Is Success Out Of Your Reach? Stop Striving!

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EPISODE 73 – PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Hi there, welcome back to Kelly Martin Speaks. I’m your host Kelly Martin and this is episode 73.

Today I am going to talk about succeeding without striving and getting to know our personal life season that we are currently in.

Yesterday I was watching a video by someone called Teal Swan on the topic of depression. While not depressed right now, I have experienced depression a lot in my life. She spoke about futility and how often when depressed we have come to a point in our lives where everything just feels futile. And the reason we suffer is because we resist and fight  against this futility.

For example, if we wanted our relationship to be different, we could become depressed because we felt that our partner was not aligning with our desire for a better relationship, and instead of accepting that it’s futile, that we cannot change the other person, there is a little hope that we can and so we resist letting go of this sense of futility instead of perhaps finding another way to embrace the situation. That could be leaving our partner, re-thinking how we view our partner in a more positive light and appreciating what is beautiful in our relationship.

I began to think about the subject of certain areas of my own life and the futility of my quest. My desire to not be resistant to flow or receiving in my life, that in a way has become its own resistance. So I have been fighting my own futility. Thinking that if I just did XYZ, all of that would change. I realise I need to accept right now that in my life things are not flowing in the way I had hoped they would and to argue otherwise is not only futile but deeply frustrating and could quite easily lead into a more depressive outlook.

So what is happening and how can we drop this futility, this feeling we must exert effort or will to be happy, satisfied, to effect change?

The Cycles Of Change

We begin to see that we live our lives in cycles. For example, you could be in your springtime right now, where the new is just taking root or you could be in your Autumn where it is time to let go of what no longer works or even in your Winter where it appears nothing at all is happening or changing. I think I am in my Autumn right now, letting go of the old, so at the moment there is no point me striding forwards trying to exert my will and make change happen.

Sometimes we are in a place of small exceeding. Where success in any thing, from relationships, to business, work, family…is not going to come about by striving.

We may have tried striving for so long and are falling into a more depressive outlook. We may be fighting against what is not working and still trying to bulldoze our way through what feels like a brick wall right now.

Often, when life feels futile, we need to focus on the simple in our lives. Those small things that others may not even notice, but that it is absolutely important for us to notice at this time.

As we focus on the small and simple we are in a far better place to move or take action at the right time.

When we are in a place of instability, we need time to make adjustments. This could be releasing beliefs or people, cleaning the home, doing what we can to support our health and wellbeing. Small adjustments that may have long lasting effects.

It is often a time to not look forward to see where we want to go, but look to the here and now and see where we actually are in reality. What small changes or focus can we become aware of right now?

At this time instead of going out into the world to try and will change, we devote our time to accepting that less is more. That we are not to try and convince others or push our will onto anyone else.

As frustrating as it can be, we need to be patient but also to remain open. Remaining open allows us to take new opportunities and directions that we would never have thought of in the time when we were pushing forward and striving.

By doing so we are better able to succeed without striving.

Succeeding without striving is a very feminine approach to living. Both men and women have this feminine inside that we can draw on. The feminine approach is being receptive, open, flexible. So that when our lives begin to turn more towards the summer, when everything is filled with vitality, fullness and possibility being birthed, we can grab it with both hands.

Like many, I have spent a long time trying to will my life to change, to no avail.

It got to the point where I just gave up trying and instead started to take a more day-by-day approach to living. I am not always successful at this, infact sometimes I am downright rubbish at this. Some days I am in worry mode or stressed out that I won’t be able to take care of myself if I don’t just fix ‘XYZ’ and you can insert whatever issue you feel you have a problem with right now.

It is easier said than done to simply drop this insistence on striving, because we are taught we need to be action orientated and goal driven. Driving the changes ourselves, but I know from experience, when I do take my hands off the steering wheel of my life, it simply flows far more easily and gracefully.

This helps me when I am spiralling downwards into a depressive episode. To know that the reason I am feeling low and sad, or feeling in a really suffering place is that I am fighting what is. I am fighting the futility of something I want that’s not happening the way that I want it to.

We all know what this feels like. It doesn’t feel great.

Sometimes we may take many, many goes at trying to make life work in this more controlling way before we drop all of this and surrender to a new way.

It sucks, I understand this. It can feel incredibly hard to trust and have faith. Especially if your life has been perceived to having little go the way you have desired. Sometimes we don’t have a map of our past to see that things have worked out, but more often than not we are just misperceiving our past map as being litterred with failures, instead of viewing it as being scattered with stepping stones that lead us to who we are right now and who we are becoming.

Your past may have felt painful and hard, but now, when looked at with wiser, loving eyes, was probably a great journey, a map worthy of a great adventurer, which you indeed are. You may just have a bit of faulty programming that makes you envision it completely differently.

If you’re honest, you may look back and see that many things you wanted in your past were not good for you and may not be something you would choose to have now. Even if at the time they felt the worst kind of experience ever, they happened, but you are still here choosing life.

So let’s gather together, all of us who may fear letting go of the futile and instead let’s start to allow success without striving and get to know what season we are in so we can see that all is well, exactly as it is right now.

And know that we are not meant to be flowering all of the time, that it is okay to be the seed right now if that is where you are in life.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Kelly Martin Speaks

If you have a question or topic you are struggling with and would like me to answer on an upcoming podcast episode, please get in touch. Your name will be confidential. EMAIL me at kellymartinspeaks@gmail.com or message me on Facebook via my page Kelly Martin Speaks.

And don’t forget, if you feel that others are passing you by and ‘The Not Good Enough’ voice is screaming loudly, pop by kellymartin.uk to find out all about my books, including Book 1 ‘When Everyone Shines but You’

You can also support my channel via my podcast page on my website kellymartinspeaks.co.uk via Paypal

Until next time…bye for now.

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