Why 'Holding On' Is Holding You Back

You've worked hard to build the life you have. So why does it feel like something's missing — or worse, like you're stuck?

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the very things you're gripping tightest might be exactly what's keeping you from the life you actually want.

In this episode, Stephanie and Maren go down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland to uncover her secret of letting go and explore the powerful (and often misunderstood) relationship between trust and surrender. 

Inspired by a clip from renowned Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön, they unpack the difference between surrender and weakness and explore the metaphor of Alice falling down the rabbit hole -with curiosity instead of terror- to show what it could look like to stop white-knuckling your way through change and start trusting the process.

The life you're dreaming of is not about doing more or climbing another mountain, it's actually about going inward and making space and embracing curiosity. It’s about discovery.

Key Takeaways

• Surrender isn't weakness — it's courage. Real surrender means trusting and that trust has to be built. It's a practice, not a personality trait.
• Your resistance to change is normal. Just like a caterpillar literally dissolves before becoming a butterfly, your inner immune system will fight transformation. That discomfort doesn't mean you're failing — it means you're becoming.
• The thoughts that fill your head aren't you. Write them down — I'm too old, I don't have time, it's too late — and look at them. What you witness loses its grip.
• Scrolling, snacking, and staying busy are false escapes. They give you the feeling of relief without building the actual capacity to sit with discomfort. The real practice is learning to be uncomfortable — consciously and on purpose.
• Stillness is not the same as doing nothing. Listening inward, tracking what your body is telling you, asking what is this asking of me? — that IS the work. And it changes everything in your outer world.

We'd love to hear where you are with this. Are you in the free fall right now? Grabbing for every branch on the way down? Or have you found your wings?

Find us on Facebook and LinkedIn (links below) — and come tell us your story.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it — and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnObGF4WQkE

23:21 Pick Your Hard

26:29 Inner Mastery 

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Transcript

Welcome And The Real Question

Stephanie 0:03

In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?

Maren 0:10

Deep inside, you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.

Stephanie 0:19

That's what we invite you to explore with us.

Maren 0:22

We're your hosts,

Stephanie 0:23

Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac

Stephanie and Maren 0:26

...and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast.

Stephanie 0:30

Yay! So I've got a question for you. Have you ever had a relationship with someone that you know you just believe that they're always going to be there for you, and then you go through a real hard time. And the people that you thought would be there for you maybe aren't. And surprisingly enough, some of the other people are there for you. I think this is a real common thing, and why I'm bringing this up is that trust and surrender are hand in hand. And it's a practice.

Trust Is An Investment

Maren 1:09

  I love those words, and I want you to go more deeply into that because in our society, surrender is so often considered a bad thing. Like when we surrender, that's the white flag and it's somebody else, that means somebody else has won, right? Somebody else has gotten the better of us. So we need to surrender. So what do you mean by trust and surrender?

Stephanie 1:38

Y Yeah, so let's go deeper into surrender and trust. First of all, you cannot surrender unless you have trust. Now, there's a different level of trust. You can have blind faith or blind trust, and just, oh, well, you know, whatever will be will be, and away I go. Hope for the best. Which is not really trust. Trust actually is an investment. If you have had a relationship with someone or something, and it's been there for you, tried and true, it's much easier to trust and it's much easier to let go and surrender. Surrender doesn't mean giving up. Surrender actually is a humongous act of courage to totally know that when you fall, something or someone will catch you. But we don't tend to invest in building those relationships, whether it's with ourselves, with another, or whether it's with something greater than ourselves. Would you not say that? I

Maren 2:40

I would completely agree with you. And I really want to be transparent with our audience. Part of the reason that this conversation came up today was because I had seen a video with Pema Chödrön. She's the first female Buddhist monk from North America. And so I wanted to share that with everybody and let's let's listen to it together. And if you're watching us on YouTube, you can actually watch it with us.

Pema Chödrön 3:19

So I would say the way to find some kind of equanimity is to grow your capacity for the um queasiness, the fear, the anxiety, the the um uncomfortableness that comes along with the times we're living in. So that comes along with the feeling of groundlessness of not having anything to hold on to. So in other words, instead of trying to find something to hold on to, you uh you become more and more comfortable or more and more at home, more and able, more and more able to hold free fall. Let's call it that way, you know. Like um, I used to think about Alice in Wonderland, how she just fell down that hole and she was falling and falling, and she was just not grabbing for anything or anything like that. And at one point in my life, she was like a role model to me because of the fact that she she just fell and waited to see where she was going to land, you know. So for all of us, I think we shy away from these feelings, and in the process of that, our ability to hold them, our ability to live from that place diminishes, and the way to become more comfortable, more at ease in a shifting, changing world, which has always been the case actually, is to make friends with the feelings that are evoked by nothing to hold on to.

The Immune System Secret

Maren 5:09

So to me, that is surrender, that being allowing ourselves to be in the free fall without needing to hold on or grasp or scream our head off, like aaahhhhh.

Stephanie 5:27

Yeah, I see this all the time. Like, you know, I like what she says about making it a practice of the uncertainty.

Maren 5:34

Yeah.

Stephanie 5:34

Like being still with the not knowing, not trying to figure it out, not trying to push through it, just like that. My saying of like, don't just do something, just sit there, just allow it to be present. Like, what if it wasn't yours to figure it out? What if it actually was moving through you? And I'll use an example of that. I, as you know, many of us going through, you know, change of seasons, we tend to end up with colds or flus. And, you know, numerous of my clients are going through this kind of this month-long cough and cold, and they can't seem to get rid of it. And they blame themselves. I hear it again and again. Oh my gosh, you know, I'm not taking care of myself. I need to eat better, I need to sleep more, I need to do all these different things.

Maren 6:17

And, or that they got it from their kid, or you know, my kids at school, or you know, whatever the all the stories we tell ourselves about it.

Stephanie 6:26

Right. And I said, you know, what if you were present to the butterfly and the caterpillar, that that whole metamorphosis? Because we tend to like hang on to a story around it versus looking at your immune system is changing. You know, you perhaps have said yes to being in a new way of being in your life, which is because you haven't been there, it's uncertainty. You haven't been there, you have no idea what it's gonna be like. And so internally, your immune system is fighting it because it's a new place. It doesn't know if it's going to be a good place or is this healthy? Is this am I in danger? And the relationship with the butterfly and the and the caterpillar, of course, is that the caterpillar in the chrysalis is going bye-bye. See you later. And its immune system is trying to fight to stay alive. Yet there's the DNA in the agreement that it's meant to become into a butterfly, which is a completely different paradigm than living as a caterpillar. And that's, I believe, where most of us want to go when we say, I want to live the dream, I want to live my life, I want to live something better. You're going to have to let go of who you are now in order to become who you are aspiring to become. And that's going to mean a translation of going through the chrysalis, going through the not knowing like the Alice in Wonderland.

Maren 7:45

Right, being uncomfortable.

Stephanie 7:47

And having to let go of everything that you know is certain.

Maren 7:50

And the other thing you mentioned was the immune system. So our immune system literally, its job is to look around and say, me, not me, kill it. Anything that's not me, it's gonna try and kill it. And that's what's what you were talking about, the process of the caterpillar and the butterfly. What one of the things, I don't know if you're familiar with, I know you are, Stephanie, and our our audience members. So what happens to the caterpillar is it literally turns into caterpillar soup. And the immune system of the caterpillar literally tries to kill off the very cells that are trying to make it allow it to transform into a butterfly. So it is in that complete free fall. And when Pema Chödrön talks about the fact that she looked at Alice in Wonderland as a role model for herself to be, I know before we came on, Steph and I were talking, we're like, oh my God, I'd be grabbing onto you know, like if that were me, I'd be grabbing onto the branch and screaming like hell.

Spotting Old Stories And Thoughts

Stephanie 9:02

I can see a part of me just like going, holy shit, I'm gonna die, and reaching out for every freaking limb along the way, which is gonna pull my arm out of its socket. And how many times do we all do that? Like we try to hang on to the old way of thinking, the old way of being, old relationships, old things that no longer serve us, old habits, and yet those are the very things that are actually hurting us in transforming, in transforming into the new ideal that we want to live. Sometimes we do have to let go of a lot of the things in the outer world, which can feel really scary.

Maren 9:33

So I have a great question. How do you know when it's your immune system, the old you trying to hold on, or it's something literally trying to protect you that you need to protect you?

Stephanie 9:53

That is such a great question. Like that is such a great question. It's like, and that takes a practice of I'd say, first of all, I'd have to look at what is it that I say I want? Like when people, I'll talk to people and they'll say, Oh yeah, living the dream, and they're saying it sarcastically. And I'm like, well, what is your dream? What is it that you dream of? And sometimes people go, I don't know. I was just kind of saying that as a matter of speech. But I said, well, if you could drop in and really listen, what would your dream be? And so that's what I would say to myself, what is the dream that I really want to live into? Have I made space for that? Have I made, have I given myself the capacity to even entertain that idea? And when I go there, it gives me hope. Like it's the butterfly, right? This time of year is springtime. It's like, oh God, you know, the crocuses are coming up, the flowers are coming up. It's like, wow, that gives me hope. Things are breaking through. The long, dark, hard night, winter. That's the not knowing. Are things gonna bloom? Are things gonna blossom? Well, of course they will, because that's the cycles of life. So this too shall pass. That old saying of the dark night or the difficult challenge. Same is true with the good stuff too. This too shall pass. We will go through these cycles. And if we ride those cycles, we're gonna be ups and downs and sideways. But if we can step back and give ourselves some capacity, some space to go, well, what is the dream that I'm moving towards? What is the life that I want to live into? That will actually give you guidance to be able to then attune and go, okay, is this moving me closer to that or further away? And so, an example. Say I want to I want to be in better health. I want to work out more. I want to feel better in my clothes, I want to have more energy, I want to be able to get up off the floor without going, oh my God, oh my god, oh my god. I'm gonna have to let go of some things, like you know, chocolate covered almonds, and I'm gonna have to let go of, you know, maybe I'm gonna have to get up a little bit earlier in the morning and maybe go to the gym, or maybe I have to think differently.

Maren 12:02

I was gonna say those are the outer things that you would need to let go of. Tell me some of the inner things, like the stories you tell yourself that you'll have to let go of.

Stephanie 12:10

Exactly. So those are the outer things. So the inner thing is I'm gonna have to say it's possible. I have to let go that I am hopeless, or I have to let go that I'm waiting again for an outer thing of someone to give me permission or my health to give me permission to say, oh great, now I've got this disease that I have to go to the gym and I have to eat better. I don't want to have to do anything. I want to choose to. So I'm going to have to have to. I'm gonna have to look inside myself and go, wait a minute, what is... what is the internal dialogue that I'm saying that's pushing me, that's harsh? Because that's not gonna help me any. That's actually gonna create more inflammation and maybe even a little bit of rebellion against the case.

Maren 12:50

Well, and I think like, to bring that to, like to kind of bridge that with what you were talking about before of the immune system, that's where your immune system for you know, somebody who wants something- You say that you want something, a new job, a new boyfriend, a new girlfriend, a new body, whatever, right? And springtime, right? We just set our goals and our new year's resolutions, and we're kind of in that like, oh, is it... can... is it possible? Can I even do it? And starting to get into the the negative talk about it. And right so now you've got the immune system of the old you saying it's not possible while you still are holding on to the dream of what is possible. And so, yeah, doesn't it make sense that our systems are kind of fighting and at odds with each other? And oh gosh, I got just got sick, right?

Stephanie 13:47

Right. So going back to that person who, you know, my clients who are going through their snotty phase of transformation, you know, part of some of the exercises that I offer to them and say, go inside and tell me what you're congested with. What thoughts are taking up space that are making you congested, that aren't giving you any room for you to breathe and name them, name those little boogers.

Maren 14:10

Right. That's what I was gonna say. I love that when you said the snotty part of yourself, right? Like, what's the snotty part of yourself and what is it saying to you? What is it saying to me?

Stephanie 14:24

Give yourself some space between it. So write them down, you know, look it out. You might just say, you know, I don't have time, I'm too old, I'm too tired, it's too late. It's like all these different things that we say.

Maren 14:35

I haven't done enough, I'm not good enough, and blah, blah, blah.

Stephanie 14:39

I don't have the money, you know, all those things that we write in, write them down and look at those little boogers, the little snot stuff. And this is where you need to make like the, this is the space that that has to happen of like, oh, okay, those are just thoughts. They're not me, but those thoughts will drive your physical body, they are the drivers. So learn to then inform those thoughts. So and I'm not saying to just erase them out and put positive affirmations, those help too, but to really look at what is that thought that says, I'm too old, I don't have enough time or money. What is that doing to you? What is that doing to your own immune system? You're having to fight against it, just like the caterpillar and the butterfly. You're having to fight against it instead of saying, Well, wait a minute, I don't want to put my energy towards fighting against something. By the way, anytime you ever fight against something, it only gets stronger. So that caterpillar. So that caterpillar fighting the immune system of the butterfly, it only makes the butterfly stronger. So I don't want to be making the belief system that I don't have time, that I don't have money, that I'm too old, or all those different things. I don't want to make that stronger. But I want to look at it and say, I am no longer going to give that energy. I'm no longer gonna fight against it. It's there, but it doesn't have to be my reality.

Practicing Discomfort Without Numbing

Maren 16:02

So I love this because that's letting go of the shore or dropping into the Alice in Wonderland hole, and you don't yet know what it will get replaced with. That's holding that space open without grasping, without like screaming bloody murder, maybe...?

Stephanie 16:21

Yeah, right.

Maren 16:22

And that's the uncomfortability practice that Pema was actually talking about and how powerful it is in our lives to... you can hear that when Stephanie is talking about it, of if I was able to let go of that "sure" of what I think that I know without having a something to replace it yet, I am now living in the world of possibility. And when you think about Alice in Wonderland, that's where she lands, right? This world of possibility, of like craziness.

Stephanie 16:59

And she's curious on the way down, going, whoo, okay, that's interesting. Oh, yeah. And she's seeing all these things that are part of her world that are no longer that she's no longer grasping for. She's just watching them go by, she's just watching them go by. And what if we could do that with our thoughts? Just watching them go by. Instead of holding onto them.

Maren 17:21

That is a Buddhist practice, yeah. Of watching your thoughts go by, not grasping them, not identifying with them and saying, oh, that's me. That's me. And it's a powerful practice when you can let go of saying, that's who I am, and identifying yourself as your thoughts. And you know, if you're listening and you're going, well, if I'm not my thoughts, who am I? I want you to take a moment right now and think about. I want you to watch your thoughts. Just kind of watch your thoughts, watch that question that you just asked.

Stephanie 18:03

Or listen to them, listen, feel them or whatever, whatever your mode is.

Maren 18:06

Yeah. And now ask yourself who is the you that was watching or listening to or feeling those thoughts that asked that question. Because it's not the same you that had the thoughts. So that means that you are not actually the thought because you're the one who's asking the question about it.

Stephanie 18:33

Yeah, you've made some space to actually be aware of those thoughts rather than have them around you.

Maren 18:41

And if it's not who you are, if it's not your identity, that means that there's other possibilities. And that's the power of not... of letting go, of going down the rabbit hole with curiosity instead of with terror. And it is a practice, it won't happen overnight. Trust me. Exactly. I when I heard this this morning, part of the reason, like I said, that we're talking about it is because it had such an impact on me. And I thought, I've never considered Alice, in Alice in Wonderland, in her the way that she fell down the hole as a role model until I heard Pema talking about it. And I thought, oh, I want that. I want that. That's gonna be a practice that I embrace.

Stephanie 19:34

And you know, I want to say something about our our society today, we want the quick fixes. You know, we want to be able to have it now, and so there's no space to just be in the not knowing. So we're not very comfortable with it. And I truly believe that part of people, and this is my family history as well, is like what I've grown up in, is the addiction level of it. Whether that's food, whether that's alcohol, whether that's drugs, whatever the addiction is, it gives us a sense of surrender falsely, because it lets go of our mind. It gets us out of our mind. And think there's a huge

Maren 20:21

meaning that the addiction does.

Stephanie 20:23

The addiction does, or whether it's scrolling on on social media, it distracts us enough from our thoughts. But the more we do that falsely from an addictive sort of place, the less we are able to consciously do it. And so what I mean by that is like when you -practice is not easy. Being able to practice watching your thoughts go by, or you know, practicing being in the unknown without eating or scrolling or doing drugs or doing alcohol, like actually being uncomfortable is actually the practice. Why do that? Because you'll be able to do it better, and without side effects that are negative, you have side effects of actually being able to claim possibility and choice and freedom. And you can access it at any time, any place, rather than having to rely on something outside of you to be able to get that fix.

Maren 21:27

You know, so that like when you're at work and something triggers you, you don't need to go away and scroll or go get a drink or complain to your coworker.

Stephanie 21:39

Go on vacation.

Maren 21:40

Because you've actually invested time in building a skill set that allows you to be uncomfortable of like, and that's one of the places that I'm at right now of I notice that I'm uncomfortable. I am not always able to in that moment. Shift myself. I am now able to say, Oh, I'm uncomfortable because I want to reach for something to self self-soothe, quote unquote, right? Like I want to reach for the little game on my phone, or I want to reach for that piece of chocolate, or I want to reach for the phone and complain about somebody. And I have started the practice of, I've actually been doing it for quite a while, of like, okay, I see you. Little, think about that little booger, right? I see ya little booger. And I'm just going to be present to it, not make it right or wrong or good or bad.

Stephanie 22:36

And stay curious.

Maren 22:40

Yeah. And most of the time now it dissipates. And it's like, oh, okay. And then I can be in choice about who I want to talk to and what I want to talk to them about instead of being driven by that.

Stephanie 22:52

Yeah. Instead of either running away from it, hiding from it, being in rebellion and reaction, you can actually stay centered in your heart, you know, in that place where then you can be in choice and you can make a choice that you can be at peace with rather than have the ramifications of the shoulda, coulda, woulda, ought tos, or shaming yourself. Like I said, you know, we did a podcast earlier a while back on Pick Your Hard, you know. Yeah like it's hard, it's freaking hard not to like rush in there and fix something or that that's conditioning. But if you can sit in the not knowing, if you can be the Alice in Wonderland and fall into a new reality, that's what she's doing, you know, and to trust that unknown, that is the practice.

Somatic Listening And Inner Questions

Maren 23:45

And you know, you said it's hard to do this practice, it's true, it's also hard to be sick, and it's hard to be in a horrible relationship, and it's hard to be stuck in a bad job, and like that's what we mean by pick your hard because you can choose to make your hard the practice of becoming more aware or to live in the hard.

Stephanie 24:17

So sometimes what I will do in those situations, like you said, job.. it's hard to be in a bad job, it's hard to be in bad relationships, hard to be sick, to just sit there and perhaps ask yourself a question because we tend to want to go away when we're just sitting there too. It's like oh, I'll just ignore it, it'll go away. I'm not saying that. I would say ask yourself a question. Like, what might this be guiding me to? What is this asking of me? And to listen, listening, that's the space, not reacting, but listening. Like it may be saying, just sit there, just rest. This too shall pass. But it it's like having the awareness to actually be present to it.

Maren 25:04

We're such a culture that celebrates action all the time, that will be challenging to sit and listen. You know, we don't think of it, and being present is actually an action. It is.

Stephanie 25:26

And listening inwardly is an action.

Maren 25:29

It is.

Stephanie 25:31

So I always... one of my teachers would say, be still and let that movement move inward. So instead of outward movement in action, outward, let it go inward and feel how... it's like this is somatics. Track where that energy is going in your body. You might feel it in your heart, you might feel it in your knees, your lower back. And you're again not fixing it. You are just tracking it, you're observing that movement inwardly, and maybe it lands in your lower back, and so that you are present to your lower back. Again, not to fix it, but to be stay curious with it and ask it a question. You might ask it, okay, back, I feel you. You're hurting. What are you asking of me?

Maren 26:12

Right.

Invitation And Key Takeaways

Stephanie 26:12

What are you needing from me? Not from the world, not out here, because you can't change that. You know, but what are you asking of me that I can give to you right now? And that's the internal movement.

Maren 26:26

So regularly throughout the year, we offer something called Inner Mastery. And if this type of stuff is speaking to you, that might be something you're interested in. So you can check our website for that. Just because I get so excited about this stuff, and I know Stephanie does too, and you can hear it in our voices, that's if you're somebody who also gets excited by it, we would love to hear from you. We would love to get your feedback and and have you be a part of of our world and have more of these conversations. So please do connect with us. You can find us on Facebook and on LinkedIn. And then also, if you're interested in the the clip that I played from Pema Chödrön, I will link that in our show notes. It's a YouTube video from Sounds True. I'll also link the episode, the "Pick Your Hard" episode that we had done. So I love this conversation. I hope to have more of them with you guys. Anything left, anything last minute with ...

Stephanie 27:32

I just always say, you know, I bring it back to stress that 88% of it, and this is by the American Medical Association, 88% of disease is stress-related, meaning it's what's going on in our heart and in our mind.

Maren 27:47

Yeah.

Stephanie 27:48

And so when you think of a physical manifestation of an illness or a disease, or and I don't just mean like a physical ailment, it can be like, you know, something's not working for you in your life, you're not accessing your dreams. That's also a physical ailment. 88% of it, and probably even more than that, is mostly internalized.

Maren 28:09

Yeah.

Stephanie 28:10

And if we don't address that, it is gonna be hard in the outer world. So it's pick your hard, you know, go inside, work with that 88%. It'll be amazing how things change in your outer world, how things show up differently to you and how you see things differently, feel things differently. It's worth it.

Maren 28:29

It really is. So contact us, let us know where you are with this, and if you enjoyed this, you know, kind of talking about somebody else's thoughts and the Alice in Wonderland metaphor. And we'll see you in a couple weeks on The Soulful Leader Podcast.

Stephanie 28:55

And that wraps up another episode of the Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac.

Maren 29:03

Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website at www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com.

Stephanie 29:12

Until next time...