When I learned this, everything started to click

Do you ever feel like the harder you work at something, the more harm you actually do?

For example, I’ve been working on my sleep lately.  With a five-month-old baby, sleep is something of a luxury, especially as my relationship with sleep has been, let’s just say,  chronically fickle.   Ever since my mid-twenties hit, that delicious brand of deep shut-eye left the building along with my general sense of “it will all work out.”  

After all, with a new-found sense of responsibility and “adulting” came this constant low-hanging fog of anxiety and aimlessness.   I started living more in my head— “out there” —as opposed to in the safety of presence.  I didn’t know that then though, I was trying to figure it all out, and hard. 

As an Enneagram four, my hefty three wing took full effect.  Poor thing, she wore herself out. 

What I’ve learned is that it’s not actually sleep that’s been the problem all along.  It’s my relationship with sleep.

But isn’t this always the case?  It’s not actually the thing that’s the problem.  It’s our relationship with the thing.  

Take food for example.  Food is a glorious thing.  Yet, when our relationship with food becomes manipulative or out of balance, we suffer.  I see this often in therapy as emotional eating is a popular medication of choice, especially for women.  

Back to sleep.  In my efforts to sleep better at night, I began to fixate on how I would make it better.  I took baths, drank sleepy time tea, meditated, exercised in the morning, turned off my phone at night—you get it I tried it all.  Yet, it kept me in a striving spiral where the focus was “not enough.” With this scarcity-based approach, I actually produced more anxiety around going to sleep at night.    

As you can imagine, this didn’t help me seamlessly drift off at night.  Eventually, I had to back up and examine my relationship with sleep, just like I would a relationship with a friend. 

How was I feeling towards sleep? What was the pattern at play here? How could I cultivate a different, calmer approach? 

When we navigate challenges in life from a place of will power rather than relationship, we will continuously come up short, perpetuating a vicious cycle of self-defeat and shame.

What challenges are you facing?  Do they stem from anxiety, money, career, weight, addiction or perhaps health?  Before trying to change your behavior or fix something, look at this challenge in light of relationship.  

How would you describe your relationship with it? Sit in the observer chair and simply be curious about how you experience this problem.  Write it all down.

Chances are, there’s a better way to relate to this challenge in your life.  For me, letting go of the expectation around what it should look like is vital.  So is staying in the present moment as opposed to getting tangled up in a web of anxious thoughts about the past or future.

What about you? 

It’s true, challenges in life are unavoidable.  But how we relate to them is 1000% within our control.  So, my friend, I suppose it’s time for you and I to become our own expert in relationships.  Everything…and I mean everything…is relational. 

Love & Gratitude,

Katie