A Softer Relationship With Life

Life can start to feel heavy when we’re constantly trying to improve ourselves, stay on top of everything, and force our way into becoming a ‘better’ version of who we are.

In this episode, I reflect on a quieter shift that’s been unfolding in me recently.

A gentler way of relating to myself, other people, and ordinary life.

We explore self-pressure, receptivity, compassion, therapy, interconnectedness, and what can happen when we stop treating life as something to battle through alone.

The episode begins with a short grounding practice. If you'd prefer to jump straight into the reflection, you can skip ahead to around 3 mins 15. 

✧ A Question to Reflect On

Where in your life are you creating unnecessary pressure for yourself right now?What might emerge if you loosened your grip?

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Thanks for listening! 

🪞 Want to go deeper?  

FREE VISUALISATION
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WORKING TOGETHER
If you want a space to connect with more of who you are and move towards what lights you up, I offer 1:1 depth coaching. Find out more: https://www.rachaelebanksgold.com/working-together

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Your soul craves something more. Your heart wants joy, not with enough. You're done with all the goods and ready to reconnect with what you need not with you. Welcome, I'm Rachel, and this is the Soft Way Podcast. Let's make quite the noise, but each pressure, and listen to the voice within you that's always known in your face. Join me for so called practical insights to help you grind into presence, connect with your higher self, and let this person of you lead your life with painfulness and gentle power. And without the pressure to figure it all out. Because you are supported. Life is with you. So come on home. I just sat here talking for about half an hour, 40 minutes maybe. And uh yeah, I just realized I wasn't even recording. Oh dear god, okay. Well anyway, hello, how are you? Thank you for tuning in. Welcome to today's episode. So let's just take a very, very brief moment here just to come into presence. So wherever you are, just feeling your body, knowing what it's like to be in this body. Connecting with your breath. Interesting where there's tension and releasing it. Remembering. You don't have to force. You don't have to overwork, over effort fix. The best thing that you can do for you for your journey, for your path is to come home to yourself. So again, welcome to this episode. Life has been feeling quite interesting to me lately. So I'm noticing over the last few days that something is emerging within me that feels lighter. Feels kind of like a new layer, a new layer of being that's emerging. And it's not that everything's just been all shiny and wonderful. Actually, I've been very busy of late, and it's felt like, hey, I don't want to be this busy. And yet something is shifting in a positive way. There's this unexpected collaborative energy that I'm feeling. It feels pretty good, I must say. But relationship, receptivity. So when I say relationship, I mean the way that we're relating to ourselves, the way that we're relating to life, and also how we're relating to other people as well. So what if what actually helps in terms of us expanding and becoming freer and aligning to our purpose, creating lives that reflect who we are at the deepest level? What if what actually helps there is relating to ourselves like a loving grandmother, being receptive to life as it's happening, and also trusting our own rhythm instead of all this effort. A few years ago I reached a point where I was just fed up with the challenge I had in relation to relationships, so relating to others, which at the time I labelled social anxiety. So yeah, I was kind of fed up with just feeling super nervous around people, especially in like a work setting, and also just feeling like friendships, like new friendships that I was making, just felt hard, just felt unnatural, and there was just a lot of jagged edges, shall we say. So I decided I'm gonna have therapy, and my goal was becoming somehow normal. You know, wanted to be less awkward, less anxious, less in my head, less prone to comparisonitis, and just more comfortable in my being. Maybe be me, be authentic. What the hell? And I'm not sure if it was just the wrong timing or the wrong therapists or the wrong modalities, but honestly, not much shifted. So I was going in with this big goal, and it felt like effort, and I had all these high hopes, and yeah, didn't really get much out of it. And on reflection, what has actually helped me and continues to help me is something a bit less goal-focused and a bit more open-ended, a bit softer, like being intentional about compassion toward myself, toward others, which is very much still a work in progress, but it is powerful when I do practice, also meeting my thoughts and my emotions with more presence, so kind of not identifying with them so much, like noticing the space, noticing that they aren't me, and then therefore just having more choice in how I respond, and also therapy. But the difference now is that there's no big agenda of you know changing who I am. My intention is actually just to allow myself to be fully human, you know, with a warm and grounded other. And the other thing that I'm noticing that's quite quietly potent is allowing myself to really take in the goodness of small moments of connection. So whether it's texting friends or co-working with my BFF, or having a taxi ride with a really friendly taxi driver, or walking in the forest, whatever it is, these little moments where I just feel this like softening, this opening. My body is just like, yes, this feels really good. So noticing that and just letting myself fully receive it, almost like taking a long bath after being out in the cold all day. Got some essential oils on the go, letting that relaxation, that warmth, that fragrance, just really letting it seep in, enjoying it. By the way, I spoke more about this about savouring practice in another episode called Letting Yourself Feel Good. So check that out if you're curious. But yeah, I really feel that there is something quietly very powerful about allowing moments of warmth, of connection, of beauty to be deeply felt. And you know, they don't always have to be involving other people, they can just be you see a flower, and it's beautiful, and you stop and you take it in. That is a gift to you, that is a gift to you, and it's also mirroring what's inside of you, and it's also saying hello, hello, other being on this planet. So we don't always have to rely on like changing our relationships. There are so many opportunities of things that are inviting us to feel that sense of expansion in our being. In the last like year or so, is reflecting more on the kindness of strangers, the kind of things that we don't really think about, that actually when we stop, it's like, oh yeah, like I'm actually so reliant on you know, this network of people that if they weren't doing this, you know, I wouldn't be able to enjoy this. Whether it's like the food that's in our fridge, and thinking about the people that grew that, the people that deliver our packages, literally anything that you pick up or enjoy, there are people behind it, you know, and I think we forget that. And it's nice to think about it, this sense of like, wow, I'm so deeply interconnected with all beings. You know, there's this network of giving, of giving, of giving and receiving. So noticing what's good, noticing the connection that's already there. And also something else that I'm finding helps us to naturally expand, effortlessly shift is relating to ourselves with more softness. I'm noticing that life just feels less hostile. You know, things that I used to brace against have started to feel a lot less like enemies and maybe start to feel like friends. You know, whether it's work or certain people, little things that we tend to contract against. I don't know, when there's softness inside, I'm just finding that it's easier to open. Um, and when when you open things start to look different and feel different. So, for example, I might notice like I'm feeling guilty because I haven't responded to a text, and there's this gentle voice that's starting to grow, and it's almost like a grandmother who's like strong and supportive, and there's just this like, nope, you're not gonna make yourself feel bad. You know, you can do this at a time that feels good to you, it's okay to trust how you feel, or noticing the part of me that wants to pressure myself into doing more when actually my body's like, I want to rest. So there's the sense of trust, trusting in my own rhythm, trusting that not everything needs to be forced, and that life is unfolding in divine timing. We don't have to force, we don't have to rush. I'm not saying don't take any action ever. Okay, I really don't want this podcast to sound like I'm just saying don't do anything because that's not the case, but there is a quality of being that facilitates doing from a natural aligned place. And interestingly, I do think that there's softness in relating, in relating to self, in relating to others, in relating to life, like laying in beauty, enjoying moments of deep connection, or enjoying moments of light connection, but feeling it deeply. I feel like this is helping qualities that maybe we feel like we need to try to embody, that we need to try and strengthen within us, or that belong to other people, can actually be shown and seen and felt within us naturally and effortlessly, you know, whether it's like playfulness, you might be like, Oh, I wish I had the you know the confidence to to say something as silly as that, or whatever, or intimacy, vulnerability, or generosity. There might be a voice that says, Oh, I should be more, blah blah blah. Or I wish I didn't take things so seriously, I wish I was more light-hearted. These things can all come online, like naturally and effortlessly, the more the quality of relating to life, to self, to others, softens and opens. Okay, so arising and being felt and experienced, not because we are forcing ourselves, but actually because we are opening up to life. We are interacting with our moment to moment experience with less gripping. So that all said, the two invitations I want to leave with you are number one, what would it look like to relate yourself with less gripping with more softness? So what would your inner loving grandmother say to you as you went about your day, as you experienced challenges, as that familiar pressure, guilt, self-judgment, comparison start creeping in? What would your inner loving grandmother say to you? Number two, what would it be like to let yourself receive fully and deeply moments that feel good? Moments of connection, of warmth, and safety, and aliveness. So what would it feel like to take those in? To let yourself be nourished by them. So tuning into how they feel in your body, around your heart. Let yourself feel that you belong and life is is gifting you in all these little moments because you're loved and you belong here. I honestly do think that these small shifts in how we attend to our experience and how we attend to ourselves changes us in a quiet and gradual way. And often in ways that effort alone probably never will. So there's my invitations, experiment with them. And maybe over time you might notice that life starts to feel a little more collaborative and lighthearted and blessed, like something that you have to battle your way through alone. Wishing you a wonderful week. Take care.