Release Your Burdens and Choose an Easier Path

//What is taking up space in your life that you’d be better off releasing? Andrea shares her thoughts about Greg McKeown’s book Effortless, why she believes we sometimes make life harder than it has to be, and how we can make challenging conversations easier and more constructive.

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Transcript

Hey there!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Last week, we talked with Greg McKeown, who wrote New York Times bestselling Essentialism and ⎼ it’s possible by now ⎼ New York Times bestselling Effortless.  It is a fantastic book.  I would highly encourage you to read these books because these are really, really foundational.  I find so much that I resonate with them and that resonates between what the message that we’re trying to get out into the world and the message that Greg has. 

And so, when I’m going through Essentialism on a regular basis…  probably every six months or so, I listened to Essentialism, and now Effortless will be on that rotating list as well.  But the reason why I do that is because I recognize that life is short, that there are things in life that feel important that may not be that we feel drawn to, that we feel pulled into, and we feel like we don’t have a choice.  Like, “I have to do this thing because it’s expected of me.”  

You know, a lot of people have a hard time. “I think that this is important to me so I’m just going to try to cut things out,” or “I’m going to try to focus on what’s essential.”  But then I’ve heard from a lot of people who’ve said, “I wanted to live like that, but it became hard because other things creep back in.”  “Life is hard,” or “There’s just too many essential things,” as Greg put it.

And so, then Greg turned it on its head and said, “Well, what if it wasn’t as hard?  What if it’s easy?”  That is what is so intriguing to me, because we were kind of alluding to this in our conversation last week.  But there is this point in time when you just feel like you’re in an effortless state.

Right now, I feel pretty effortless actually.  And so, I’d given him a percentage of time.  I was like, “I think I’m, like, in effortless state about 5% of the time.”  Maybe it’s not that low, but the effortless state is when you feel very present, when you’re free, when you’re ready to offer the best of who you are.  It’s not hard.  You’re not overwhelmed.

And so, one of the things that I’m trying to do is trying to think a little bit more.  Just give myself a little time to think about it, “What is it that I’m feeling so overwhelmed by?  And is this something that I actually need to hold on to, or is it something I could release?  What if I could release more of the things that are burdensome and walk forward without worrying about it?”  That sounds a little trite, but I promise you, if you read the book, you will not feel like it’s trite.

This effortless state, where you feel like you’re really here to offer the best of who you are, I really believe in it.  I really believe that it’s possible.  And I believe that a lot of things that we hold on to…  Greg talks about holding a grudge and how much space that takes up in our minds and our hearts.  There’s a lot of things that we hold – expectations.

You know, I was a music teacher at one time.  And so, you know, my heart’s desire is that my kids would be able to benefit and be blessed by music as much as I have in my past.  Well, a lot of parents have gone through this before, you know, maybe with sports, debate, or whatever they might have been really good at when they were younger.  And they long for that for their kids because it was such a great experience for them.

But maybe some of the things that we’re holding on to for expectations, even for our children, what if we let go of those?  What if we allow them to explore and find themselves instead of placing expectation and pressure on them so that they are less overwhelmed?  So, what if we could let go of a grudge?  What if we could let go of resentment?  What if we could let go of expectation?

I just want to invite you for a minute to take a little bit of time and consider what you might be holding on to ⎼ like a grudge, like an expectation ⎼ that is causing you stress, that makes you feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed.  Is it something that is serving you in some way?  Or is it something that if you let go of, what could be possible?

I’d encourage you to really think about that.  What could you let go of?  What could be possible for you in your life, in the intent that you have to make a difference in the world, in the intent that you have to make a difference in your family, in your team?  What could you let go of that would then allow you to feel less stress, to feel less annoyed, that might free you up then to be able to be you, free you up to be able to be your best self for others?

Greg talked about gratitude, and I mentioned in that conversation last week that gratitude has always kind of been a little hard for me.  This conversation about gratitude, I’m like, “Yeah, okay, so I’m supposed to be grateful all the time.”  A little skeptical on the gratitude thing.  And it’s not so much that I don’t believe that I have things to be grateful for.  I believe that.  But it’s hard for me to buy in to just making a mental shift.  For me, it has to make more sense than that.  It has to be more than just, “Okay, sure, I’m just going to say that I’m grateful for something.”

And what I mentioned to him was I really appreciated a little graphic that he used to demonstrate this.  He used a circle, and it was like for the first time I saw it, that there’s only so much room in us.  We’re finite human beings.  There’s only so much room in my brain, in my heart to hold either a grudge or gratitude.  It made more sense to me when I saw that, “Oh, gratitude can actually literally push out the complaining.”

And this reminded me of love casting out fear.  What if we could let go of more?  What if we could release things that are taking up space and do not deserve the space in our head?  Maybe it is even someone else’s voice inside your own mind.  What if it doesn’t deserve to be there?  Why are we allowing it to continue to take up space?  It’s not easy to let go of those things, but it’s possible.  It’s possible.

So, as you’re moving forward ⎼ moving into summer, if you’re listening to this when it airs ⎼ moving into a new season, how do you want to approach that season?  What are you going to allow to take up space inside of you, and how might that be getting in the way of what you find to be most essential?  What could you release so that you really could narrow in and go for the difference that you’re trying to make, go for the life that you’re trying to live, to hold love for the people that you want to hold love for more than holding grudges?

So, there’s a couple things that I want to encourage you to do.  First of all, go out and buy those books.  Greg also has a podcast that I mentioned last week.  It’s called What’s Essential.  And then also, we have a little resource that’s available to you.  It is the Deep Impact Method, which is becoming more clear to me as time goes on that this is probably one of the most essential things that we talk about, maybe the most essential thing that I have to offer the world.

And we don’t want to hold that behind a veil.  We want you to be able to learn what it is.  Someday, maybe with building the audience, if you want to share this episode and encourage people to subscribe to Voice of Influence, to join our email list, etc., then maybe we’ll get to that point where I can write a book and it will have a huge impact like Essentialism has had on me.

But this concept is called the Deep Impact Method, and it is really truly about what needs to happen in the other person, how to kind of meet them where they’re at ⎼ because that’s one of the things that Greg talked about as well, how to meet somebody where they’re at ⎼ and invite them to move toward you.  Invite them to feel safe, invite them to feel significant, that they matter, and then to let them know that, “I actually believe in you so much that I have something to share with you.”

And it’s a challenge.  It might be something that’s course correcting, or it might be something that is just a new opportunity, something new to think about.  But in the process of influencing one another, if we could have these things in mind, if you could have the Deep Impact Method in mind and practice it a little bit and start to understand how these principles work, I really believe that you will have a deeper impact than you could imagine.

So, I would invite you to come to voiceofinfluence.net and sign up for the Deep Impact Method course.  It’s a mini course, just about twenty, twenty-five minutes long.  You can push the button on the front of our web page, or go to voiceofinfluence.net/podcast and find it there.

Your voice truly does matter.

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