Everything happens in cycles. Seasons, life, growth, etc. The more we can understand how to ride those cycles, expand upon them, and build the capacity to remain intact while we’re either overwhelmed or bored from the outer fringes of them on each side the more we can enjoy those cycles as the beautiful sway to life.
Your bodyweight goes up and down. Sometimes that window is moves along is five pounds and sometimes it’s twenty, and sometimes it might be fifty or seventy pounds. Why does it go up by seventy pounds with no alarm bells going off? You’re living below your 4% comfort and ease window. You’re distracted, compromising or unconscious.
I’m going to lie and tell you that for me that window is usually pretty narrow. Five to ten pound of shift in my bodyweight alerts me to changes that need to take place in order to stay in the window. I put that tension on myself by implementing changes.
Throughout my life I’ve learned and developed a sensitivity to the indicators that show up and keep me within what are MY acceptable parameters. My parameters are mine though and you need to figure out what yours are and fine tune them like it’s a race car that you’re trimming grams off of.
Drug and alcohol use are the same way. And the tension that I bring to my relationships have a similar tolerance. Even the amount of comfort and discomfort I engage in has a flowing, dynamic harmony.
I often bring a dualistic frame to things and it fits here as well. Although there are a complex number of things that contribute to our leaning along the spectrum, they create a direction one way or the other, of building towards pressure or moving away from the sources that create it in order to have release.
The main thing that is needed, and I’m going to ride my soapbox here, is paying attention. Raising our consciousness is your lead domino. So a key to success is the ability to not feel, or rather to feel it, acknowledge it but keep going towards what we want.
When we get negative feedback that’s just bullshit chatter it’s important to not listen to that. When our mind and/or body starts to whisper in our ear that we’re tired or we’re hurting. Sometimes it’s bullshit and sometimes we need to listen.
I have a bit of a science background,(really just enough to make me dangerous) but my approach to things is to create the stability and certainty to be able to control the environment I’m living in and operation around. Once I’ve done this I have a much better ability to make a change and then look for the impacts.
I also know myself well enough to be aware of the part of my mind that hates change and will look to sabotage any data that would help me to determine that the changes I’m making have an overall positive effect.
The sweet spot window for change and what helps humans change is about 4% to 20% outside our current scope. If we get near or over that 20% line we start to feel too much pressure and we either blow out and fall apart or we freeze and shut down. If we’re living near or under 4% we’re usually way too comfortable, flat, and uninspired.
So if you’re not paying attention and managing a healthy cycle of creating pressure in your life and knowing when you’re playing game and giving up or recognizing the need for engineered release you will not get as far as life and you could.
The opportunity:
What are you doing to build your capacity to withstand pressure?
Where do you need to create more pressure in your life?
Where do you need to have a release in your life?
Thanks for your time, have a great day!