What Are You Afraid Will Happen If You Stop?

There is something I need to admit.

I spend a lot of time encouraging people to slow down, to breathe, to rest and to trust that they don't have to earn their worth through constant doing. Lately I've realised I need that reminder just as much as anyone else.

Right now I'm completely immersed in revamping my website and creating new offerings for September. Every year I take August off and that has become a non-negotiable promise to myself and my family. So naturally I've convinced myself that everything has to be finished before then: the website, the new programmes, the plans, every last detail and this is just on the work front! I still have a house to run… My thinking seems perfectly reasonable: if I work really hard now, August will be free and I'll be fully present with my family, rested, switched off and enjoying the summer.

Except life doesn't quite work like that.

So, I find myself constantly thinking about work. The laptop stays open longer than it should. Walks become something I'll do tomorrow and playing with my children becomes something I fit in between tasks, if that! Even when I'm with them, part of my mind is still running through everything that needs doing. Then the guilt arrives because I know these are the moments I won't get back.

The irony isn't lost on me. Here I am, helping others reconnect with themselves, whilst quietly slipping into one of my oldest patterns. A project excites me and before I know it, my all-or-nothing mindset has taken over. I convince myself it's only temporary. I justify every late evening and every missed opportunity to simply be, telling myself it will all be worth it when it's finished.

But will it?

There is nothing wrong with working hard or feeling passionate about something you love. The problem comes when we postpone living until we've completed one more task, reached one more goal or ticked one more box. I'll slow down when this project is finished, when the children are older, when work is less busy, when life settles down. But what if when never comes?

That question led me to another. What are you afraid will happen if you stop?

At first, the answers seem obvious. I'll fall behind, I'll disappoint people, people will think I'm failing.

I wonder though whether those are really the answers or simply the stories sitting on the surface. Perhaps the deeper question isn't what we're afraid will happen if we stop. Perhaps it's what stopping might reveal.

When everything becomes quiet, there are no emails to answer, no projects demanding our attention, no endless to-do list proving how productive, capable or useful we've been, there is just us. For many of us, that can feel surprisingly uncomfortable because stillness has a way of revealing the beliefs we've been carrying for years without ever questioning them.

Why do I feel responsible for carrying everything? Why do I find it so hard to ask for help? Why do I think that my value comes from what I achieve rather than who I am? These aren't questions to answer quickly or problems to solve. They are invitations to become curious.

Beneath our busyness there is often something much quieter asking to be heard. Perhaps it's grief, uncertainty or emotions we've never really given ourselves permission to feel. Only you can discover what lies beneath your own story.

One of the most humbling things I've learnt through my own breath practice is that the mind is incredibly good at explaining our behaviour. It always has another reason to keep going, another deadline, another perfectly logical excuse. The body, however, often tells a different story. It doesn't speak in words. It whispers through tension we didn't realise we were holding, through exhaustion that doesn't disappear with a good night's sleep, through a breath that has quietly become shallow without us noticing. Sometimes our body knows we're carrying something long before our mind is ready to acknowledge it.

This is one of the reasons I love working with the breath. Not because it gives us another thing to do but because it creates the space to listen, to gently become aware of what has been quietly shaping us all along. The breath doesn't tell us what our story is. It simply helps us hear it and release it.

I'm still learning this. Some days I close my laptop and choose the walk, some days I don't. Some days I remember that my children won't care whether my website launched in July or September. They'll remember whether I was truly there. The work will still be there tomorrow and the to-do list will never really be finished but this moment won't come again.

So rather than leaving you with an answer, I'd like to leave you with a question. Not one to solve today but one to carry with you. When you strip away all the reasons, all the justifications and all the busyness, what is it that you're really afraid of?

Awareness isn't about having all the answers. Sometimes it simply begins with being willing to ask the question.

With Love and Light,
Stefanie

Founder of The Oya Energy
theoyaenergy.co.uk