When Doing Nothing Becomes the Hardest Work

This reflection is written in the second person, but it’s really a shared journey. I’m right here in it, too.

The Uneasy Art of Ease

You sit there, doing exactly what you always wished for—to be in ease—and it feels off. Your chest tightens, your mind sparks with lists, excuses, old patterns. Instinct tells you to move, to produce, to show your worth. The ease exposes all the expectations you’ve built about continuously moving forward, about always striving, always earning, always doing.

And yet, in this pause, you begin to notice: these impulses aren’t all you. They’re habits, adaptations, parts of a self you built to survive, to be liked, to feel safe—or perhaps simply the product of mirror neurons having watched your adult entourage and media acting the same way.

The Question That Follows Ease

And then, naturally, the question rises: what's next? You ask your soul, your higher self, the universe—something larger than your habits—what the next step is.

In this space, you start to look at the layers of yourself with humility and authenticity: what serves me? What doesn’t? What is truly mine? From this reflection, clarity begins to arise—not as a plan forced into being, but as a creative fire that moves through you, pointing toward expression, exploration, and expansion in alignment with your real self, your heart, your soul, your inner fire. But, not quite yet. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Sitting With the Impulse

I welcome you to sit with what is behind each impulse that arises—and more importantly, the emotion revealed when the impulse is not acted upon.

Is there an urge to go online and look for a new or different job? To swipe on a dating app? To take a new training? To seek career counselling or another personality test, hoping to know yourself better?

Sit. Feel. Wonder. Listen. The layers will reveal themselves, and if you can stay with them without resistance, they usually dissolve like cotton candy in water.

The Fears That Surface in Still Space

Often the discomfort or fear stems from not knowing how long this space will last. Will I be able to pay the bills? What will others think? Will I get lazy? Am I wasting time I could use to build something forward-moving?

These are real fears. Please make sure your electricity doesn’t get turned off and that you are fed. This is what that three-month cushion is for. Don’t wait to use it only if you get sick or fired. This pause—this conscious reflection—might actually prevent that from happening.

As for the other questions that arise, the medicine lies there.

The Foundation of Trust

All of this rests on a foundation of trust. Trust in yourself to hold and love yourself through the discomfort, the uncertainty, the awkwardness of doing 'nothing'. Trust in life itself: in its intelligence, its resilience, its loving way of orchestrating exactly what you need at exactly the right moment, even if you only see that in retrospect.

Trust requires humility because it asks you to acknowledge that you are not in control of everything, that your habitual strategies and clever plans might not truly have been in your best interest.

Trust requires vulnerability because it demands showing up a bit more raw, exposed, with no guarantees. Like standing barefoot on a cliff edge, wind whipping at your back, you are invited to feel the risk, the height, the fragility—and still choose to breathe and lean forward.

Without humility and vulnerability, trust becomes arrogance and fear: “I can control this, I can force it, I can make it work.”

Humility and vulnerability together allow you to open more fully into the unknown, to stay present with what is, and to let the creative fire move naturally, burn away impurities, and reveal what is truly alive within. They are the soil in which clarity, authenticity, and the realignment of self can take root and flourish.

Living the Practice

I’m writing this because this is exactly what I am experiencing right now—landing in ease, noticing impulses, sitting with the emotions that arise, questioning what serves and what doesn’t.

This process is the result of four intense months of reflection, radical honesty, and gradual surrender, and it has landed me in the place described above. My mantra through it all is a gentle: what’s next?

Stay tuned—I’ll be sharing what emerges from this generous process.

If you feel called to sit with your emotions, be real with the habits of thinking, expectations, and patterns of performing as they arise, somatic spiritual coaching may be for you. Contact me for a complimentary discovery call when it feels right.