drop the rope
there is a concept in ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) that i love called the tug of war metaphor.
imagine you’re in a tug of war with a monster. the monster is your hard thing: a depression monster or anxiety monster or fear monster or a judgement/criticism/shame monster or a frustrated/ruminating monster or a control monster or any other kind of struggle monster. you and your monster each have one end of the rope and you are pulling on the rope just as hard as that monster… the harder you pull the hard it pulls. you’re stuck.
what do you do?
you drop the rope.
the monster is still there but you are no longer tied up in struggle, you are free to take a new approach.
we can drop the rope. we can walk away from the war. we can untether.
i love the word untethered. i am inspired by a brandi carlile song about how broken horses are tethered in wide open spaces, in fields that lead for miles.
in other words, we are the only things holding us back… the tether, the rope, is an inside job.
untethered means
· to be released, let go, not tied or limited or confined or restricted.
· to be free, to free yourself, to create your own liberation.
and to me… for how it has inspired me to get unstuck… it means to free yourself from struggle so that you are free to move toward more of what you want.
there’s another phrase from ACT which i love…
the problem is not the problem. the struggle is the problem.
our doubt, fear, uncertainty, sadness, frustration, overwhelm, worry, or any other resistance is not a problem. the belief that we shouldn’t have any is the problem. the story we tell when those things show up is the problem. our need to control or protect or eliminate is the problem.
our job isn’t to fix or solve or eradicate or conquer or control our resistance. our job is to alleviate that inner struggle… to drop the rope.
doesn’t that sound nice?
so the question is: how do we become untethered from our inner struggle so that we can move forward?
the answer is self-leadership. we learn to lead our self - to lead our struggling parts - and to lead with our empowered self… to let self take the lead.
this is what we will learn to do in untethered… to become self leaders, to alleviate struggle… to drop the rope so that we can do more of what we say we want to do!