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There are times when life looks fine on the outside - work is flowing, relationships are steady - yet something inside feels muted. A quiet flatness.That subtle hum of “blah.”In this solo episode, Barb explores how that feeling can often be a sign that we’ve drifted into our minds, narrating, managing, and interpreting life instead of living it directly.Drawing on a James Joyce quote, “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body,” she reflects on how our mental protectors, once useful, can begin to constrict the very aliveness we long for.Through story and reflection, Barb invites you to notice where you might be living one step removed and to rediscover what happens when you let life in, not as something to fix or improve, but as an opening to more connection, richness, and felt presence.“Maybe the question isn’t how do I live more fully, but how much life am I willing to let in - even when it stirs me?”Thank you for listening to the Innerverse of Business and Life Podcast. For more resources like this, visit Barb's website at Barbarapatterson.com (https://barbarapatterson.com/).SHOW NOTES* [00:00] - Letting Life In: An Introduction* [01:41] - The Distance from Our Bodies* [04:23] - The Protection of Observation* [06:02] - The Impact of Internal Guards* [09:21] - The Call to Aliveness* [12:34] - Exploring Direct ExperienceSHOW LINKSSubscribe to the podcast on YouTube Follow Barb on LinkedinFollow Barb on Instagram
There are times when life looks fine on the outside - work is flowing, relationships are steady - yet something inside feels muted. A quiet flatness.
That subtle hum of “blah.”
In this solo episode, Barb explores how that feeling can often be a sign that we’ve drifted into our minds, narrating, managing, and interpreting life instead of living it directly.
Drawing on a James Joyce quote, “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body,” she reflects on how our mental protectors, once useful, can begin to constrict the very aliveness we long for.
Through story and reflection, Barb invites you to notice where you might be living one step removed and to rediscover what happens when you let life in, not as something to fix or improve, but as an opening to more connection, richness, and felt presence.
“Maybe the question isn’t how do I live more fully,
but how much life am I willing to let in - even when it stirs me?”
Thank you for listening to the Innerverse of Business and Life Podcast. For more resources like this, visit Barb's website at Barbarapatterson.com.
This podcast is a space to explore the profound connection between our inner world and our work in the world. We dive deep into the heart of what it means to live and work from a felt knowing of our essential selves – aligned, alive, and fully expressed. We’ll play at the intersection of business, spirituality, consciousness, and growth.
Through intimate conversations with thought leaders, change-makers, authors, and humans just like you and me, you’ll hear real stories of transformation and the internal shifts, “aha” moments, and wake-up calls that have helped them to access new dimensions of creativity, higher levels of intelligence, unlock dormant potentials and experience greater joy and fulfillment.
Barb Patterson (00:56)
Hi, welcome back to the Interverse of Business and Life. I'm Barb Patterson. In today's solo episode, I want to share an exploration that has opened up new levels of connection, fulfillment, and richness in my life. I'm calling it Letting Life In. Last week in a webinar that I was co-leading with Isla Coats, a participant shared a quote by James Joyce from the book The Dubliners. It's Mr. Duffy lived a short
distance from his body. Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. Now, that line really resonated. I could relate because it named something I could see in myself and in others. There are definitely times when I'm living a short distance from my own life.
from my body, from the pulse of what's here right now. I'm moving through the days, through what I love, showing up fully, but somehow slightly above it, not dropped in I'm thinking about life more than feeling life.
I'm observing myself instead of being in it. And for a while that distance feels normal, fine, even comfortable.
But last year, I was going through a period where I started to notice this faint hum underneath everything, this subtle flatness, a feeling of blah. Like something was alive but uninhabited inside of me, that I was alive. I was going through the motions of my life but not really getting touched by it. And I started to talk about this in the webinar last week, how I'd been moving through a stretch of
Looking like everything was fine on the outside, but inside I felt muted. Not sad, not anxious, just blah.
But thankfully through good friends and my own reflection, I saw, I had a realization that the flatness wasn't about my external life. It was about my internal life, where I was living from inside myself. I was in my mind all the time interpreting life, narrating it, managing it,
Instead of letting myself feel it directly, instead of a direct experience of life, I was one step removed observing it. Now that's where the James Joyce quote came in. It was a perfect way to say what I had begun to see for myself. The realization that living one step removed even a little bit impacts our ability to have a more felt experience of life and the people in our lives.
What I've been seeing more clearly since then is how lately that pattern of being one step removed, of observing life, interpreting it, the mind, it's what a mind does, right? But what I've been seeing is how my mind actually does this as a form of protection.
you know, and I can see that in an honest way, that level of protection was valuable for me at times. You know, it helped me navigate uncertainty. It helped me navigate the unknown. â It helped me improve at times.
But what had started out as a possible helpful protection or helpful tool ultimately started to become a way of life. And as it moved more and more in that direction, it was no longer helpful.
What I didn't realize is that the very thing meant to protect me was also creating distance from my own aliveness, from intimacy, from the rawness of being here and being human.
My friend Kay recently told me a story that brought this home. She and her husband Ian have just bought a piece of land in Scotland and they're bringing it back to life.
On it is this orchard of trees, and these trees have guards on them. They are plastic and they have cable ties, and they were put there what looks like years and years ago. And those protectors, those tree guards, are important when trees are young. It helps them survive the early years.
Now, because they've been on there for years, it meant the trees were growing with the protectors around them.
When she finally removed them, she saw raw marks underneath, scars where the trees had been pressed and twisted against its restraints. And the guards had actually shaped the way the trees grew. It caused them to grow in different direction or to get those tree bumps. I don't know what the technical term for that is, but hopefully you get the visual.
What's interesting is even with the protection, the trees kept growing. They're resilient. They're still alive and they're strong.
When she shared that, that image stayed with me. First, just interesting to me that the trees kept growing and evolving. I mean, that's just their nature. That's what trees do, which is what we do as well. The protection and the guards weren't blocking growth or evolution, and ours don't either. However, the internal guards we have are impacting our experiences.
just like those guards were impacting the way the tree grew. That's what we do with our minds. We keep the old protectors long after we've outgrown them. So being one step removed from life made sense when I was young and there was a lot of things going on around me and...
I had learned how to observe and check out situations. Like that has served me in so many ways. It's one of the reasons I think I do what I do and why I feel like I've honed that ability to read people, to connect, to listen deeply. But what I'm sharing with you today is when that gift starts to get overused in a way, it's like a protection or a skill that â stays on too long.
So when life starts to expand us, those protectors, those old mental habits and defenses start to pinch. And for me, they pinched as blah and uninspired. So we often think of expansion as uncomfortable or moving into the unknown as scary or trying something new is what makes us uncomfortable. But what I think might be an interesting thing to consider, thinking about the trees,
What if the discomfort isn't in the expansion itself? Again, that's our nature. Maybe it's in the resistance, the effort of holding on to those protections that no longer fit.
When I noticed that sense of blah, that feeling, I could feel the bind and the constraint in it. I could also see my mind trying to help me out to interpret it. I would feel that and then I would go into trying to problem solve and fix it. And thankfully what happened again through
the gift of good friends and some guidance and remembering was, â what if rather than trying to interpret the blah and trying to understand it intellectually, I just allowed myself into the sensation of it, into the feeling of it. And what started to happen was naturally then I started to feel more movement. I started to feel more the aliveness.
The blah was coming from one step removed, not from anything wrong on the outside.
So that protection of one step removed when it's no longer needed actually feels constricting and binding and for me, blah.
It was constricting the very energy of life that I was meant to feel. So what might life be showing me? What would happen if I didn't have all these conditioned protectors, the ones that say, don't be too vulnerable, don't get it wrong, don't want too much? If I let those protectors go, what would life offer me? What might I be available to if I allowed myself to be more in my life versus one step?
remove trying to understand it or fix it or interpret it or guarantee a certain outcome.
What might be there if we all made ourselves more available to life, to expansion and to the moment? You know, we crave fulfillment and connection, expansion and aliveness, yet we try to sort it out first, think it through. Perhaps with the illusion, like me, that thinking about it will guarantee a certain outcome or a smoother ride. We want to move in the direction of a fuller life or work that has more meaning, but the mind tricks us into thinking that
We need to be safe first. We need to know what to expect. We need to know what action we're going to take. We need to know the outcome. Or we need to feel confident or assured before we take action. And yet, there's a price we pay
when we really no longer need them.
For instance, perhaps you'd like more intimacy in your life or a relationship, but then you resist the feeling of vulnerability or self-consciousness or the feeling of feeling exposed. Yet intimacy, the thing we crave is all those things. And there's something profoundly beautiful about being with another just as we are in any moment. Perhaps you want to step into a new expression in your work or change jobs.
make a big change in your life, but then you protect yourself from that feeling.
the sensations that come along with change or being seen or not knowing how to do something or getting caught wanting what you want.
Yet what if it's the aliveness of it all that is actually calling to you, asking you to meet life and all that it has to offer in a more meaningful and feeling full way. I realized that's what the next journey was for me. That inner realization that I had gotten into a habit of one step removed offered me an opportunity with consciousness and intention to help myself
by being more in life, what would I learn by having more of a direct felt experience of what life was offering rather than trying to direct it all with my mind or interpret it all with my mind? What's available in the direction of aliveness?
what's available in that full-bodied participation with life, even if it stirs me, even when it's uncomfortable. Now that I could feel, I could even now in talking about it and sharing it with you, I can feel the yes inside of that. And then the mind will come in and say, but right?
Well, I think it's helpful to know that this isn't another thing to do or fix about yourself. This is simply an exploration to see what's possible. What do I discover about life? What do I feel when I allow myself to be more available for the aliveness versus trying to orchestrate, control, or manage it all via my thinking?
For me, in a way, it was a remembering. As soon as I saw it, thought fell away and I naturally just dropped into a knowing. I naturally dropped into a more felt experience. And then what I started to be able to do in a more nuanced and helpful way was recognize when I was living from my mind or when I'm living from my mind versus in my body.
interpreting rather than just allowing the felt experience of the moment. Now, I love my mind. I love our intellect. I love all the ways we can dream into possibilities and all of that. But again, it was something I had overused or become more comfortable in that than in
the aliveness of dropping in and letting life in, being touched by life. And I could feel in a deeper way the desire for more of that. So in those moments, I do what I can to just drop in, return to the body, to breathe, to allow, to feel sensation. Because what I am seeing more and more is that by letting life in,
what happens naturally and I don't try and hold off certain kinds of experiences, there is definitely more inspiration, more connection, more richness in that direction.
So blah wasn't showing me something I had to change on the outside. It was showing me I had removed myself by living more in my mind, more in my thinking. So maybe the question isn't how do I live more fully, but how much life am I willing to let in even when it stirs us, even when it's uncomfortable?
Like that tree, we keep growing either way. That's the good news. But when the old protectors finally fall away, even for a moment, life can touch more of us and we can touch more of life. As always, thank you so much for being here, for listening and walking this path along with me. If you know anyone that would benefit from this episode, please share it. I'm so grateful to you and I look forward to the next time.