Take the Pressure Off | Healing through Jewish Wisdom

The conversation

You finally stop to take a breath, and right away a voice comes up in you saying that you're running away from your life. Gili knows that one up close. She was running nonstop from role to role, and the moment she decided to stop is exactly when the harshest, most critical voices jumped into her head. When the choice is between disappointing yourself and disappointing someone else, it's always better to choose the other person. That's the central work: to focus on yourself a little more, and on other people a little less.

The truth

Gili describes herself as an achievement-driven, hardworking person who loves deadlines and goals, but she says that reaching the summit and standing there wrung out, like a slaughtered cat, no longer suits her.

She admits that she's afraid of disappointing the people who wait for a new episode every week, but she reminds herself that it's always better to disappoint other people than to disappoint yourself.

The moment she stopped the constant running between roles, mother, partner, Emotional Healer, inner voices started telling her she was running away from her problems.

She describes a moment when she almost ran off to a cave, and before she did it she asked herself what that escape was actually for.

Questions and answers

What should I be doing instead of just digging in and taking on the problem itself?

In the episode, the answer is to focus on solutions and not on problems. The problem itself is never the problem. The problem is always the way you look at it. Agonizing over when and how it will work out best is also unnecessary. Better to focus on believing that it will happen, and to cut back on the running and the pressure.

Why does a voice jump into my head telling me I'm just running away every time I try to stop and take a breath? And how am I supposed to know whether what I'm doing is worth my time?

You need to check whether what you're doing comes from intention and meaning, and to ask yourself whether it moves you forward, makes you happier, or benefits you emotionally, financially or socially. An action without intention is a waste of time that only adds pressure.

Gili's original episode description

Surprise!! Episode 82, Get Out of the Pressure, Man, is back in the library after editing.

You know the feeling when you really want something to happen, and then it happens and you're in shock? In shock that it's actually happening, in shock that you got to this point, flooded with feelings, with thoughts, even with people around you cheering you on. It's all nice, but then I suddenly realized that I'm in gratitude and also in overdrive, and overdrive isn't good.

I felt like I was on the fast track, not stopping, running all the time, from one thing to the next, from one role to the next, and here I'm a mother, and here I'm a friend, a partner, an Emotional Healer, a lecturer, and also someone carrying messages out into the world. Blessed be His name, but that's a million responsibilities, and we haven't said a word yet about the noise the world makes, and the world makes a lot of noise.

I'll share honestly that I'm an achievement-driven, hardworking person, and I also love the strategy of throwing the bag over the fence. That's how I get myself moving. I love a deadline, I love having goals, ambitions, dreams, and I hold myself to a high work ethic. But that place of reaching the summit and being there wrung out, like a slaughtered cat, suits me less and less. So I stopped.

I stopped, and into that vacuum, because there's no such thing as emptiness in this world, came the voices, paying me a visit: you loser, what are you stopping for? This is what you wanted! This is what you asked for! What's going on here?? What's this about shutting yourself in a cave? You're running away from your problems!

And then came the fear of disappointing! You know that one? I do. I immediately reminded myself, for the millionth time, that if it's up against disappointing myself, obviously I choose to disappoint someone else and not myself. For years that wasn't clear to me, and even now there are times when I get confused, so I remind myself, and you too: always prefer to disappoint other people over disappointing yourself. From a certain angle we were meant to disappoint one another, because usually that's what comes of not disappointing yourself. And that's our central work here in this game of life. To focus on ourselves, and less on other people.