivate this sense of a well-resourced foundation, and you can leverage that moving forward.
Take 5-10 minutes to write down for yourself your own resources for the challenge at hand.
Next…
2) Reconnect to the back of your body.
This one is trickier to put into words.
So I’ll simply link in a guided audio example for you.
You’ll need some empty space to lie comfortably on the floor and about 20 minutes.
(Yes, 20 minutes. You’ll save yourself hours of ineffective effort later on.)
Afterwards check in…
What's different now about you, you as a body, you as a person? What's different now compared to when you began? Is there something different about your state your mood?
Think about that challenge you found yourself up against, the one where you hold yourself back.
What’s different about your sense of the challenge now?
A lot of people are surprised to find that when they reconnect to that sense of back-body awareness, the challenges don't quite seem so challenging.
Often it's our mental chatter, our perception of the challenge, that is actually the biggest part of the challenge.
With that in mind let’s take it one step further…
3) Eliminate your prime constraints.
The same client who inspired this post was having this challenge around doubling her business revenue.
She felt like she was holding herself back.
And as I discussed earlier, she was very unaware of the back of herself. It wasn't until she started going to CrossFit that she noticed much of anything there.
I asked her in terms of her business goals,
“What's the immediate, limiting constraint that's keeping you from making the forward progress you know you could?”
In her case, the biggest constraint was a sense of how unorganized she was. She felt like she had the right team, was training the right people, and had a number of new B2B prospects she could approach.
It was so ready to go, but the lack of organization on her part was really keeping her business from growing.
Finding this prime constraint is critical.
There are a zillion things that might be impeding your progress toward your goal. But what is the immediate thing right in front of you? Quite often that the the hidden goldmine lies in the elusive obvious, the things that you haven't yet seen.
When you’ve identified what your prime constraint is, you’re able to hone your focus. You can then determine what possible steps would clear that obstacle for you (ideally you only solve each problem once).
What do you imagine is the simplest possible solution to removing that specific constraint?
The simpler, the better (as long as it’s not too simple).
What we’re looking for here is action. Find the smallest possible step you’re willing to take in order to remove your prime constraint. And after you’ve removed that constraint, take a moment to pause.
This is no time to rush madly ahead once again.
Reflect on the small bits of progress every step of the way. Orient yourself to the next prime constraint, and take it on only when you’re certain that you have your own back once again.
