“Courage is fear walking.”
~ Susan David, author of Emotional Agility: How to Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work & Life
Imagine that instead of feet – each with 26 bones, 33 joints, 19 muscles, 107 ligaments and 30,000 nerve endings – you stood on 2 blocks of wood. Big solid blocks of oak.
With that solid foundation, it might seem like you’d be super stable.
But imagine if you are standing on a rocky beach, or a root-covered trail, or a marshy meadow. Without agility and mobility, without awareness of the nuance and subtleties of the surface you’re on, it wouldn’t take much to knock you over.
One unstable stone, one loose root, one unexpected hole and you’d be ass-over-tea-kettle.
Now imagine that instead of the myriad human emotions, you have two: “mad” and “glad.” From the outside, you might seem super stable. Like a rock.
But imagine you are in a tense work situation, or you have a teenager at home, or you love someone who doesn’t think exactly as you do. Without emotional agility and mobility, without the awareness of nuance and subtleties of your emotional landscape (and that of those around you), it wouldn’t take much to knock you over.
With only “angry” and “happy” to support you, one unkind comment, one disagreement, one unexpected loss, and you’d be figuratively on your butt.
The focus of our Nourishing Movement classes this week is showing up in the body, movement and life. It felt like serendipity, then, when I was reminded of Dr. David’s work and her question, “How do you want to show up?”
Here are three practices from her work that we can apply to both our physical and emotional selves:
3 Practices for an Agile Body & Heart
1. “I notice…” instead of “I am…”
Dr. David reports that her clients often say things like “I am furious” or “I am worried.” Instead, she suggests using the phrase “I notice…” as in, “I notice that I feel angry that he is ignoring me” or “I notice that I’m worried about what will happen next week.”
Similarly, my class participants sometimes use phrases like “I am uncoordinated” or “My knees are bad” or “I am not good at balance.” I encourage people instead to say, “I notice I feel awkward doing that movement” or “I notice that the inside of my right knee feels tight” or “I notice my balance is more wobbly on my left side today.”
The difference is that “I am…” adheres you to the emotion, the sensation, or the experience. This language makes you become the emotion, sensation or experience. By saying, “I notice…” we can use our experience – emotional or physical – as information, as data, not as who we are.
2. Two other things that might be happening
When we feel a rush of sensation – be it physical or emotional – it’s easy to paint it with a broad (and largely unhelpful) brush. When you hear yourself saying something like “I’m stressed” or “My whole body hurts” or “I’m overwhelmed,” ask yourself what are two other things that you are feeling. Maybe the stress is rooted in fear and anxiety. Maybe your low back and shoulders are tight but your feet and knees feel good. Maybe you’re overwhelmed with anger or gratitude or joy.
Expanding our granularity and specificity about what we are experiencing, helps us communicate more clearly with ourselves and with others and helps determine next steps that are skillful and kind.
3. Courage is fear walking.
Courage – both physical and emotional – does not mean an absence of fear. Instead, courage means moving through the experience rather than getting stuck in it. The next time you feel afraid based on an emotional or physical sensation, ask yourself, “How might I feel this and walk through it?”
At the heart of cultivating agility in body and emotions is the question, “How do I want to show up?” I encourage asking yourself and answering it authentically every day.