Expanding Our Capacity For Ease

On 21st-century Earth, we are invited at every turn

to make things harder and more complicated.

Let’s learn together how to cultivate a life of ease

so that we have the energy, the time,

the internal resources, and the support we need

to be able to face all the hard things life sends our way.

Subscribe! Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pandora | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn

Make Magic:

Make ease a core value.

When you’re approaching a task, ask yourself;

What would make this easier?

What's the easiest way to do this?

When you’re thinking about your goals,

prioritize ease over perfectionism,

and everything else that’s driving you to take the hard way.

Transcript: Expanding Our Capacity For Ease

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. Welcome to Mind Witchery. Welcome to 2023. In today's episode, I want to invite you into something that I, myself, am really working with this year. So [laugh], hopefully that sounds interesting and fun to you. It's just really been on my mind, and I think you'll kind of see, as I talk about it, why I would choose to make this a podcast episode for this week. 

So, today's episode is about expanding our capacity for ease—for ease. That is something that is just a main project for me here in 2023. I'm recognizing that life in this 21st century [laugh] on planet Earth is complicated in many ways. It's multiplex. It's got all of these different sides.

I mean, my goodness, I just switched my health insurance, and it was like a project [laugh], like a major project just because, in many ways, our world is actually not set up for ease. It's kind of complicated, and so why wouldn't I, everywhere that I can, try to cultivate more ease? And, so, what do I even mean by ease?

I looked up the etymology of the word, like I always do, and in its oldest sense, ease is tranquility. Ease is comfort. Ease is being rich, being well off. A life of ease is a rich life, a life free from suffering, free from anxiety. 

Now, of course, on planet Earth [laugh], I don't know that anyone's life is free from suffering and anxiety. But a life of ease is, at least, I think, intended to balance that out, the kind of basic anxiety of living in late-stage capitalism. Yeah?

So, as the word "ease" has evolved, it's also picked up connotations of spaciousness. Actually, "ease" is a knitting term. I'm a knitter, and when a sweater that you're knitting has a lot of positive ease, that means it's got a lot of roominess. It's designed to be roomy and spacious. 

Ease has also evolved a little bit to indicate a simplicity, I think, like a spareness. Especially in our world of just so much, so much information, so many ways to turn, places to look, so much stuff to manage, ease also has a connotation of more simplicity, like easiness, right? It's easy. It's simple. 

And I guess what I'm sort of saying by referring back again and again to the context in which we live, the complicated, challenging, the really anxious context in which we live here on 21st-century Earth is to say that cultivating a life of ease is a counterbalance to all of that. We are invited at every turn to make things more complicated, and we are encouraged at every turn to make things harder. 

When I was googling around for quotations about ease, I found, by and large, like, watch out, ease is a slippery slope into indolence and laziness and sloth. I found quotation after quotation kind of talking about how, you know, you only build character through struggle, and your life is only meaningful by virtue of, like, how hard you work, and how hard it is.

And I see that—and/but, guaranteed, we all have our struggles, and there are many, many complicated problems, enormous challenges [laugh] that we are working on, individually and collectively. So, might we learn and intend wherever we can to cultivate more ease so that we have the energy, so that we have the time, so that we have the internal resources, and so that we have the support that we need to be able to face what is hard in life?

So, like I said, this is my personal project. This is something that I am working on here at the beginning of 2023. And here's basically what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make ease one of my core values. I'm exploring what happens, what it's like to make ease a core value, right? 

So, for me, prioritizing ease, like, living into ease means more spacious schedules. It means simpler meals. It means making sure that I'm caring for my body, like, I'm promoting bodily ease, which right now actually for me is meaning so much support for my body: physical therapy, and body work, and more time for stretching and for caring for myself. Yeah?

So, what would it mean for you to orient toward ease? How could you make your home life more easeful? What would that entail? What would promote ease in your body? Like, what do you know promotes ease in this body of yours? 

What kind of movement? What kind of routines? What kind of food and beverage? What is it that helps you to feel ease in your body? And I begin there personally with my home environment and with my body because those are foundational.

So, from there, when I am approaching any kind of doing—and so this might be feeding a house full of people, for example, or it may be putting an offer out into the world—I'm endeavoring to [laugh] make ease a core value of that. Like, what could be easy? What would be easy? Yeah?

And, so, the questions that kind of go along with making ease more of a core value are, what's the easiest way to do this? It's like here's an example. I had a group of people that I was feeding last week, and there were many, like [laugh], dietary differences among these people. I had some vegetarian people. I had some gluten-free people. I had some lactose-intolerant people, like big variety.

And my tendency is to ask, "What will everyone love?" Like [laugh], what will make them happy? And, in this case, I endeavored instead to ask myself, "OK, given all of these challenges, what would be the easiest thing to make?" 

Perhaps this sounds obvious to you, but I want to say [laugh] this is like some major evolution on my part because I am the sort who is always trying to maximize every situation. I don't just want to feed the people; I want each person to be so thoroughly satisfied with what they eat. 

And, you know, I want to impress them. I want them to think like, "Oh, wow, that was a great meal. She's a good cook." My criteria for success, till now, have involved, like, maximizing and excellence and, like, overachieving. Like, that's where I've aimed my arrow.

And it is a big fucking deal, actually [laugh], to aim instead toward what could be easy; what could be simple. And, P.S., I made a stir-fry. It was delicious. Everybody was very happy. [laugh] 

So, another question that I'm learning to ask myself is, what would make this easier? Like, OK, here's something I've got to do. What would make this easier? 

Now, I'm finding that, oftentimes, the answer to what would make this easier is support. That's great. That's another thing I always want to orient more and more toward. I'm historically not great at asking for support or tapping into support, and so it's not a surprise for me that, oftentimes, what would make something easier is getting help with it. Yeah?

So, those two questions—what would make this easier; what's the easiest way to do this?—and then also just the idea that I would orient toward ease in my day, that I would prioritize cultivating ease in my body, in my home, in my everyday life, all of that together is how I am expanding both the presence of ease in my life and also my capacity for ease. 

And, yeah, there's a spell you can use. The spell is, the best way is the easy way, or the easy way is the best way, right? At the same time, as these questions and that value and that spell, I hope, will all be helpful, I feel a need to acknowledge what gets in the way of ease, like, when I am overcomplicating something, or when I'm feeling really resistant to letting things be easy.

Oh, because that is another thing. [laugh] Oftentimes, when something's going to be easy, there is more allowing, right? There's less control. There's less directing. There's less holding the reins really tightly. And there's more allowing. There's more just openness, and holding the reins very loosely, yeah?

So, when I'm not feeling like I can do that, what is it that's getting in the way? I personally find this really helpful because, ironically [laugh], ease does not come easily to me. So, probably the main tendency that gets in the way of ease, for me, is people-pleasing. When I'm overcomplicating something, almost always, it is in the effort to please or impress or placate other people.

I don't know. Maybe you feel this too. So, I gave the example of the dinner from earlier. But another place I see this a lot, both in my own self and then also with people that I coach, is making offers really complicated, you know?

Let's just say I'm a coach, and I'm saying, "OK, well, we can meet once a week or every other week or once a month, and you have the option also to add on a VIP day, and you could exchange your VIP day for a credit towards a retreat, and, and, and, and, and"—right? Lots and lots and lots of different options, and I think that's (a) very complicated. It's not easy to explain. It's not easy to, like, draw up all of the infrastructure for all of these different offers. 

And then why are we doing that? I think we're doing that in the name of people-pleasing. We're doing that because we want to make sure that what we offer is exactly what people want. I wonder if you might resonate with this example also. 

Sometimes, someone will make an offer that would make something easier for me, like, "Hey, I could come pick up the book that you're going to lend me." And people-pleasing me would say, "No, no, no, no. I'll just drop it off. I'm going into town anyway for errands." And that makes things more complicated for me. 

But I don't want to accept the offer because I want them to borrow the book, and enjoy the book, and I want the book to come to them with ease, right? It's like prioritizing ease for other people, even when it makes things more complicated for us. And, so, that's one thing I've noticed gets in the way of ease for me.

Another one, of course, is good old perfectionism. It is that desire to cross all the T's, and dot all the, I's. It is that once an A+ student, always an A+ student kind of tendency that won't let us streamline, won't let us innovate systems to become more easy. For example, we learn maybe a method of doing something, and even if the method is very complicated, and even maybe some of the steps seem superfluous or redundant, we will still follow all the instructions to a T. 

I just have to pause and say how interesting that like a T, we follow things to a T, we cross all the T's, what is it about T's? [laugh] "T" is actually also a sound I think a lot about when I'm speaking, like, whether or not to enunciate the "T."

All right. With that aside, that kind of perfectionism that is like, "I'm going to make this whole thing ideal"; "I am going to maximize my performance on this, I don't know, health insurance application [laugh]," right—it could be any number of things—if we're applying that same kind of rigor to everything that we do, it is very difficult to cultivate ease, I find. So, that perfectionist tendency, that's another thing that can get in the way of ease. 

And then finally, like I mentioned earlier, we are all of us immersed in this culture that glorifies hard work, that prizes it, that pretends to reward it. And I say "pretends to reward it" because many of the hardest working people in our society gain the fewest rewards. Yeah? Let's just be very clear about that. 

This is an ideal, it's not a reality that [laugh] hard work gets us success. Yeah? But when we are raised up believing we need to go the extra mile, when we are raised up believing that it is through maximizing, it is through doing the most that we prove our worthiness of resources, of respect, of love, we're all swimming in this culture, and so, of course, that also gets in the way of ease. 

So, what I'm finding is that making ease a core value is so helpful in dealing with all of these obstacles, internal and external, to ease. When I make ease a core value, I'm really leaning into the countercultural imperative of it. I'm prioritizing ease, not just for me but in and for a culture that is obsessed with things being hard, and with the value of hard work, of challenge, of struggle.

Like, listen, definitely, we learn and grow through challenge and struggle, and [laugh], at the same time, we all have plenty of that. We don't have to manufacture more of it on our own. I imagine that when I hold ease as a core value, I am also exemplifying that. Like, I'm showing other people how things can be easy; how a schedule could be spacious; how an offer could be simple. I am offering that as another way to thrive. 

Centering ease as a value is also really helpful for anyone with perfectionist tendencies because what I find the perfectionist really wants is a bar to reach; a standard to exemplify. So, we could make that standard pleasing everyone or getting a perfect score, or we could say, "Oh, here's the new standard. It's ease." 

Like, how easeful can you make this? How simple can it get? I have to tell you, I have found that so incredibly helpful for my own perfectionist to sort of redefine and reframe what would be perfect here. It turns out it's actually not doing the most. It's experimenting with doing the least.

And then finally, making ease a core value, it can also spill out into our relationships, right? So, speaking of people-pleasing, I know so many of us with these big squishy hearts. We want to make everything easier for everyone else. We can see how we're all in struggle, right? 

That's what makes me want to say, "Oh, I'm lending you a book but, no, no, no, I can drop it off for you." That's what makes me say, "Yeah, we'll customize a payment plan just for you," [laugh] right? So, when I do that, when I make things more complicated for myself, that is going to spill over and out into the relationship. 

I mean, hey, if it's easy to drop the book off, then fine, but if it's not easy, and we're just doing it to spare someone else the trouble, let's not pretend like that trouble doesn't itself spill over into other places. Like, maybe it spills over into my afternoon. Maybe it spills over into the way I'm feeling about my friend. Like, "Oh, I got to take her this book." Right? 

Maybe it spills over into how I am with my family and my partner that night. Maybe it spills over into my own stress levels, into my own body. So, for me, being more honest about the effects of that, when I overcomplicate things in order to please people, like, what actually is the effect? Is the people pleasing worth the complication, and how does the complication change how I am?

Like, if you go back to that dinner that I made, had I chosen to do something more impressive that had plenty of options for all of the people, I would not have been a very fun host that evening because I would be cooking basically three different meals all at the same time, and not really available to chat with my guests. 

I was going to say, you know what, this is pretty simple and basic, but I'm just going to make it. I'm going to let it be easy. Then that ease spills over into the way I can be with my guests. 

So, ease as a value that we're living into, ease as a counterbalance to a world that is telling us all the time to work harder, do better, like, embrace the struggle, that is the ease that I'm increasing my capacity for this year. So, I invite you to join me.

Again, the questions are simple. They're easy [laugh], right? What would make this easier? What's the easiest way to do this? What's the easiest choice? And then trusting, trusting for a change, or maybe even just experimenting with the possibility that the easy way might just be the best way; that the most useful approach might just be the best approach. 

Can you imagine? It just might be so. I, for one, am super hopeful for me and for you because I want more spaciousness, more comfort, a richer and less anxious life for all of us. All right. As always, thank you so much for listening, and bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording