Ease is misleading

For most of my life, people have regarded me as cool, calm, and collected, which is mostly a conditioned response from being socialized as a “good girl.” Good girls stay quiet. They don’t raise their voices. They don’t get angry. They do as they’re told.

I made this “cool, calm, and collected” descriptor a huge part of my identity. It meant I rarely voiced my opinions. I never spoke up when boundaries were violated. I wanted to keep the peace (keeping peace and making peace are two very different practices). So I just swallowed it all and kept going with a smile.

At some point, the cool, calm, and collected descriptor got translated to not letting others know I was struggling or not allowing myself to be seen in the struggle.

I have a memory of being in 7th grade PE class, where I was on the verge of puking from running so many laps, and the teacher complimented my smile and for having a good attitude. Looking back, I wonder why I was so afraid of being seen as grappling with difficulty. When did the belief settle into my bones that everything should appear as easy and effortless?

This pattern of course has caught up with me in many ways. Big life changing ways. It’s why I stopped drinking, because get a couple drinks in me, and everything I hadn’t voiced would all come pouring out, often in volatile ways. Then I’d have to deal with the shame and embarrassment when I was sober.

So while I was at the gym the other day, I was struggling with the last couple reps of the pull down machine—my lats were on fire—and I was still trying to pretend like this wasn’t affecting me. Like this wasn’t hard, dare I say, I wanted it to look easy. And then I started talking to myself, which Davis and I call “having a board meeting.” And it went something like this: “What are you doing Margaret?! Of course this is hard! You haven’t done any kind of weight lifting in years. What’s so wrong with letting people see that you’re putting in EFFORT and that you’re working towards something important to you? Sheesh.” So I bared my teeth and let out a big loud grunt to finish the set.

And a massive awakening happened inside me in that moment.

So much of the online space, especially the wellness world, preaches about ease. Aligning with ease. Manifesting ease. Everything oriented towards ease.

I don’t think ease is bad by any means, and have absolutely used the desire for ease as a selling point, but I also think it bypasses the very real reality of 1) life being hard and 2) needing effort and discipline to get what you want.

Let’s look at some of the definitions of ease, shall we? I pulled these from Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

-the state of being comfortable

-freedom from care, pain, discomfort, labor, or difficulty

-freedom from embarrassment

Now I understand why I had conflated ease and easy together! It’s literally the definition of ease. I’ve heard someone redefine it for themselves as effortless effort. I’m still sitting with that one…

To think that life should just be full of ease dismisses most peoples lived reality of needing a lot of effort to make ends meet. And I was dismissing my very own lived experience without even realizing it. I have big goals for myself and my business and they aren’t going to happen if I don’t put in some good ole fashioned elbow grease. But because I had been under the assumption that ease should mean easY, I had internalized that something was wrong with me because damn, entrepreneurship is not easy y’all. So I thought that since it wasn’t easy and easeful, I must be doing something wrong. And well, I was lol but nothing is inherently wrong with me.

As my business coach Rachel Turner says, you gotta thrash for a bit. You gotta thrash and flail to get that energy out and come back more clearheaded. Let people see what’s important to you by how you show up and let them see you showing up messy and imperfectly. Because presence matters more than perfection. And while I don’t consider myself a perfectionist at all, I’m pretty satisfied with a solid B-, I was getting stuck on keeping a perfect appearance, one that displayed ease despite how incongruent that is with my current experience.

And what I realized in that moment where my lats had officially hit their max capacity for pull downs, everything I want requires some goddamn effort and discipline.

But there is a balance between putting in enough effort without burning out and having enough discipline without suffocating under strict structures while ALSO not forcing it or willing it to happen by sheer willpower alone. This is what I’m currently exploring. What are the systems and structures I need to put in place so my creative, generative energy can flow with power and potency? How can I do this while still making space for rest, play, and joy?

What’s calling to you? Do you feel like you need the medicine of more discipline and effort? Or do you need the medicine of more ease and flow?

What are some of the actions that help you cultivate more of the medicine you need?