Living in Tension (Guest Post)

How to Transform Energetically

Greetings! This week’s post is a guest issue from a friend of the newsletter,

Edward

. He’s a doctor that’s been exploring life’s alternative paths, and writing about it along the way. I’ve come to look forward to and enjoy his reflections, and I am excited to share his essay about dealing with the tension of a pathless path.

I’m also making great progress on my book. If you want to pre-order, grab the Kindle here or get the printed versions when I launch in September.

A few things I wanted to shout out that friends are working on:

• Tiago Forte is hosting his first annual Second Brain Summit in Los Angeles on October 3rd and 4th. He has thrown in impressive freebies with the ticket (see digital swag bag). I don't think I’ll be attending but it looks to be a fun event. You can check out more here and get early bird pricing.

• Future of Cities: Thanks for all the feedback on the Future of Cities roundup. I made some updates to the post here. I also wanted to shout out Cabin’s “Turn your neighborhood into a thriving community” accelerator program which runs for 10 weeks starting in September. This is perfect if you are looking to start your mini-hood or more.

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On The Art Of Embracing The Tension

Gentle Reader,

In classic literature, there is a recurring theme of the hero meeting a guide or mentor. In Dante’s Inferno, Virgil guides the protagonist through the underworld and in The Count of Monte Cristo, Abbé Faria shares his worldly wisdom to help Edmond to figure out the reasons behind his imprisonment.

The function of these mentors is not to impart secret knowledge, but to prompt reflection in order to allow the protagonist to realise the latent power which already exists within. 

Luckily, there are ways to access these powers without having to traverse the nine circles of hell, or without being stuck in jail with a wise priest. All it takes is honing and listening to our instincts, to root out tensions which are obstructing us. 

Hidden Tensions

Everyone is living in tension, albeit in different ways. 

I experienced a tension from early on in my adult life between the career I had chosen and what I ‘really’ wanted to do. This levied a silent tax on my energy levels and demoralised me in ways which eventually were too forceful to ignore.  

Tension can manifest in any number of ways, according to its source. My working-life tension made me tired because I was expending energy on the psychological overheads of bullshit work and pretending to be someone I was not. Private life tensions, for example from an unfulfilling relationship which lacks connection and intimacy, might manifest as restlessness or agitation.

We can hide from tension in the short term, but unless we address its source, it will always return. In my case, I was guilty of using travel to escape tension but, in line with the proverb, I found that wherever I went, there I was. If I had a fight with my girlfriend, I would blame her expectations and, assuming we couldn’t work it out, I would look for an escape route. In work, instead of working through difficulties and communication problems, I would quit. 

Each time I made a quick exit like this, I felt the instant relief of a sudden decompression of tension. I would temporarily feel great, even elated, but the tension always came back with the next job or the next girlfriend, except it would be stronger, more inscrutable, and it would live deeper in my body. 

Energetic Bastardisation

Tension tells us that we need to change. I had to stop in my tracks and acknowledge that certain forces in my life had corralled me into a career which was not ‘me.’ 

The end result was a sort of energetic bastardisation, not unlike cognitive dissonance, yet more related to the emotional or vibratory plane. I didn’t feel this overnight, but rather it was a slow drawing back of the veil which revealed what I was facing.

Facing tension, and avoiding a quick fix, what can we move towards? The remedy will be particular to the root of the problem. Recurrent desires or thoughts, of work that energises you, are signs of your true interests and passions. Whenever I took holidays from work, the same old ideas and curiosities tended to arise, and I would begin to think about them, enjoying an energetic shift which would dissipate as soon as I returned to the work environment which was stultifying me. 

In my work and personal life, the pattern was similar. There was no point in running away from something unless I had something to replace it. In some cases, the right thing to do was not to leave, but to work through the issues, which can require confronting deep tension.

I had to sit with it and think – is there something going on here? And there are levels to the game. First, you must identify the feeling. Then, see if there is a feeling behind the feeling – if you notice that you have financial insecurities, you might find that a fear of not being financially stable is actually masking a fear of not being seen as conventionally successful or of letting your parents down – you are not actually afraid of being poor, but you are afraid of what not being rich says about you.

Such fears run deep. They were encoded in childhood via overheard conversations, facial expressions, and tuts of disapproval. These memories live in your body as tension, as blueprints borne of fear, rather than of a desire to flourish. 

This tension, once felt and worked through, is clarifying. The actions you need to take might sometimes be radical, like confronting financial insecurity by embracing entrepreneurship, or it could be the opposite – giving yourself permission to focus on your 9-5, to find the confidence in yourself to know that you are capable and worthy of getting that raise or promotion. 

Energetic Transformation

Once you start living according to your own desires, you will notice changes. 

The first is energetic improvement. The silent ballast which weighed you down, which made you collapse on the couch every evening after a day of bullshit work, is no more. You can now live through your own intention, and you will find that when you work on what truly energises you, that work is generative of more energy, and new pathways and opportunities will begin to materialise. 

Personally, after working through some family-related tensions, I found that speaking to immediate and distant relatives came a lot easier, once some of that affective baggage had been shed. In your relationships, you might discover more honesty and vulnerability, accessed through an ability to hold and work through tension, or you might notice physical changes such as greater range of vocal tone and facial expression, being able to sink more easily into a relaxed state, or just feeling more embodied. 

The second change you might notice is that your choices in life beget tension in others. Society wants to categorise and define people neatly and, when you defy classification, you cause those who live an unexamined life to feel uneasy, since your deviation from the well-trodden path is a mirror to those who are paralysed by their own tensions, causing them to feel anger, sadness, and frustration.

Many can’t see a life beyond their blinkered outlook. When I took time out to travel and learn Italian, many of my friends actually didn’t believe my motives. The line of questioning took the form of okay, but what are you really up to? or Do you have a really good job lined up for next year? Suspicions ran deep – surely it was not plausible that I was out there taking some reflective downtime? Such an idea was inconceivable to many. 

Acceptance & renewal

The third and final change is the radical acceptance that tension is fundamental, and that the only state of no-tension is death. 

This acceptance allows us to transform, to become new versions of ourselves as we pass through different stages of life. Each renewal makes our past selves seem like strangers whom we can no longer understand, because we have developed new values, outlooks, and ways of being in the world.

Transformation is universal – think of the caterpillar who becomes a butterfly, or the dragonfly nymph who casts off its shell and flutters away with new-sprouted wings. Our own acts of personal evolution might not be as dramatic as the metamorphosis of a larva to a winged insect, but an inner change can be equally transformational, as it carries the same shades of beauty, wonder, and hopefulness which typify renewals of every kind, and which bring meaning to the journey of perpetual becoming which is life.