Hello and welcome,
Today I will be reading to you the third chapter of my book Break Free Live in Truth and it's called Taking a Bath in Tension.
This chapter is a bit shorter than the others but I believe it is a very important subject.
So make sure you're comfortable and I will start.
I often notice how people avoid all kinds of tension in social situations.
And I get it,
I used to be like that too,
Sometimes I still am.
When you start speaking your truth,
You'll feel it.
Tension.
Sometimes in yourself,
Sometimes in the person you're speaking to.
Or you can feel it in the air,
Even without words.
It's one of those feelings we try hard to avoid.
It can hold you back from speaking your truth.
Or it can make you question yourself after you've already spoken.
I realized that in order to speak my truth,
I had to get comfortable around tension.
I had to train myself and my body to stay grounded.
By learning to be okay with tension,
You get to be authentic.
You get to choose your response instead of reacting from fear.
That,
To me,
Is freedom.
Of course,
I still don't enjoy tension.
I don't seek it out.
But it's no longer that heavy,
Haunting fear I used to carry.
Sometimes people avoid tension by passing it on to someone else.
They redirect it.
Let's say someone asks your friend to walk their dog for a week.
But your friend doesn't want that responsibility right now.
It's just too much.
Instead of saying no,
They say,
I'm not good with dogs,
But Maura is.
She'd love that.
Which might not even be true.
Now you're the one left with the tension.
You either betray yourself by saying yes,
Or you have to be the harsh one who says no.
Unless you really want to say yes.
This kind of redirection might seem small,
But it isn't.
Especially when you're still learning to respect your own time and energy.
It sends the message that your no matters less than theirs.
This happened to me a lot.
I wasn't firm in my own energy yet.
And people sense that.
Somehow I became the easy option.
The one people would push things onto.
But people don't redirect to those they deeply respect.
They redirect to the ones who feel unsure.
So I had to become someone who respected her own no enough.
To let others feel it too.
It made me wonder,
Why do we avoid saying no in so many ways?
And I believe the answer is.
.
.
Tension.
That feeling of not knowing what's going to happen.
So I started practicing something I now call taking a bath in tension.
Instead of resisting it,
I breathed into it.
I stopped running.
And I let myself soak in it.
I'd send that message I'd been avoiding.
And then I'd wait.
Breathe.
Let the discomfort wash over me.
Not fight it.
Not analyze it.
Just feel it.
And the truth is,
It always passed way quicker than I expected.
Most of the time the worst case scenario never came.
And even when it did,
I could handle it.
Because I had faced my fear.
The more you avoid it,
The bigger it gets.
But when you face it,
Really face it,
You see it smaller than it pretended to be.
The more you sit with tension,
The easier it becomes.
And it's such an honest way to live.
Authenticity makes life richer,
More calm,
More you.
This was today's chapter.
I hope to speak to you soon.
