There is something I have been trying to do since 2017.
And I have tried everything to achieve it.
I have thrown money at achieving the thing like I am Beyonce and have money to throw. I signed up for course after course. I paid for 1:1 coaching, peer coaching and group coaching. I told nobody, and I declared the thing on social media multiple times to the whole world. I tried therapy and hypnotherapy. I tried meditation courses, exercise and massage. I bought 10s of books repeatedly. I journaled and committed. I committed over and over and over again.
I tried every possible thing I could think of to get the thing done, apart from one; the bloody thing.
I went out of my way to climb a gargantuan metaphorical mountain of courses and coaches and cliches because the real one I faced was so intimidating that one step was impossible. I danced in the moonlight, laughed at the rain, and skirted around the edges to avoid the one thing I needed to do.
Now it is five years later, and I am tired. I have reached the top of the gargantuan mountain, and it is not all it’s cracked up to be. The promises were empty. The pounds none refundable, and the thing I was trying to avoid is still there. Still decidedly unachieved.
Because, no matter how hard I tried and committed and promised, all I was doing was avoiding. I was avoiding my feelings and myself. No amount of dancing, laughter or skirting would ever be enough unless I sat with what was uncomfortable.
When you face a sizeable personal challenge, there is no shortcut. There is no “quick fix”. There is no easy way out.
Until we sit with the things we are desperate to avoid, we stay exactly where we are. Yes, it is uncomfortable, yes, it feels like hell, and yes, it feels like you are drowning under a choppy sea of emotion, but the only way out is through. The only way out is right through the middle of the fire. The only way to move forward is to experience the feelings from which we are running. To put down our weapons, lower our gard sit with them. Let them be. Watch them. Be present with them. Notice they are fleeting and emerge on the other side. A smidgen closer to achieving the thing we are so desperate to achieve.
There is no alternative route; the only way out is through.