Do you ever feel like you are barreling through life with your fists clenched and the thought “If I can just get through this…” running through your mind constantly? Maybe it is the diet bet you are trying right now or the two-week wait that you’re in the middle of where you notice it most.
White-knuckling happens during situations where our thoughts lead to intense feelings of nervousness. For instance, when you ride a scary rollercoaster and grip the handrails as tight as possible just waiting for it all to be over. Any situation where you are waiting for it all to be over could be considered a white-knuckle moment.
Most of the time we’re not waiting for a 90-second theme park ride to end that is causing our white-knuckle moment. Many of us are waiting for entire phases or chapters of life to be over to let go of the intense nervousness. Whatever it is you are facing, here are a few tips on how to stop white-knuckling your way through life and start enjoying it.
Let go of perfection. Wanting everything to be perfect causes us to hold on tight to ideas and beliefs that don’t serve us. When we think things should be perfect, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Perfection is not a precursor to happiness. In fact, it is the opposite. People who are white-knuckling their way through life because of perfectionism are not genuinely happy people.
Feel your feelings. Everything we do in life is because of how we think it will make us feel. We gravitate towards good feelings and try to avoid experiencing negative emotions. Feelings are just vibrations in our bodies caused by our thinking and when we learn to feel them (both good and bad), instead of resisting or avoid them, then there is nothing we can’t experience in life.
Embrace what is happening. When we resist reality we create a great amount of personal pain and we push away from the experience we are having. Resisting the way things are will cause you to have more and more white-knuckle moments. Stop resisting and start allowing. When we approach life with our hands open (instead of with clenched fists), many possibilities we never even imagined become available to us.
Want to stop white-knuckling it every day? Reach out to me.
