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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
[00:00:00] Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way from emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness. Coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live, rise up live.
Joy your way. Hi there. Welcome to their episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time. To spend here with me. And today I wanna talk about a challenging skill. I know that I have definitely been challenged by this, and it's the art of letting go.
And this isn't about giving up hope, uh, or giving up in general. It's about finding the strength in releasing our tight grip on things that we can't control, and [00:01:00] embracing emotional resilience. So let me ask you this. Have you ever found yourself trying to manage every detail or every outcome? Of every moment, or maybe you wanna have, you wanna have the certainty of knowing how something is gonna, something's gonna turn out.
Almost as if that, if you can hold on, you know, if you, if you control it, it's all gonna be okay. I think we see this happen in our relationships. I think some of us see it in our career. Uh, some of us see it in the, our children's decisions that they make and that tight grip that we have actually drains us of our emotional health and wellbeing.
'cause it's actually exhausting. And I just wanna say there's no judgment here. I understand it deeply because I absolutely have dealt with. Stealing the need to control, especially when things didn't evolve the way that I had envisioned them to. And I would beat myself up thinking that I had dropped the ball somehow.
But the uncomfortable truth that I discovered is actually the more tightly that I was holding on, the more [00:02:00] anxious and my anxious and overwhelmed, I felt my anxiety would go through the roof because I was. So, so attached to how something was going to, to occur, and I don't know if you've experienced this, maybe you have, but I think a lot of us, I, at least with my clients, they've said even the most perfectly laid out plans seem to have something go wrong.
And then that creates a sense of panic. So I wanna see if we can maybe liberate us ourselves a little bit. You know, really recognize that emotional resilience isn't about. Perfect outcomes or absolute control. Our resiliency is actually how gracefully and how self compassionately we are and how we respond when things don't go according to plan.
It is about learning that the powerful art of letting go, and when I'm saying letting go, I'm saying releasing the control. The, the story or the vision that's popping into my head as I'm saying this, is I just recall teaching my [00:03:00] son to drive, and I remember him gripping that steering wheel and every time he'd make even the slightest movement, I.
The car would completely shift. And I started to feel carsick after a while and I remember saying, you know, just, it's actually okay if you loosen the grip on the steering wheel. And as he loosened the grip, you know, the car didn't shake as much. He felt like he had actually more control when his grip was a little bit looser.
And so that's the best metaphor that I can think of. You know, when I'm. Talking about this is sometimes the less grip we have on something, the more ability we have to actually maneuver and it actually feels better, but. There's a reason why letting go feels difficult for us, and it's because often we feel like if we, if we loosen that grip, if we loosen the grip on the steering wheel, so to speak, it's, we feel uncertain.
There's this sense of uncertainty and we fear the uncertainty. We feel pain. We fear disappointment. We fear loss. So [00:04:00] we, we hold on tighter, but it's that more control that we exert. It's actually. The less secure we feel over time, right? Because we actually end up driving ourselves a little anxious and a lot anxious, and we end up creating more overwhelm.
So I wanna just offer this. Exercise for you, uh, for you to just think through, you know, well, how do we shift from this place of holding on so tightly? You know, some of us are visual people, and so maybe it would be beneficial for you to, you know, visualize something or to bring to the mind's eye something that you've been holding onto or being, you know, that you feel like you've been gripping tightly.
And as you bring it to your mind's eye, actually see if you can visualize what it would look like to just loosen the control or loosen the grip. Around what it is that you've been trying to control. And as you're visualizing this, just take that deep calming breath and, and as you're visualizing it, see yourself opening maybe even your [00:05:00] hands or opening, uh, or releasing the tension.
So for those of you who do better visually, that could be an, an opportunity or a way to practice. Letting go. And if you do that, you know, routinely, you visualize letting go routinely, what happens is you're building that muscle for you to consciously choose to release control or release the the need to control something.
'cause as you're visualizing it, you're teaching your mind, you're building that muscle so that it becomes a mindset shift and you're able to create that sense of inner peace. For those of us, I, I mean, visualization is something that I've, I've learned to build the muscle around, but some of us can't do it visually.
And so I would say that if you're able to journal, uh, and write things down, it can be a huge. A tool, a very helpful tool because if you can take some time each day to write down what your fears are or what your concerns are around the thing that you are controlling and that you're holding onto, what ends up [00:06:00] happening is you create space between the thoughts and the fears that you're having and.
The, the thing that you're trying to control. You create space between those two things, but you're also creating space between your thoughts and, and yourself. So you're able to step into observer mode and you're able to recognize that maybe those are fears, that if you, if you complete the thought loop, for instance, and you ask yourself, okay, you know, like for instance, if I'm afraid that if I let go, if I don't.
Control every aspect of what my daughter does in terms of her college applications. I'm afraid that she's not gonna get into a good school, and then I scare myself by saying that she's not gonna be able to, you know, be successful. When we can see there's space between that, we can actually see that, that, well, that's not, that's not true.
I don't have to actually control every single thing my daughter does because my control over it doesn't necessarily depend on whether she's gonna get into a school or not really. The person in the middle, my daughter, and where she wants to get, like, there's, there's so much [00:07:00] room within that, and really if I control it, I'm actually increasing my own anxiety and thereby increasing her anxiety.
And that actually creates it. It makes it harder for us to even get through this whole college application process. So I wanna just say and remind you that this isn't about. When I'm saying letting go or releasing the tension that you're holding onto, it's not about resigning yourself or passivity. So in that last example, I'm not saying we don't care about our college, our daughter's college applications.
We're just saying maybe I don't have to hold on so tightly and control every aspect of it, and I can give her a little bit of room to, you know, maybe. Decide when she wants to take the SAT or the a CTI don't have to determine every single, you know, date for, for every test that she takes. I can ask her when would be a good time for her and, and open up a discussion around it.
When we don't let go, what we end up doing is we create more overwhelm within ourselves. So what letting go does is it actually gives us the ability to [00:08:00] make choice and to acknowledge where and what even is within our control. Uh, and we are able to redirect our energy towards things that we actually can manage.
'cause oftentimes we're holding on so tightly, we're trying to control things that aren't even in our control. We're trying to control other people, for instance, or their responses. But what we do have within our control is how we choose to respond. Bond. We do have the ability to process through our own emotions.
We do have ownership over our own perspective and that allows us to adapt and to cope with circumstances when we, when we are able to separate those two things. So again, what I wanna just get across today is that resilience arises when we accept that life's outcomes aren't always ours to own control and dictate, but are.
Response is something we can own and that gives us a sense of freedom and it, and it allows us to have that freedom from not holding on so tightly. If you would like to explore how coaching could help you, maybe if you find yourself. [00:09:00] Being, you know, in this place of needing control and actually being really fearful.
If you don't have control, coaching can absolutely help work through that and, and, and help you understand yourself on that deeper level so you can move through it. 'cause at the end of the day, it could be the thing that's holding you back. If you would like to explore that, feel free to book a time with me anytime@coachwithKamini.com.
And until next time, stay well. Thank you for listening to Rise Up Live, joy your way for more information. Book a chat with Kamini@www.chat with Kamini.com, or visit her website@www.com wood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram. Username, it's authentic me. Thank you for listening.