Feeling Restless? Two Common Traps to Avoid

Restlessness drives us to seek new experiences, to explore the unknown, to create something out of nothing. It’s a compulsory component of Transition.

Feeling restless is a sign that change is coming; it signifies that the peaceful status quo is starting to shift. It’s an invitation to transform ourselves. When we’re feeling restless, we’re the caterpillar in its cocoon, waiting to emerge as a beautiful butterfly (or an improved moth, depending on genetics).

But restlessness is also uncomfortable. It’s like an annoying internal itch that we can’t quite scratch.

Sometimes there’s an obvious external triggering event.

But often, we feel a sense of internal disturbance without any clear explanation. This is usually the case when we’re going through a transitional state — like moving to a new city, starting a new job, or going through a breakup. We’re stuck in the limbo of liminal space, waiting for something to happen to restore our sense of stability.

We might feel that restlessness emotionally; intuitively; physiologically; or even subconsciously, as a recurring voice in our dreams or journals.

When we don’t know the reason for our internal agitation, it’s destabilising. Without a logical understanding of our feelings and behaviours, our minds can become unsettled. We don’t like that.

So when we feel restless, most of us will channel our inner Houdinis and try to find a quick way out of the discomfort and back to a state of stillness. In doing that, there are two traps we commonly fall into: escapism and rationalisation.

Trap 1: Escapism — Tempted to run

To ease our restlessness, many of us start with a classic strategy of avoidance.

As Benjamin Hoff wrote in the Te of Piglet, “We try to solve restlessness with more movement. In other words, by increasing our restlessness. The West is full of…restless seekers of instant gratification, larger-than-life overachievers. The West idolizes them because they’re Bouncy and Exciting.”

Social media has helped us all become experts at escapism. Some of us lose ourselves in films, books, social media or real-life dramas. Others develop addictions to work, pills, alcohol or food; or to fitness, dance and spirituality (my go to’s). But even if we binge-watch the entire series of Game of Thrones, it’s still a temporary distraction.

Don’t worry, I’m not advocating a full stop to watching cute puppy videos on Instagram, but trying to distract ourselves is a trap that won’t help neutralise our inner agitation.

Trap 2: Rationalisation — Find the problem and solution at the same time

Once we become aware of inner agitation, our busy analytical minds get hungry for logic: they want a nice narrative. This helps us feel more in control and therefore relaxed… even if our explanation isn’t correct or is only partially true.

We can get very creative trying to find the cause of our inner turmoil so that we can then solve it. We might consult friends and therapists; study the bottoms of tea cups or champagne flutes; seek the wisdom in tarot cards, traditional healers, or best of all, this blog…

The rational mind wants to understand why we feel disturbed. But a focus on narrative analysis is a trap. It not only wastes our time and energy, but it may also exacerbate and prolong the agitation. We exhaust ourselves looking for answers… so we must resist the temptation to keep looking!

When trying to escape from quicksand, the more one flails about, the faster one sinks.

How to resolve restlessness

When we feel a deep desire to get out!, it’s counter-intuitive to stay with the discomfort, but that’s the only way through. The route to inner peace begins with embracing our inner agitator.

Here are three practical steps you can take to ease the agitation caused by restlessness:

1. To partially satiate your mind, identify any clear internal ‘voices’ you’re aware of, and the emotional base underlying them. Is there an unexpressed desire, or unmet need?

2. Align your life in a way to lessen agitation. Clear out jagged edges caused by behaviours, activities, and people that are in opposition to the person you’re trying to become, or who are negatively affecting your energy.

3. Beyond those two steps, if it’s not immediately clear what’s causing the agitation, stop trying to fight, understand, or rationalise the feeling. Recognise that you’re in a restless state of mind, and surrender to it. Learn to accept, allow and acknowledge the emotion to be as it is, knowing that it is a vital part of a transient state of becoming — and it will eventually pass on its own.

Restlessness as a teacher

As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “The future is entering into us in this manner in order to transform itself within us long before it happens… So you must not be frightened… when a restlessness like light and cloud shadows passes over your hands and over all your doing.”

To allow transformation to occur, we need to be patient. There is no exotic vacation, psychoactive substance, shamanic wizard or even supreme life coach who has the cure for restlessness.

Of course, that’s challenging advice to implement: these feelings are confusing, uncomfortable and brimming with tension. But as Rilke writes, “Why do you want to exclude any disturbance, any pain, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what these conditions are working upon you? Why do you want to plague yourself with the question where it has all come from and whither it is tending?”

Sometimes the easiest action to take is no action at all.

So the next time you’re feeling restless, don’t try to escape it. Embrace it. Listen and wait. (After catching up on the latest Instagram videos of parrots imitating cats, of course!)

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What are Major Life Transitions? How are they different than Changes?

Transitions are not Changes. Transitions are psychological. Change is contextual.

Major Life Transitions involve a period of being in-between identities, a dark void without clarity, a state of stillness within motion. They bring us into the liminal space: the boundary between what was, and what is to come.

We know we’re in a Transition when we undergo a deep, raw, often excoriating process of losing our sense of self. We question our identities. Transitions include multiple changes — to our health, career, relationships, finances, geographies, etc — but they’re not synonymous with Change.

Although caterpillars can grow up to 100 times their size, move locations, and even change colours, those are still changes. But when caterpillars enter into the pupa and turn into butterflies, they’re in a Transition: a complete metamorphoses of identity.

Feeling lost in your transition? A guide can help!

Tips to get your own guru and access your inner wisdom

Major life transitions are rarely linear or straightforward. They require a solitary exploration into unfamiliar terrain during which it is common to feel lost, alone or despondent. As we move out of our comfort zones, our fears strike with full force. We might doubt ourselves and our ability to move forwards. Missing the familiarity and safety of our previous lives, our ‘known world’, we may even try to reverse the changes we’ve worked so hard to implement, and regress to where we started.

At times like these, a touch of guidance can help us stay on track. Luckily, this support is available and can be accessed both internally and externally.

Getting in touch with our inner guides

Our strongest inner guide is our intuition: also called our inner compass or our gut instinct. It might be experienced as a strong, recurring desire; or a slight, niggling feeling that just won't go away.

Our gut instinct may seem irrational, illogical and in conflict with what we think we should feel. While we are conditioned societally to favour logic over intuition, it's often that inner compass that provides us with the most reliable sense of direction when we feel most stuck. When we ignore its voice, we may experience regret or resentment afterwards: a sign of a crossed personal boundary.

A few years ago, I felt unable to connect to my intuition: I was so overpowered by the needs of others and societal ‘should do’s’, that I couldn’t isolate what it was that I wanted, independent of those subconscious influences. It’s still a work in progress for me, but there are a few strategies that helped.

How to heed our inner voice

Our inner guides appear when we start looking for them. They're always present: they're part of our psyche. The challenge is that sometimes, they're hard to identify or hear. I learned that to access our internal wisdom, we need periods of stillness and silence so that we can listen deeply to ourselves. The more we develop our relationship with ourselves, and grow our self-awareness, the better our relationship with our inner guides will be.

To access our inner voice, it can be helpful to practice meditation and free-writing (journalling without an objective). Our gut instincts may also express themselves through our dreams, which are a window into the workings of our subconscious mind (Click here to read my thoughts on the importance of daydreaming for self-discovery). During transitions, our dreams may become particularly vivid. It can be helpful to jot them down in a dream diary, and review it for common themes or patterns.

Some questions to help identify the voice of our intuition, especially when contemplating a decision, include:

• Is this more of a YES or a NO for me?

• How do I feel in my body: are my muscles tense or relaxed?

• What feels more constraining or liberating?

• What feels more nourishing or depleting?

• What feels more pressured and rushed, or relaxed and natural?

• What feels most aligned or authentic to my values?

We can also create an 'inner advisory council' comprised of select aspects of our personalities. This allows us to review important decisions from the perspective of aspects of self that we wish to be more prominent. These might be strengths with which we are already familiar: for example, resilience, humour, or compassion. Or they might be latent parts of ourselves that are yearning to be seen and take a greater role in our lives, like playfulness, adventure, or connection.

When feeling stuck, we could ask: 'what would the part of myself that craves more adventure, want right now?' Or, 'how could I look at this situation from a place of humour?' It might even help to write a letter of guidance from one of these aspects of self: what would its advice to us be? By taking our direction from this handpicked ‘inner advisory council’, we can also help limit the influence of parts of ourselves that we wish to leave behind, as we embark on our self-transformation process.

Seeking outer guidance

Major life transitions can be completed following our own internal wisdom, but we may also benefit from the support of external guides. They might be family, friends, coaches, religious leaders… or as some ‘spiritual’ people are quick to inform me, celestial messengers… Personally, I’m still limited to the human ones :)

I love the term guru: a Sanskrit word which means a 'dispeller of darkness.' To me, the term implies that a guru is not going to tell us what to do or how to do it. Rather, they will shine a light when and where it's needed. Gurus appear when we need them, and step back when we don't. They know that if we can see ourselves and our surroundings more clearly, we will find our own way forwards.

The type of guide we're looking for takes responsibility for our spiritual growth. They have a (sometimes annoyingly!) acute ability to see past our excuses, fears and self-deception and straight to our innermost desires. They point out the ways in which we are holding ourselves back from freedom: they remind us that the cage, in which we feel trapped, does not exist. Our guides hold us gently, carefully, with unwavering care and belief in our ability to make the changes we seek. They listen to our insights, celebrate our successes, and reaffirm our growth. If we feel we made a mistake or took a wrong turn, they remind us that this is all part of our experience of change, and encourage us to keep going.

Because of the vulnerability of transitions, it's important to feel safe and stable in our relationship with our gurus. Some 'green flags' to look out for and embrace are that they treat us as equals. They speak so that we can understand them. They share information at our pace. They are both wise and kind: they deliver hard truths with love and compassion. And they commit to being available to us for the entirety of our self-transformation journey, however long it takes.

How do we find our outer guides?

According to an old adage, “When the student is ready, the master appears." Gurus have an uncanny ability to appear when they're needed. Or perhaps, they were there all along - but the timing wasn’t right, or we didn't notice them. We can ignore our guides by rejecting external help, keeping our metaphorical door shut. Or we might not be listening carefully enough, and miss out if they’re contacting us quietly. But don’t worry, they’ll reappear.

But suppose we feel we’re ready, but nobody is showing up. What do we do next?

To actively locate external guides, it's important to make space for them in our lives. Notice who you already turn to for advice or guidance. Are any of them unhelpful, distracting or negative influences? If so, reduce the time and energy you spend with them, or change your relationship with them. Pay attention to the people around you who are positive influences, and exude the type of energy you're seeking. Identify and frequent the communities or places where you can find more people like that.

Perhaps there's one person who stands out. Or maybe there are a few people who are helpful in different ways, and you choose to assemble a "Council of Advisors" that you can turn to for support. Once you find a potential guide, it helps to clarify expectations. How often will you communicate? How long will the relationship last? How will you check in with one another or provide feedback?

Ultimately, do what feels right so that you feel most secure in your relationship with your chosen guide. And if the relationship is not working for whatever reason, that's fine: move on and accept that it is just another part of the process.

In my case, there is one person whom I consider my ‘guru’. I’d met him once in person and subsequently we had little contact for a decade. Three years ago, we reconnected by phone. He asked me a profound question that cut through me like an x-ray: it acted as the catalyst for me to take action on my personal transformation. I asked him if he’d be open to continuing to support me as I took various leaps of faith – and he agreed (yay!). I feel very grateful to still be able to rely on my guru’s support and friendship today.

Guidance on guidance

There are no shortcuts for personal metamorphoses. But there are catalysts - and a good guide is one of them.

Ultimately, whether they're external or internal, guides serve our decision-making because they have our best interests at heart. They bestow on us the wisdom that we didn’t know we needed, at exactly the time when we need it. If we're not paying close enough attention, we might miss the voice of our intuition or the presence of external guides in our lives; but they'll always reappear. We’re never as lost as we might feel.

I’m going to close with a quote by one of my inspirations, the author Andre Gide (whose last name is one letter short of ‘guide’…) In his book The Counterfeiters, a young man, Bernard, is seeking advice from his friend’s uncle, Edouard:

Bernard: "And if I live badly, whilst I'm waiting to decide how to live?" Edouard: "That in itself will teach you. It's a good thing to follow one's inclination, provided it leads uphill."

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What are Major Life Transitions? How are they different than Changes?

Transitions are not Changes. Transitions are psychological. Change is contextual.

Major Life Transitions involve a period of being in-between identities, a dark void without clarity, a state of stillness within motion. They bring us into the liminal space: the boundary between what was, and what is to come.

We know we're in a Transition when we undergo a deep, raw, often excoriating process of losing our sense of self. We question our identities. Transitions include multiple changes - to our health, career, relationships, finances, geographies, etc - but they're not synonymous with Change.

Although caterpillars can grow up to 100 times their size, move locations, and even change colours, those are still changes. But when caterpillars enter into the pupa and turn into butterflies, they’re in a Transition: a complete metamorphoses of identity.

The Perfectionism Trap: Four ways to adopt a Wabi Sabi approach to life

The price of perfection: just one of these Japanese cherries costs £240 or $300USD

Tokyo supermarkets are famous for their displays of flawless fruits in fancy boxes, which they exhibit like diamond rings in a jewelry store (with price tags to match!)

These impeccable aesthetics may have led to a line of luxury cherries, but they also have a cost. Food waste aside, there’s an expectation to consistently reach a standard of above-excellence.

The pressure to achieve perfection is not limited to Japanese fruit farmers; it’s a universal sentiment, exacerbated by social media and a culture that demands us to be more than ordinary. Beyond the veneer, not only does perfectionism lead to wasted potential (and fruit), but also to chronic disappointment, ill-health and a fear of leaving our comfort zones.

The desire to be perfect is a trap.

In a beautifully ironic example of imperfectly executed wisdom, the Japanese are also responsible for the antidote to perfectionism: wabi sabi.

Wabi Sabi

The principle of wabi sabi accepts that perfection does not exist in nature and therefore isn’t possible for humans (or fruits) either. It views imperfection as beautiful and pleasurable. In a wabi sabi world, there are no mistakes. Nothing is perfect; nothing is finished; and nothing lasts forever.

For those of us used to holding ourselves and others to a high standard, accepting imperfection can be challenging for several reasons.

Self-Acceptance vs Self-Improvement

There's a tension between striving toward being the best version of ourselves, which is healthy, and demanding an excellence bordering the impossible, which is not. Self-help books, for example, can teach us that we have to follow the author's specific formula in order to attain excellence in living. They can make us feel stressed instead of good (which is a great marketing tactic for selling more self-help books!)

Accepting ourselves as we are is also important for inner peace, self-love and rest. But of course, without pushing ourselves to aspire to more, we can stagnate. It's like hiking up a mountain: when we're trying to reach the summit, we need to try hard, but it doesn't make sense to maintain that level of effort in all other situations. Otherwise we will end up fatigued, demotivated, disappointed and resentful of ourselves and others. We need to find our own balance.

Expecting Too Little vs Too Much of Others

Those of us who hold ourselves to a standard of perfection often expect the same for others. We see people's potential and so badly want them to realise it; but when they fail to live up to the high bar we set for them, we are quick to call out their shortcomings and errors. We might think: "If I were you, I'd have done it like this; so you should too." We can become critical, resentful, and disappointed and as a result end up distancing ourselves from our loved ones and colleagues.

A wabi sabi approach to our relationships is to set aside all expectations. It's to recognise that nobody thinks or behaves the same: we're all on different journeys, in different places, and moving at different paces. Instead, we can see people's behaviours and actions as the characteristics that make them unique, and to love them for their individuality.

Melancholy vs Positive Psychology

We might feel a societal pressure toward emotional perfectionism. Particularly with the popularity of positive psychology, there can be a push to be happy all the time. Any lower emotional state is less desirable. But wabi sabi actually embraces melancholy. It views sadness as a path to self-knowledge: acting as a mirror that helps us explore the depths of our soul in a way inaccessible in a place of joy. Wabi sabi recognises that undergoing pain increases our empathy to others, especially those who are suffering. It also makes us more artistic: with hardship comes heightened sensitivity, which spurs creativity.

One of the beautiful aspects of melancholy is that it contains both joy and sadness at the same time. Illnesses, tragedies and pain may diminish our strength but they also enlighten us with a greater appreciation of life. They enable us to celebrate with more passion. As Rumi said, "A wound is the entrance by which light penetrates you."

Transience vs Desire

The aspiration for perfection in our lives may lead us to wish that our favourite feelings and experiences will go on forever. We can easily become attached to that which brings us happiness, whether relationships, objects, activities or places. After all, when we find something we like, it's human nature to want more of it! But wishing that which is transitory to be permanent is a quick recipe for disappointment and suffering. That brand new car will get scratched, our friendships will change, and our bodies will age. Events in our lives that we may not like - pain, tragedy, death - remind us that all of life is transitory.

Instead of wishing for permanence, a wabi sabi approach is to be like water in a stream: to flow and to accept that the world around us is also flowing. Life is constantly changing and so are we. We will never experience the same moment again, nor will we be exactly the same. Whether we're in the midst of elation or depression, life moves on and so do we.

(Im)perfect Freedom

Setting aside the expectation of perfection can be liberating, releasing a tremendous amount of pressure. It means we no longer need to fear life's mishaps.

But it's not easy. It means casting aside our assumptions, shedding our pretenses and letting go of attachments. It means stepping into the unknown and embracing that there is no one way to 'do' life.

Relax: it can't be done perfectly.

Reflection

How can you apply wabi sabi principles to your daily life?

If you welcome your own imperfections, those of others, and those found in nature - what might change in your thoughts, actions, feelings and relationships?

Meditation

Become more aware of your aspirations for perfection. When you observe these tendencies, try to balance self-acceptance with self-improvement; let go of expectations of yourself and others; embrace melancholy; and accept transience.

Further Reading

Wabi Sabi: The Wisdom in Imperfection (Nobuo Suzuki)

NB: This blog will now be published monthly

I would love to hear your reflections, thoughts and questions!

Please share them with me.

FAQ: What are Major Life Transitions? How are they different than Changes? Transitions are not Changes. Transitions are psychological. Change is contextual. Major Life Transitions involve a period of being in-between identities, a dark void without clarity, a state of stillness within motion. They bring us into the liminal space: the boundary between what was, and what is to come.

We know we're in a Transition when we undergo a deep, raw, often excoriating process of losing our sense of self. We question our identities. Transitions include multiple changes - to our health, career, relationships, finances, geographies, etc - but they're not synonymous with Change.

Although caterpillars can grow up to 100 times their size, move locations, and even change colours, those are still changes. But when caterpillars enter into the pupa and turn into butterflies, they’re in a Transition: a complete metamorphoses of identity.