Focusing Tip #824 – “I don’t have time to sense what’s right for me”

Does it feel like you don’t have time to sense what is really right for you? Read on…

A Reader asks:

I’m just emerging from a time of caring for my mother, and now I can give attention to my own needs. But I have a lot of confusion about what’s right for me.

I’m trying to do Focusing to help me sense my way forward, but whenever I try, I just get tightness in my jaw and a sense of urgency, like something in me is saying, “There isn’t time for this!”

Dear Reader:

I have a simple principle: Always spend time first with the part of you that won’t let you be with anything else!

So your first step in Focusing will be to spend some time with the tightness in your jaw, and its sense of urgency.

This is the kind of part that is worried about something, so you have a head start in listening to it. Once you are in a solid contact with it, you can say, “I’m curious what you are worried will happen if I take time to sense my way forward.”

The process of respectfully listening to that part’s worries will probably help it to calm down. You might even be surprised by what it’s concerned about. You’ll know you’ve understood it when that tightness starts to ease.

Then you can turn your attention to what’s next in your life.

I suspect that sensing what’s right for you will take a bit of time (the worried part is right about that!). What a gift to yourself it is, to give yourself that time, to set aside a space of no hurry, no pressure, “we have the time we need to do this, because it’s important.” And then open up and listen… allowing whatever comes to show itself, in its own way. Perhaps over several days or weeks even. Letting it take the time it takes.

What an important thing to be doing! I wish you well!