Balance Effort & Ease

Starting from a place of recognizing that you are 100% valuable and 100% loved, it’s critical to acknowledge the balance required in our lives. There is a fine interplay between taking action and allowing rest. Expanding this concept beyond caring for our physical bodies can serve us emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

Main points: 

• It takes intentionality to notice when effort is required and when we need to lean back and have a season (or moment) of ease
• What are ten things you want to do in the next decade of your life that require effort?
• Decide that effort means an opportunity to grow 
• Healthy growth won’t happen unless the effort is balanced with regular ease and rest

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Chapters

• 0:05 Noticing Effort and Ease
• 13:23 Vibrant Life With Effort and Ease

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm Life Coach Kelly Tibbets, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness so that you can invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Hey friends, today we're going to be talking about a tool that I hope will help you this holiday season and also in the month to come. When I think about the tool where we notice with love, I think about becoming someone who studied a little bit of yoga about six years ago, and when I first began to go to yoga, I had a lot of thoughts about it, and many of the thoughts were that it was too hard and I wasn't going to be able to do any of the more difficult practices. And I was just really gifted to have some amazing yoga instructors who really were confident in their advice to me, to listen to my own body and to learn what I felt like I wanted to lean into. And I think that was the first somatic practice that I was exposed to, which meant I began to notice did my arms want to move, did my legs feel like there was a stretch that was needed, and one of my favorite yoga instructors and I will leave a little link over to the podcast that she was a guest on taught me this phrase to notice the effort and the ease that life involves both of these different types of energy. There are times in life when we need to sort of lean in and have effort, and there are times in life where rest is required and we need to notice that it's time for ease, and so I don't know if that's something you've ever thought about notice the effort in the ease. But that is the phrase that I thought could serve us as we go into the holiday season. Let's notice, with love, the effort in the ease. So let's start from a place of love. If you're safe to do so, close your eyes, put your hand on your heart, take a few of those deep breaths and as you do I want you to hear me you are 100% loved. There is nothing more required. You are made in the image of God. You are 100% valuable just by breathing in and breathing out, and, at the same time, I believe you are made on purpose, for a purpose. I think there's work that you do, a mission that has been given to you that the world needs, and so both effort and ease are required. But I think the effort needs to begin by noticing with love how incredibly valuable you already are. One of my favorite pastors is on Instagram as the walking pastor, and she says it like this you are God's favorite, and so is everyone else.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Can you imagine if we walked through life noticing with love where effort is required, where we need to lean back and have a season of ease and held that same grace for everyone else? That's where I think holiday harmony would really happen If we were in any kind of family relationship. We're sitting around the dining room table, we're sitting together in a living room watching a sports game, and everyone in this space knew to the core of who they are, that they are 100% loved, 100% valuable nothing more is required and, at the same time, walking that narrow road of realizing they were made on purpose for a purpose and we're full of that desire to live out of mission life, I think we'd be full of grace, we would be kind and loving, and so those are some of the reasons behind why I'm a life coach. I want the whole world to walk from a place of knowing that they're loved, so that we can go out and love one another. As a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ, that's what I think. The core message is that we were made in the image of God, that we are 100% loved. Nothing more is required and we get to go out and love others as we love ourselves. And so I think part of being people who love ourselves well begins with this noticing what requires effort, what requires ease, and noticing that you need them both. So effort is anything you're doing that provides an opportunity to grow.

Speaker 1: 4:26

It is really easy as we get older to stop doing things that require effort. It's easier to stop doing things that are hard because we have all kinds of thoughts about it and all kinds of feelings, and I Just want to remind you that if one of the feelings when you try something new is shame, shame and guilt are very different. Guilt is I did something wrong and I should stop, and that's a really good thing for our body to tell us if we are doing something that injures others or injures ourselves. We should feel that feeling called guilt and it should help us to stop. But shame is completely different. Shame says that you're not 100% valuable. You're not 100% love. Something you did moved you away from that and that's simply not true. And so what if you were able to notice when your thought Required your body to produce some feeling called shame, and you could just see it there and say, oh hello, I see you. I'm not going to listen to you, I'm gonna allow you to move through my body and leave and and Still did the hard work of trying something new, of being somebody willing to put in some effort.

Speaker 1: 5:28

If you Took a piece of paper right now and wrote down the numbers one to ten, what are ten things you want to do in the next decade of your life that require effort? You might not know how to do it yet, or it requires more effort than you currently are putting towards that goal. What would it look like in your life to notice from a place of love that that goal is important and you're willing to put in the time and the energy To think, the power thoughts to feel any feeling and to take the small action steps to create those results? I think life would be incredibly vibrant if we were producing the results that are important to us, even if there is no urgency. So I'll share a few of mine. I want to be strong when I'm 75. That's one of my power thoughts, so that requires me exercising and eating healthy food. It requires me To not drink a ton of diet coke so can end up with like bad edicts. What do you notice about one of your goals?

Speaker 1: 6:27

Now, one of the things that I want in my life when I'm strong at 75 is I want to be flexible and I want to be able to move, and so the other week I had the opportunity to go play pickleball for the first time, and I am surrounded by people who love pickleball Whether it's coaches that I follow, just friends, like it just seems to be sweeping the people that I learned from, and so I Both wanted to do it, and it would require effort that I didn't know if I could Produce the energy needed, and so a dear friend of mine invited me to come. She had the paddle for me to borrow, and I barely slept the night before because I was so nervous about who are these people going to be and how great were they going to be at it, and would I be able to hold my own, and I was terrible, but I've never had more fun. The people were so kind, they were so gracious, and Having fun at that kind of level was so new to me. I don't remember the last time I had fun like that. It was more fun than anything I could think of. You know is more fun than playing like a game of kickball, which for me still felt very, very uncomfortable. Pickleball felt like just kind of fun in, almost easy. It wasn't easy lots of rules, lots of things to learn, but there was an ease to it. But in order to even see that I would enjoy it, I had to put some effort.

Speaker 1: 7:42

And so what if we decided that effort means an opportunity to grow? Is that something important to you? Are you open and receptive to the idea that you could continue to grow for the next decade, the next 25 years? That's what I want in my life. I don't want to be stagnant and I definitely don't want to go backwards. I want to think new power thoughts, I want to feel feelings, I want to live a vibrant life and I want to do brave, creative, purpose-filled action steps. So that's going to require effort. At the same time, what's the other side of the coin? It is putting in so much effort that we never allow ourselves to fill our own soul with sunshine and experience the ease that life was meant to have as well.

Speaker 1: 8:25

So as I'm recording it, this podcast, it is the fall, and living in New England in the fall is often like breathtakingly beautiful, and it's kind of interesting. This year the colors are a little bit more muted, we had a lot of rain, but there really are these just like breathtaking scenes every now and then where the wind will hit a tree and the leaves will start to fall. And so it takes work on my part, takes effort, to enjoy the ease of a sunny day with the fall leaves falling on the grass, because it's very, very pretty to see grass filled with leaves. But can you think of a few thoughts that could keep me from just sitting there and enjoying it? Like there's housework to do, there's yard work to do, there's coaching work to do, and so it both takes a little bit of effort for me to just decide to sit still and enjoy the beauty of the season and then, once I can get into that place, to allow myself to be comfortable and enjoy the ease.

Speaker 1: 9:19

And so the big idea of this podcast is I would love for you to believe this that it is valuable for us to have both effort, that opportunity to grow and ease in our life. And so, as we go into the holiday season, deciding in advance what you want to think, how you want to feel, what you want to say yes to and what you want to say no to, is really important to create results. Now there are two things in life that we need to accept. There are two things in life that we cannot change. We must accept the things that we cannot change. We're not in charge of the circumstances of our life and we're not actually in charge of the results in our life. You have seen this before where you've done 10 action steps that should result in the result you want and yet, from something outside of your control, that result didn't happen. We are in charge of three things we have the ability to create brave, creative, purpose-filled thoughts. We are in charge of our feelings and processing those, and we are in charge of taking small actions.

Speaker 1: 10:18

And so to feel effort as an opportunity to grow, that thought this effort is an opportunity to grow is going to create some feelings in your body that will serve you. It's going to be energetic, energetic and enthusiastic, and then choosing a thought like ease allows me to be comfortable, to rest, to fill my soul with sunshine. Thoughts like that will allow your body to, instead of feeling frustrated when you're sitting still, looking at the sun, to allow your body to enjoy it, to receive, to be still. And the goal really truly in life is to find those aligned thoughts that are creating the powerful feelings that allow you to say the yeses and the noes that you want in order to create the results of your life, allowing, at the same time, the open-handedness of we don't know when or where or how results may be created. It's a really interesting dance of two steps forward and three steps back.

Speaker 1: 11:12

And are we going to ever have perfect power thoughts every day? No, how human of us. Are we going to notice and process every feeling? No, but having a coaching community allows us a safe space for someone else to help us notice the thoughts and feelings that coaching has transformed my life. I would not be this version of myself without the coaches that have poured into me, and that's why I come every single week and share a tool with you and, at the same time, invite you to join my community, especially as we go into the holiday season, because what depletes us is the relationship with the people that we love, but they think thoughts so different from the thoughts that you think, and their feelings and your feelings don't always feel like a match, and their decisions and action steps whether it's to say something, to not say something, to do something, may be completely different from what you would say or you would do.

Speaker 1: 12:04

And so the harmony is believing that all of these different voices and all of these different energies create beauty, that we're not meant to all be 100% the same and right, holding the boundary of when people are not treating you as 100% loved, 100% valuable. You don't need to make space in your life for them to be unkind and disrespectful and dishonoring. All of this work is nuanced, I think. As humans, we wish that life was more clear. This is the right thing to do. This is the wrong thing to do. I'm going to say yes when you say no, but rarely is it true that there's this dichotomy.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Normally, the healthy part is when we're able to notice the nuance. Sometimes we need effort, sometimes we need ease, and often it's on the same day or in the same project. Sometimes we need to lean in and advocate and sometimes we need to lean out and support voices around us. So, as you go into the holiday season, what would I love for you to remember? Start by noticing from a place of love and if you don't feel like at this moment, your nervous system is regulated enough to be feeling love just aligned in your body, put your hands on your heart, close your eyes, take those deep breaths and remember who you are. You are so precious and so loved From that space of knowing how loved you are.

Speaker 1: 13:23

What do you need? Do you need effort? Do you need ease and how human? You're going to need both. I'll be back next week and I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you for joining the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encouraged you and equipped you with some tools to move towards your vibrant life. To learn more or join my coaching community, you can visit my website at kellytibetscom or follow me on Instagram and Facebook. I look forward to connecting with you. Thank you, всего you.