The Myth of Pushing

There is a rhythm to everything under the sun.

The sun rises.

The sun sets.

Your heart beats.

Your breath rises and falls.

Are you living in harmony with natural rhythms??

This week, I have been working with two separate clients - a woman in a small country in the Caribbean and a CEO in the U.K. - who have been living and working balls to the walls.

The lady client in the Caribbean has been suffering from heart palpitations and anxiety so severe she has been unable to drive for years.

Despite following the advice of the nutritionist to the royal family, the CEO in the U.K. still struggles with exhaustion in the afternoons.

Many success coaches preach that you must push in order to be successful.?

10X it!

Push. When pushing doesn't work, push more!

You hear the yelling, screaming and chest pounding.

If only you just work harder than the next guy, you'll get ahead, you're told.

Before Christopher Columbus came along, many people believed the world was flat. Just because a lot of people believed that didn't mean it was ever true.

You may believe you have to push, struggle, angst, grit your teeth, work 22 hours a day, strain, beat the other guy and generally grind your way through life to get to the topper most of the topper most.?

Is that true?

Even if you get what you think you want - money, fame, outward success - how do you feel on the inside while living and working this way?

What if you could actually succeed without pushing??

What if you could simply tune into the natural rhythm of life and experience success by paying more attention to what really matters?

The lady in the Caribbean had apprenticed under her father, a workaholic who later succumbed to degenerative brain disease.

She had followed his example but the habit of overdoing everything was causing her heart palpitations that could not be totally alleviated by diet and exercise. Her anxiety was so severe she hadn’t wanted to get behind the wheel of a car for years.

The C.E.O. in the U.K. had been taking the world’s greatest nutritional supplements, carefully monitoring his blood chemistry through expensive lab tests. Yet still he felt the same in the afternoons.

They each needed to recognize that their habit of pushing was in fact the root cause of their misery.

As a medical intuitive healer, I find some of the hardest people to treat are those who have challenges on the mental level.

No, these people are not crazy - that’s not what I’m saying.

It's the people who become so convinced that their way of looking at life is so correct they won't consider any other alternative.

Many of us have hardened our beliefs so severely that we have brainwashed ourselves to think in ways that undermine our health, happiness and relationships.

Do you ever stop to ask yourself if what you think is actually true??

Being a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University, author of 10 books (8 of which went to number one on Amazon), host of a weekly radio show with 47,000 listeners every week, I have a teeny tiny amount of experience of this pushing thing.

It was my lifelong habit of pushing that led to the adrenal burnout that led to me having to rebuild myself from chronic fatigue which is why I could write?Unlimited Energy Now ?from a place of true authority.

[caption id="attachment_16534" align="aligncenter" width="650"]?Unlimited Energy Now by Catherine Carrigan, available in paperback, ebook and audiobook[/caption]

I admit it - I’m a reformed pusher!

I remember sitting in a library one day telling myself I wasn’t creative any more. At the time I think I had been trying to teach 10 or more exercise classes every week - and not very well I might add.

Looking back, I hadn’t suddenly become stupid. I was just too tired to think straight.?

If you find yourself feeling washed up like I did, you can ask yourself if your beliefs about what it takes to be successful are actually true.

Many of us pushers don't know how to do it differently. We push, crash, rinse, repeat.

If you recognize that indeed your habit of pushing, struggling, angsting and gnashing your way through life has been causing you a host of nasty side effects, here’s how you might want to do things differently:

1. Affirm: I CAN SUCCEED WITHOUT PUSHING.
2. Affirm: I CAN LIVE WITHOUT STRESS.
3. Affirm: IT’S EASY FOR ME TO HAVE A WONDERFUL LIFE.
4. When you look over your schedule for the following day, feel into the energy. Go over each appointment and as you think about what you have planned, notice how you feel. If your stomach knots, if you hold your breath and groan just thinking about what you have planned, you may want to change something. As you practice this new habit of feeling into your life plans, you become self correcting.
5. Schedule daily meditation. My friend, fellow author and meditation teacher?Tom Evans ?swears regular meditation can warp the time-space continuum. As you practice meditation you may notice how you glide seamlessly from one activity to the next.
6. Feel the energy. I know I just explained that you can feel how you actually feel when you think over all you plan to smash into the few hours of the day. Now I’m talking about something else. As you go about your day, feel the energy of what’s coming at you. Here’s an example. This week, a client called suddenly and needed a session. I already had a pretty busy day. On the one hand it seemed like I would be squeezing myself but when I felt the energy it didn’t feel like a stress at all. I was scheduled to interview someone for my radio show right before the appointment. I logged into Zoom 15 minutes early for my interview and voila!, the interviewee, obviously a highly intuitive person, had also logged in 15 minutes early. We had a wonderful interview, the extra client session was a joy, and I went about my day feeling awesome.
7. Recognize that you have good days and bad days. Hello! You’re human. Some days it feels like you can climb a mountain. Other days you need to make soup, pad around the house in your slippers and hide from life. Give yourself permission to have what I call “hammock days” when you need to. My favorite place in the universe is my hammock. From here I can stare at the sky, listen to owls, watch the birds in my garden and generally do nothing. Or I can write. Don’t expect yourself to be 110 percent all the time.
8. Use your intuition. Those of you who have read my book?Unlimited Intuition Now? will not be surprised to hear me recommend this. When you recognize that all living processes have rhythm, you can use your intuition to figure out when exploding ahead will actually yield results and when you are better off holding your powder. If you watch an orchid grow - like I do, observing the orchids in my healing room - you observe that even the most gorgeous living beings appear dormant a lot of the time.?
9. Practice saying no. The highly revered Warren Buffet says “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” A long time ago, a multimillionaire client told me, “If it’s not an immediate yes, it’s a no.” In other words, if someone asks you to do something and your heart doesn’t immediately leap for joy, you’re probably better off giving it a pass. If you have trouble saying no because you are in fact a people pleaser, if someone asks you to do something, give yourself permission to say, “Let me get back to you on that.” Then feel into the situation. Then respond. If your self esteem depends on asking how high when other people ask you to jump, then do the inner work so that start putting your personal priorities first.
10. Realize the 80/20 rule applies to everything. Pareto’s Law states that 80 percent of the consequences come from 20 percent of the causes. There may be no need to chase every possible opportunity. What if you could tune into the 20 percent of the opportunities that bring you the most joy, money and fulfillment? Work smarter, not harder. Either ignore the 80 percent that just wears you out, hire other people to handle the 80 percent or stop worrying about trying to be everything to everybody. This all goes back to feeling the energy, using your intuition and practicing saying no.?
11. Practice the art of allowing. Let people be who they are. Let life unfold in divine order. I remember years ago visiting a shaman. He told me, “You even try to control the weather.” At first I started to argue with him, then I recalled seeing a homeless family - a mother with several babies including one in a baby carriage - sitting on a bench beside a homeless shelter and the rain starting to sprinkle. I shook my finger up at the sky. “You stop that right now!” I remember exclaiming. I asked the shaman for advice. “What do I do when I see that it’s about to rain on a homeless family?” I asked. “Let it rain,” he said. Stop trying to control the weather, give up the habit of thinking you know the best outcome for everybody and allow the life force to carry everyone where they need to go. Recognize when you are misusing your life force.?

Although the habit of pushing can wear anybody out, it’s particularly detrimental to women.?

In Chinese medicine there is yin energy and there is yang energy.

Yin is being. Yin is quiet. Yin is restful, dark, earth, within, feminine.

Yang is doing. Yang is active. Yang is busy, light, heaven, outward, male.

When women spend too much time being yang and not enough time being yin the habit of pushing blows out our hormones, makes us act more like men and causes us to lose touch with the highest version of ourselves, our divine goddess self.?

As a reformed pusher, I try to do better.

It’s a lot easier,??happier and more comfortable to be a 63 year old who moves from the guidance within rather than the worn-out, depleted and overwhelmed person I used to be.

What is healing? Healing happens you recognize that pushing through life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be and practice the art of allowing.?

To order my books in paperback, ebook of audiobook?please visit the Catherine Carrigan Author Central Page on Amazon at this link.

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To set up an appointment for a medical intuitive reading or healing work, please email?catherine@catherinecarrigan?or call 678-612-8816. If you are calling internationally, please call me at the same number through WhatsApp so I can return your call toll free!