If you don’t have enough will-power or energy throughout the day, consider eliminating more friction from your life.
Friction is anything in your life that continues to slow you down, exhaust you, confuse you, or causes you some sort of grief or inconvenience. It’s a task, an interaction, or an event that continues to show up in your life and you’re all like “Ugh! This again??”
Put even more accurately, it’s not the thing itself but it’s your relationship with that thing. When something comes into your life regularly and you’re against it / in resistance to it, then this creates friction that burns up your energy.
In this article, I’ll share with you how to identify friction and shift it so that you can free up some more energy to move onto bigger and better things.
Friction burns up your mental and emotional resources
So when you encounter something that causes friction, it’s a tax on your energy. It leaves you depleted.
Example 1: Doing the dishes. You have to do the dishes but you dislike doing them. It’s boring, tedious, and you can’t get it done quickly enough.
Example 2: You live with someone with whom you have unpleasant interactions. Every time you speak — seemingly — the conversation goes in a bad direction and both of you are left feeling bitter, resentful, and misunderstood.
Example 3: Writer’s block (or any type of creative blockage). You had a sparking vision for a book or song or video series or script or business that you were going to create. But whenever you attempt to do it… it just doesn’t happen.
In each of these cases, the common thread is that you’re grinding your gears. One part of you is going one way, and the other part of you is going the other way. You’re physically doing the dishes but mentally waiting to get through them. You’re being as polite and as calm as you can be in this interaction. You’re trying to force yourself to create but something else seems to be “forcing back”.
In the end, no progress is made and you’re left even more depleted than before.
Dissolve the friction in order to reclaim your energy
Dissolving friction can take a handful of different forms. Here are a few:
1) Ask, what do I need to realize and accept?
What are you in denial of that you need to realize and accept? Maybe it’s that this person is the way they are, and you can’t change them. Maybe they’ll never change. In fact maybe you’re not appreciating your own contribution to the toxic nature of this relationship?
This is a very powerful practice. What needs to be finally seen and acknowledged? Something about the past? The present? What have you never really come to terms with? Maybe you can do that now?
To be in denial (or “disallowance”) of some aspect of reality is to create friction. You’ll never be able to access your greater creative power if you continue to carry this friction.
2) Cultivate a “yes” to something that you’re a “no” to.
What are you a “no” to? What aspect of your life are you closed off to? What are you committed to disliking or being against?
Maybe you can “be a yes” to washing the dishes. You can just take on a willingness to do the dishes without complaint. Maybe you might be willing to find something positive or enjoyable about it.
3) Listen to yourself, listen to the messages coming from within.
This applies especially to creative blocks. We’re so used to forcing ourselves to work, or diving into the guilt and shame of NOT working, that we don’t stop to ask what the blockage is about.
If you’re just procrastinating on some important work that would benefit your life — ask, why do I seem to hate doing this? Why is this so hard? What’s scary or threatening about this? What would it take to shift this?
Just pose these questions to yourself and wait silently for an answer. Trust what comes up, trust your intuition. You’ll be pointed in the right direction.
Summary
- Friction is what we create when we’re against some activity, task, interaction, or thing that comes into our experience.
- Friction is caused by this mental resistance against this thing. It creates negative emotion and thinking.
- When we resolve this friction, we can more effectively move on improving the situation itself.- We resolve friction by accepting what needs to be accepted, allowing what needs to be allowed, and saying ‘yes’ to whatever we’ve been in denial of.
- If we don’t know why there’s friction, it’s helpful to stop and ask ourselves questions like “what the hell is going on here? Why is this so difficult for me? Why do I keep procrastinating on this?”
- The more we release friction, the freer and light and lovelier our experience can start to be.
Hope this helps!
Brent
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