How learning to listen to the whispered messages can help you move through the growing pains towards the next level of you
It was like being slapped in the face with a wet fish.
I’d been feeling it for a few weeks. A general feeling of meh that I couldn’t quite place. A heaviness that was almost physical, that I’d put down to not doing enough exercise or snacking too much, or just those extra few #lockdownpounds that I still haven’t managed to shake.
I was generally lacking motivation. Feeling stuck.
Then it suddenly struck me out of the blue when I was strap-hanging on the 181 bus into Lewisham. My big wet fish to the face. Now, I know that’s not exactly the most magical of locations, but we don’t get to choose when inspiration hits.
This heavy feeling. I’d felt it before.
I knew what it meant.
It meant a change was coming.
Something was beginning to shift.
A coaching friend of mine calls it being in the goo, referring to that period in the chrysalis where a larva completely loses all structure and breaks down into a kind of caterpillar soup before reassembling itself anew as a butterfly.
I was definitely feeling in the goo.
When I tell you that I’ve experienced this before, I mean that I’ve felt it numerous times over the years. That undefinable heaviness, amorphous ‘not right’-ness. With the clarity of hindsight, I can see that it has cropped up at various points in my life.
My mum would always pick up on it before I did: “Oh, you’re feeling restless again, aren’t you?”
I would deny it. Ignore it.
Push the feeling back down.
Carry on.
Because it felt uncomfortable. And uncomfortable is bad, right?
Human beings are geared towards survival, so we do everything we can to avoid pain (including mental or emotional pain). It takes conscious effort to sit with discomfort until we come out of the other side. Shrinking back is so much easier than pushing through, even if it means we stay in the same place.
We hold the mistaken expectation that when something is right for us – when we make the ‘right’ decision, when we follow the ‘right’ path – it instantly feels good. But I imagine butterflies have to work bloody hard to pull themselves into shape and push their way out of that shell.
When I acknowledged that feeling on the bus, I did feel an instant lightness. Not because the process was over – I knew it meant there was work to be done – but because it meant I knew what I could do next. As soon as I appreciated it for what it was, I could link it back to all the shifts that have been happening in my personal life and my career over the past few years. I could label it as both a feeling that would eventually pass, and an opportunity to get curious – What is it this feeling is trying to tell me? What is it signalling about the unexpressed parts of me that are yearning to emerge? How do I lean into this discomfort and learn the lessons it has to teach?
I have become more attuned to listening to the whispered messages those feelings send me before they reach the level of becoming a loud shout that drowns out everything.
I’ve learned to accept that sensation of pushing through an invisible barrier, like breaking through a layer of cling film into something beyond. Into breathable space. The way oppressive heat sometimes needs the drama of a thunderstorm to clear the air and clean the earth.
Sometimes I wonder what might have been born in me if I’d had the self-awareness to recognise these feelings earlier in life. What could have come to pass if I’d had the courage to push through the discomfort more often.
But then I wouldn’t be here now, with the opportunity to serve other women in the way that I do. Helping them to move through their own meh and into something marvellous.
And that’s worth any number of wet fish in the face moments.
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This is one of a series of (regular-ish) articles and blog posts about coaching, compassion and culture. Head to annettecorbett.com/links to read more about my work and sign up to my mailing list
Helping women in the creative industries reveal their inner awesome, so they can practice more compassion in their life, leadership and wellbeing without cracking up, giving up, or compromising their core beliefs