Are You Coping or Creating?

I haven’t written a blog post for a while, every time I’ve had some inspiration recently for something that I want to share, I’ve sat down to write about it and then thought, ‘I’m sure I’ve written about this before, I’ll just check that post to make sure I’ve got something fresh to say’. Then I’ve read what I’ve written and thought, ‘what can I add to that?’

But finally, I’ve got something fresh to share. I know I’ve talked about some of this before in different posts I’ve written over the last decade, but what I want to stress the most, is the energetic side of how we approach wellness.

Quite simply we can approach dealing with a long-term health condition in two different ways, we can try to move away from our suffering or we can try to create wellbeing.  To simplify matters I’m going to call the first one coping, even though it may involve all sorts of healing interventions. I’m using the term coping, because all the interventions are based on a response to the suffering, a sense of moving away from something unwanted. When we are creating wellbeing, we are moving towards desired and inspiring possibilities and potential.

There is a huge difference in the energetic flavour of these two approaches, the first tends to have a heavy, restricted, pressured energy, the second is light and expansive. The things we do, from these two approaches, might not be very different, but the energy behind them will make a huge difference to their success. Think about how much more restful, rest can be when you embrace what it can do for you, rather than approach it as something you have to do to move away from unwellness.

With any kind of suffering, the perfectly natural and understandable response is to scrabble to find a way out of it. Suffering kicks in the stress response, gearing us up to act to remove the cause of the suffering. Moving away from pain is a strong motivator and can be pretty effective for somebody with a healthy body. But when your resources are limited, the pressure involved doesn’t do us any favours. If you can be motivated to move towards inspiring possibilities, without having to waste the extra energy on the stress response, you’ll have far more energy left for the creation of wellbeing. Remember the stress response keeps our energy geared for action. If we want to direct our energy to healing and repair we need to be in the parasympathetic restful state.

Moving from Coping to Creating

There is one big difference between coping a creating, one that I have talked about many times before and that is allowing (aka acceptance). Unless you can allow things to be exactly as they are in this moment, it is impossible to get out of the energy of coping and into the energy of creating. The thing that restricts the energy of coping, holding back it’s effectiveness, is the force of resistance to what is.

If you want to think about it energetically, think about blowing up a balloon. Imagine your breath as a healing force, but if you’re blowing it into the container of the balloon (the resistance to what is) it feels like hard work. Imagine a feather, hovering just beyond your balloon, needing your breath to move it. If you did manage to blow hard enough to burst the balloon, all the energy of your breath would have been transferred to the balloon and there would be little energy left to move the feather (you’d also be pretty exhausted). Then imagine blowing the feather without the balloon in the way. How much more impact would your breath have on the feather? Creating better wellbeing is all about removing the resistance so that the steps you take have an easy, effective impact. Removing resistance simple means allowing.

Allowing yourself to desire

Another key aspect of creating wellness is having a clear and inspiring picture of what you are moving towards. Many people with a long-term health condition can struggle with this because of the fear of being disappointed. But here’s a secret… having an inspiring desire isn’t the cause of the pain of disappointment, it’s the thoughts of ‘I haven’t got it yet’ that cause the pain.

When we can desire without attachment to outcome, we create a wonderful energetic signal for the universe to respond to.  Then we can take it easy and allow things the universe to do it’s thing. Which means allowing each moment to be as it is.

Inspired aligned action

Allowing the universe to do its thing, doesn’t mean that we can’t help it along. Aligned action is an important part of showing the universe that you’re serious about your desire. But here’s something that can often be forgotten. When you have a long-term health condition, aligned action will not involve anything that does you harm in the moment, so it never involves pushing or striving. When you take aligned action, you will feel good. You get a sense of lightness and freedom in your body. Anything that doesn’t give you that sense is not aligned to your desire of creating better wellbeing. We don’t have to push to make anything happen, the universe will do what we can’t.

I’d like to invite you to let go of coping  and choose to create instead. Start by putting these key foundations into place. Tell the universe what you want with an inspiring desire, allow every moment to be exactly as it is, and take only the small steps towards your wellness, that feel good for you to take in the moment!

If you’d like support with creating joyful wellness use my contact form to ask for details of my coaching triads. (There is one place available on a triad starting on the 20th of April 2023- Early bird discount applies if you pay by the 13th of April)