Have you ever felt like you are the only one doing all the work?
In relationships? In your career? In love? At your job?
You look around and it seems as if everyone else is getting help and freebies and things line up for them with no effort at all.
Well, at one level this may always be (relatively) true, because as a subjective experience (meaning your experience) you might always feel like you are the one doing things because your perception and interpretation of your own life supports that belief.
And at some level in this world, it is up to you, just as it’s up to me to take care of what I have to do, and ultimately we’re all left with all of us having to get on with whatever it is that each of us is here to get on with.
Where we sometimes get stuck is when it comes to really crunchy, scary, hairy, weird, messy things we either know we need to do, or express, or change in our lives. But we resent the feeling that we are always the one having to make the first move. So we don’t.
We know we need to take action in a relationship, let’s say. You’ve been unfulfilled for a long time or want to move on or have a conversation with your partner about what’s not working, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. You keep wondering to yourself why it is that you’re always the one having to change the dial.
Why can’t your spouse do it or your friend or your lover?
It’s some sort of weird game (we all can win!) that the universe has set up for each of us individually in which we’re forced to move past our discomfort to arrive at our next level of awareness and break through. Sounds easy. And it’s really annoying (!) that we have to do it. But without making it happen, we’d never realize how strong, resilient, malleable and brave we truly are. We wouldn’t realize that we have resources of courage within us that we often don’t call upon. And we’d have nothing to pull from as artists or be able to create meaning from in our lives simply as human beings.
I know we can get resentful when we feel it’s always us who are doing the heavy lifting. But again, if you think about the nature of relationships, other people you engage with might feel the exact same thing you feel. “Why is it always me having to make the first move?”
It’s all subjective. And it’s all relative to our own fears, level of comfort and how okay (or not okay) we are with expressing our truth. You have no idea the things going on in someone else’s head that has brought them to a place where they can actually do the thing that you’re feeling anger about because you feel like you’re the only one doing it. In their minds they too may feel like they’re doing it.
So we leave breadcrumbs hoping our partner will pick them up and have an “Ah-ha” and come to us, relieving us of the thing we’ve wanted to get off our chest for 3 years.
Or we keep Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Surely, the universe hears our prayers. So no need for me to do anything if the prayer is being answered. It’s being answered, isn’t it?
In our hearts we hear a little voice say, “Be brave. You can do this. Take the step.”
That’s the prayer being answered! But you have to do it. Move from concept to experience. Idea to action. Resentment to realization. Imprisonment to freedom.
We stop stalling. We stop saying, “I don’t know” when we’re asked questions we very well know the answers to, but use the “I don’t know” as a stalling tactic. If I keep telling myself I don’t know then I buy myself more time so I don’t have to act.
Here’s the problem with time. You keep stalling and suddenly, it’s been a year, then four, and before you know it, you still want to make the changes you dreamed you could make eight years ago. But didn’t.
Prayers are answered all the time when we realize the very thing we’re most scared to say, do, create, express, step into, apologize for, change, admit to, and go for is literally coming to pass as soon as we stop waiting for our lover, friend, teacher, agent, manger, parents, sibling, or boss to make the first move.