I Relax, But I Just Can’t Seem To Switch Off

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back, you've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it, and what to do next. Before we start by one request, if any new insights or awareness land with you during this episode, please send me an email at info at the end Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this work, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

I just jumped off a call from one of my private coaching clients. And it went through a heap of stuff. But one of the things that he was most challenged with at the moment is being able to properly switch off, he's just noticing as we've improved our holiday different things together, that there are still times where, particularly at home where there's so much going on. And even when he does what he knows, helps him relax. He just can't properly switch off. And so there's always stuff going on his head and which is often common for a lot of people as he gets to the end of a weekend. And he's still not felt like he's switched off because his mind is just racing. And he's thinking about so many different things. He also described that he he tried a floatation tank. So even he referenced the Simpsons episode when he was in there. And he's like, Oh, this is stupid. It's not working. And he said it was kind of like that he was ended up trying to count down the time because he just wasn't getting any results. He was sitting there trying to control the experience, which is pretty common, right? Like, bring, like, Yeah, bring me the Bring me the relaxation, give it give me the relaxed relaxation instead of just allowing it to happen. And what I explained to him is, it's like unless you give it instructions with anything, then you're going to struggle. And so with like with anything, you can get a whole lot of different information out there, but not always useful. And the key part is having the right strategy and the right instructions. The example I used to him was like when when I was learning to drive a manual car, this instruction that I was given, which is you just got to let the clutch out slowly. And away you go. And it's like, that's just crap advice. Because that's like a lottery. If you happen to catch the clutch on the way through and engage the clutch on the way through then then great, but if you don't, and cars are all different, right? Whether whether the engagement point is within, it's a lottery. But when I was explained to me that actually, if you let the clutch out and feel that engagement and allow it to the car to hold and then be able to move forward, then it's a completely different experience. Why wasn't I told this in the first place. So the instructions for meditation is exactly what we talked about today. Now, I want to share with you some of the best advice that that I've been given or worked out myself, because often when people talk about meditation is it's almost from a place of people who already know how to meditate, and they're not able to articulate how they got it. And so I struggle with that for ages and why I can't meditate. This is really difficult. I'm so challenged by this. And instead it's like, okay, well what's actually going on, and learning to break it down into much simpler steps. And so much of why we can't in a divided commas. Meditate is because we're trying to control the situation. We're trying to decide how it should be. We're trying to control the thoughts. And so we get into this place of resistance and just doesn't work in any situation. So instead, it's about coming back to the most simplest elements of okay, what am I going to focus on? And so the meditation that I took him through was like, Okay, first we're just gonna focus on breath, then we're just going to focus on the sounds that you hear. Then it's like, can you be breathing in

calm and then breathing out the negative and we did all these different strategies, and some of them worked for him and others didn't. And again, it's a great example of this not one size fits all. There are a whole lot of different ways to relax. Meditation being one there's a whole lot of different ways to meditate. And the important thing is, like I said to him, it's like he was a, an old footy player. It's like you're not trying to To be an expert now, it's like you're you're five or six, and you're just starting out, this is your first practice. So don't be hard on yourself, just learn what you need to learn. And because what it does is allows you the meditation as you find what does work, what it allows you to find presence. And that allows you to take that presence into the rest of your life. And how I explained it to him is that there are different times in your life where you get that natural, intuitive guidance of like, you should act on that. And for him, he's in sales. He just had those times where he couldn't exactly articulate why this was the best step it is knew that that was the best step. And that's that innate part of us that we all have that ability to navigate from that place of knowing from this gut feel or instincts or whatever you want to call it. When we go into meditation, and we're just trying to operate from logic, and we're just trying to get our brain to operate, well, then we're not able to do it at a way that we think that we can. And the same thing happens in our life, when we are busy, we're running around at 100 miles an hour we have so much on, we spend very little time in a place of presence, where we can allow that intuitive process to come through. Instead, we're just trying to navigate our way with logic, where you get the best results in life and in meditation is being able to blend the two, bringing the intuition make sense of it with your own logic. And then it's a beautiful interaction where you're blending those two processes. It's a meditations the same, not trying to control it, not trying to just be in this complete state of bliss and not trying to control it with your logic, but allowing both of them to flow in, in, it's almost like a dance right one than the other. And it's just rocking back between the two. So if you're at that point where I can't meditate, I can't switch off, I can't properly relax. Finally, more presence in your life will allow you to have that beautiful blend between the intuitive between instinctive between the gut feel, and the logic, the brain, the mind that allows you to to already solve so many problems in your now, I'd love to share with you some metric meditation training, if that's something that you're interested in. So if it is, let me know either. If you're watching this on my feed, then drop a comment below or message me if you're on the podcast, then send me an email, you'll hear my email address in the outro there. And I'd love to send that to you. And it's something that's completely changed my life. Remember listening to the Australian cricketer used to be the Australian coach and also played for Australia for a lot of years, Justin Langer talking about meditation. And he said, I can't exactly explain what it is, but I just feel better. I'm a better dad, I'm a better partner. I'm about a cricketer. And it's no coincidence that his career if you look at his career, how it improved. At the same time that he was changing how he operated from this perspective as well. 10 year journey for me so far, I can't now do without it. It's as important as eating and drinking. And it's allowed me to find more that presents more of that calm, more of that ability to switch off and to actually feel rested after a weekend. So let me know. And let's help you find some more of that presence in relaxation and get your energy and vitality back.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief. Let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform