Even my Thursdays can be bad

E52: How a client's box turned my bad day into an Effortless one.

Striding Edge, Helvellyn (950 m / 3,116 ft), Lake District National Park

This morning I fell over doing tree pose

I balanced gingerly on my right foot. My left foot was pressed against my right inner thigh as I slowly raised both my hands in prayer towards the ceiling.

And that was it. 

I keeled over.

Two weeks earlier, I was hopping on my left leg to move around. I had done some HIIT running sprints in Kensington Gardens earlier that week, and by the weekend, the pain in my right ankle was keeping me awake all night.

I could have offered myself a little slack, some compassion, but my failed impersonation of a tree this morning drew me down into a rut.

I started focusing on how my body was failing me.

About the two weeks it's taken my ankle to recover.

About the flare-up of psoriasis on the same ankle - the worst I've ever had since I was diagnosed with the autoimmune skin condition at university. 

About how the psoriasis on my ankle was so sore several weeks ago that I couldn't head out to the Yorkshire Dales for a hike

About how my neck was hurting from sleeping crookedly a couple of night's ago.

No matter how I tried to focus on my breath, the warrior poses, or chanting "om", my mind ruminated even more.

Why do I always leave it to the last minute to press publish on Effortless Thursdays?

Was my sprained ankle actually hiding psoriatic arthritis, a common pairing with psoriasis of the skin?

I worried about the burden of care my mum takes on looking after my dad who has Parkinson's disease.

What if the Functional Medicine testing that I've done so far to identify the root cause of my psoriasis (exposure to mould + mycotoxins, poor gut health, the excess) didn’t identify the root cause?

I realised that what I like to call Effortless Thursdays are not always effortless for me!

The irony of my Effortful Thursday

When I'm working with my clients, we often focus on joy because it's waned or disappeared from their daily lives.

The leaders and creative entrepreneurs I coach often find themselves in work that's like a moving treadmill, but they are neither moving forward nor backward.

In the work I do with the Healing Circle - a group of people living with cancer - they're bringing joy back to the most challenging periods in their lives so that they can heal in the ways their bodies know how when given the chance.

So it's odd, but not surprising to me, that this morning I was focused on what was going wrong - to the exclusion of everything else.

It seems like I haven’t taken on board the tips I shared in edition 16.

Effortless Thursdays #16: What’s right with you?

Even yoga was not an antidote. If anything, it was prolonging my untrammelled rumination!

Life is like a box

After yoga, I went home for a coaching session with a client. 

This individual has a successful career, and a wonderful family, but was going through stage 4 cancer.

She had a lot of racing thoughts this morning, just like I had on my yoga mat.

She was cramming so much into each day that she found she didn't have time, felt out of balance, and was frustrated when her best-laid plans went awry. 

Those were especially troublesome because they were moments that she could have had to take away the stress.

Or so she thought. Because at that moment, she realised something.

Her life was like a box.

She noticed that the things she had filled her box with were important to her.

Being there for her children when her husband was away from home. 

Being there for her father with his deteriorating health.

Attending the board of her local school.

She couldn't take anything out of the box. But nor did she want to or need to.

It turns out that she enjoyed her box being full to the brim. An empty box would have been boring for her - a life lacking purpose and deep meaning.

But what was missing from her box lately were moments of joy.

It's often said that we teach our clients what we need to learn the most. 

This morning was no exception. I realised my own box needed some more moments of joy.

Filling my box with moments of joy

So what did I do when I realised this lesson my client was teaching me?

First, I looked forward to the two conversations I had planned in my diary this afternoon. Both were with friends where we got to catch up about our lives and discuss topics like:

What does expressing vulnerability in public spaces catalyse?

How can we help the people we work with find joy and connection?

As always, conversations - whether it's with clients who are going through cancer, or catching up with friends or family - always energise me. They are a source of pure joy.

Second, as I've been sharing with you over the past few editions of Effortless Thursdays, I've been trusting my body and tuning in to what is going on inside of me, and tapping into the wisdom that of our receptive, emotional, sensing, intuiting self offers.

This morning, my thinking, rational, critical, analytical brain had relegated all of that to my outer fringes of perception. But as with the shift towards filling her box with moments of joy that my client unlocked for herself, it brought back my sense of ‘being’ to my day.

And so, as I press send on this edition, it's turned from an Effortful Thursday into an Effortless one.

ps If you’re an entrepreneur, a lawyer or another high-flying professional - who’s looking to bring joy back into your work and home life - by building a healthy brain for a career that’s full of success in a way that feels effortless, get in touch and let’s have a conversation.

Over to you

What moments of joy can you add to your box right now, without filling it completely?

What happens when you drop into your body and notice the feelings and sensations?

If you want to drop into your body, check out the simple 4-step practice to drop into your body from Effortless Thursdays #51.

That’s it for this week!

As always, I appreciate your feedback on Effortless Thursdays. 

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What did you think of this week’s edition? How can I make it more useful to you? Let me know in the comments, by email, on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

To your health and success!

Eric