103 - Opting Out of Urgency
Welcome back to Threshold Moments. In this mini musing, I reflect on what it takes to step out of urgency culture and into a pace that feels more grounded and alive.
Together, we’ll explore stories and tools for shifting from “all or nothing” thinking into resonant pacing, finding the sacred third, and making relational choices that honor our truth. Tune in to hear:
Why urgency feels real (and how it keeps us stuck)
Resonant pacing as an alternative to hustle
Finding new options when it feels like there are none
How slowing down can change our relationships
⭐️ If you enjoy this episode, sign up for my free 3-day nervous system workshop — Opting Out of Urgency — happening live on Zoom September 16-19.
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:
Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join Us hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. I am your host Sarah Tacy and today's mini musing is on Opting out of Urgency. So as we think about thresholds and we think about transitions and transmutations. So I think like when you have yourself in one state and you're emerging into another state, you're taking one thing and becoming another.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:04]:
What are the tools that help us through these thresholds? And every mini musing I tap into different tools or conditions that help us through these transitions. I'm spending an entire month on Opting out of Urgency with my free workshop coming up on September 16th, 18th and 19th. I'm giving myself a little pause between day one and continuing with day two and three. I would space them out even more, but the timing of this program lines up so that anybody who wants to join Resource after can fit it in and place it with ease between the start of the school year and before the holiday break that happens for many of us at the end of December, beginning of the new year. And so really, time to building community to learn how to resource ourselves to challenge the status quo that we may feel stuck in. And today, as we look at Opting out of Urgency, we begin to just get curious at how is it that rushing may be suppressing our truth, that rushing may be closing down our options to one of two options in which neither feel good and both feel like the only thing possible. That's the like rock and a hard place thing. I have noticed for sure that there are times where urgency feels like the only option.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:50]:
It comes up when I have timelines that I'm often making for myself or a belief that I'm thinking about now where my husband got really sick and suddenly it's like, oh shoot, Thanksgiving then has to happen at our house and not my parents. And this urgency of I have to pick up the Christmas tree that we tagged yesterday and I have to get dinner for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and now I have to make the turkey and now I have to. And even then my mom was like, but do you. Could you just have pizza tomorrow? Could you just. So it's that pause long enough of There is truth here, there are traditions, there is a change in schedule. You are the primary adult who is healthy and available. But what else Is true. What other options are available? Urgency would put us into the state of we must do it all, we must hold it all, and we must do it quickly.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:49]:
For many of us, that's puts us on a nervous system chart. It's in the hyper zone of global high intensity activation. And it's this place where hustle culture lives, where the more you do, the faster you do it, the more you get ahead of others. There's a lot of individualism in it. There's a lot of missing. All of the support that is around us or that could be possible because we learned to do it on our own, was the most dependable way and the most rewarded way and really can sometimes give us a sense of safety. Like if I don't have to rely on anybody else, I know I can rely on myself. And so there's quite a lot of vulnerability sometimes to getting curious about what else is supporting you.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:41]:
Right. Like for many of us, we're not farming our own food. Somebody else is putting in the work, putting in the hours. We could look at the seasons that are occurring and that we don't have to orchestrate them or schedule them. We could get curious about how a neighbor might be able to help and we could possibly exchange for carpooling. We may be again to say, oh, you know what? I'm actually gonna not do this birthday celebration the way I've always done it. I'm gonna let that go. And so as we begin to question our urgency, we may see that other things show up.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:19]:
So today we're exploring what it means to opt out of urgency. A phrase that Janine Yoder gave to me. I was going to call this unrushed, but I didn't want it to be a three day workshop about time or scheduling. Because if you know me, that is not my strength. For me, I was so clear that it is in this spaciousness that we have room to really notice our desires, to really notice our exhaustion, to really notice what lights us up and to really feel into what is true. So this is not necessarily about being, doing less, but it can be. It's not necessarily about checking out, but you could. It's more about finding a rhythm that is resourced, spacious and alive, while also noticing that for many of us, we live in a supremacy culture that wants to keep us on this wheel.
Sarah Tacy [00:06:24]:
So I can say it's not your fault, it's not our fault, it is our responsibility on day one. So it sounds like I'm going to be going into like, here's what the Three days are going to be. But here is also just if I could give a short outline of things to hold onto that could be useful to you today as you're listening day one. I'm going to introduce you to an idea of resonant pacing, which is not just about slowing down, but again tuning into a rhythm where your body can actually find choice. It is a place where you can keep your reticular activating system up that filtration system in your brain stem to say what else is available. It is the contrast to constantly being in fight or flight, yes or no. It is a place where your breath lives with more ease. It is where we are able to be in the unknown without being in panic.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:40]:
It is where pausing becomes a choice. And so one of the tenants here in moving from this global high intensity activation or this urgency or this hustle into resonant pacing that could look like fast conversation but still embodied with choice able to pause, consider somebody else's perspective. It could be medium, like cooking a meal while also talking to your children. But again, feeling like, ooh, I'm in my body, I can listen to what my kids are saying, I can process, I can smell what's being cooked. And there could be slow, like a slow meandering walk. We're laying on the grass and looking up at the trees in this day one I'm going to talk about. So for a lot of people, when it's like, oh, just lay on the grass, lay in a hammock, take a bath, there can be panic that arises in our system if we're feeling like, I can't relax until all of the things get done. So we'll look at.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:59]:
If you are relaxing on the grass, could you give your mind fast health while your body is experiencing low health? So we're going to look at ways that we can move into resonant pacing without the body going into panic that you're not fighting or running towards the end goal. An example of body slow, mind fast might be a bath while reading a book or a hammock while answering some text messages. So your body can have some recuperation and the mind can still feel like okay and still getting the things done right. We can of course move into things that are full pleasure and fully regenerate our system. But we also get to take small steps of showing our body that we survived moving out of urgency. And what I find, especially when I lead these one hour meditations with really focused groups of humans who have goal, some people call them ambitious humans, is that when we step back for an hour to tune into our body, to tune into resources that are already around us on the other side, our to do list shifts. The things that seemed utterly overwhelming can be like, oh, oh, my gosh, no big deal. I totally caught this.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:42]:
Your responses become faster. And we also see things where it's like, oh, I'm just gonna let that go, or, that's not mine. I'm gonna pass that on. So the lie that we've been told is that we can only relax. And a lot of times we feel this too. Like, I can only relax once everything gets done. But if you're anything like me, I notice that my to do list never gets done. A lot of the list gets pushed onto the next day.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:11]:
And more things come into my inbox. More things come up for my children, my husband, my family. And so then I would be on a hamster wheel of I can never relax because all the things are never done. And I can get into the belief, which I have seen before, that if I don't hold it all together, it will all fall apart. And so here we look for the sacred third. And this is day two. Your speaker isn't broken. I'm just pausing.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:49]:
Winton Marshalles once said that it's in the pause that we can let things land. And I'm feeling that even for myself, I can get very excited about this information and just keep going. And so I paused. Day two, we go into the trap of the all or nothing. The I must, I can't. I will give you a really simple example, because some of the I must, I can't feel so big. And I just want to say they feel really real. And if you're in a double bind of I must, I can't, you would say, I know that most of the time double binds are not the full truth, but for me, I can't see any other way out of this.
Sarah Tacy [00:12:38]:
And I think that this one is true. And it can feel insulting for somebody to even suggest that it's not. We are not looking for a unicorn here. Sometimes the sacred Third feels like that we are often just looking for one step that offers us the tiniest new reality. And what I would say is that here's an example. This is a really simple one. It's going to seem silly. It's going to seem like, why does this matter? But I want to give a simple one so that I'm not questioning, like, the whole of life.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:25]:
I was with a friend and we really wanted to go for a walk together. And this friend and I get to see each other maybe twice a year. We live in different parts of the country. And her daughter really didn't want her to leave. And the all or nothing in this scenario would be like, I either have to devastate my child. So right there's what some would call a tantrum, a meltdown is happening. Hard clinging, really big emotions. So it's either like the devastate this child and leave her and know that, oh, you know, she'll actually survive this.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:05]:
She'll see that she's okay, right? And we get our needs met. So this is also kind of a lose win scenario. Or we stay home and she gets her needs met and we could say, win, lose that her daughter wins and we give up the thing we really wanted to do. In this moment, I also realized that my daughter happened to have. I had a stroller for her. She was a little bit outaged a stroller. But I brought it because we were traveling and we could say to her daughter, oh, wait a second, any chance you would want to go in the stroller? So you can come with us and we can still go for a walk. And she was so excited and she was so happy to come with us.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:49]:
And we still got our walk in and she still got to be in physical proximity to her mother. And when there was the heightened energy of it's this or nothing, it really feels like, what other option is there? And when we are able to just really, like get on the floor with this child and be with her and be with her emotions and we're able to breathe and just then new things begin to pop up. And as we resource ourselves in scenarios that feel heightened, it is where we can start to say, show me a sacred third. Other times we can be in scenarios where I was at a retreat, I was pulling in, I really wanted to support my friend in this retreat she'd been planning for six months. She put all of her energy into it. She put so much passion into it. And I am like, I need to prep for opting out of urgency. I can't be here.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:54]:
I have this to do. I have this to do. I have this to do. So it felt a bit all or nothing. Like I either stay here and be in full support, fully present, or I leave and I check into a hotel and I just get stuff done for five days. Which felt like the better option. And as I sat with it, I also got to sit with a choice. Oh, I have choice.
Sarah Tacy [00:16:19]:
I am not going to change my date because I was Like, I can change my launch date. I get to choose these things. No, I really want this date. I really want this program to launch right after the school year so that we get to engage in an education and we get to feed that part of us that remembers now's the time to learn. Now's the time to be in community. And for those going into resource that they would be complete before the holidays and before the new year. And you get to choose more before, like new year, new me. Really? Is that what you want this year? Really kind of tuning in and having the skills to do so and make conscious decisions.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:01]:
And as soon as I recognized that I had some choice within it, I also realized I had choice within how much I would participate. And so the first day, I stepped out of a lot of the workshops, I went into a yurt, I worked on my copy, and then I went out and I did breath work and I swam in the river. And then I went back and I did copy, and then I had a community meal, and then I went back and worked on my copy. And then there were just a song circle around a fire pit. And every time that I went out to do something that was very community based, was very embodiment based, was very move my energy based. Anything that felt overwhelming suddenly felt exciting and doable. And the sacred third for me was not be all in on the retreat or go to a hotel and lock myself in a room. It was choose be a part of this part of the retreat and then go take care of yourself here.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:15]:
And then when you're doing the retreat, doing the things that feel like care, self care, that feel like they're moving energy. And so the sacred third often is recognition that it isn't all the thing you think it is or the thing you think it's not. We will look at tools on the second day to see like, oh, how do I resource myself in this place and build that recognition? Because again, binary thinking is a trauma response. And a third way points more towards regulation prefrontal cortex being online. And it also not just the prefrontal cortex, because sometimes that can only think with things that we've seen before. It also helps to activate the part of the brain that is like, show me new ways. And creativity can come online. The next part of opting out of urgency, as I see it, is the relational shifts that can happen in the tension field.
Sarah Tacy [00:19:23]:
There's something I want to say here. I'm like, so I'm naming three parts, three days. And I just also want to say that as we go through these three days, and I should just, just want to say it here, which is that urgency is part of supremacy culture. For many of us in the Western world, it seems normalized and it feels real because in our culture, it is set up to make it feel like we will not survive if we don't keep up with this pace. So I'm saying that just to say along with all of these tools and along with all of these ideas, there is, again, I think I said it already on this podcast. It's like, it's not your fault. It can be part of your responsibility. Empowerment physiology, which is opposite of trauma physiology, is that where is resonant choice, not hyperchoice, not I must do it all, I must figure it all out, but just little break in the loop.
Sarah Tacy [00:20:29]:
So when I got really excited about opting out of urgency and really feeling like this is where the magic lives, this is where I was also like, yeah, this is also where we have the ability to shift the status quo of our relationships. Many of us as women feel like we can't be safe or feel safe in our body until everybody else around us feels good and safe. There's an evolutionary reason for that. We have less testosterone. Most of us have less testosterone than most men. And because of that, fighting is often less of a great possibility for us when we're in conflict. And being able to please and appease is a better way for survival for us generally. And the more useful we make ourselves within a community, the more likely people are to defend us when we need to be defended.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:30]:
And so being liked people, pleasing, blurring boundaries has been a really wise way to keep ourselves alive when we were in a smaller village. I do believe that there were more layers of support built in when grandparents lived in the same house, aunts and uncles, cousins playing with each other, neighbors helping each other out. And it being like that sense of what we're okay when we're okay, can have some health to it. But the individual of the woman saying, I'm okay once all of my husband's needs are met, all of my children's needs are met, all of my friends needs are met, all of my coworkers needs are met is very extractive. And as Gabor Monte points out in his research and his experience can often lead to autoimmune disease. It's the one that he looks specifically at. It can lead to exhaustion. So as we pause the loop and we slow down enough, and as Ginny Muir said in her opting out of urgency interview, when we pause, we actually begin to notice, not even just our feelings, which may be rage, which may be sadness, which may be joy.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:50]:
I worked with a few people recently where it's like, oh, we get to do a session where we get to notice the joy. And we're not just gonna go in for the trauma. We get to begin to amplify this practice. Yes. We also often notice how tired we are. And the fear can be like, if I relax a little bit, then I'm never gonna start again, so I'm just gonna keep going. And adrenaline will keep us going until there's collapse, right? So as we slow down, we get to say, oh, I have a desire. I have this urge, and it doesn't align with what my friend wants to do, but I don't want them to not like me.
Sarah Tacy [00:23:31]:
And we get to practice first noticing and then building resource as we speak into that desire. And then there's the tension field between the way that you've always done it, the familiar, the unwritten contract that you and your friend, or you and your workmate, or you and your partner, or you and your kid, or you and your parents, or you and your siblings have always been. They say that people who don't like your boundaries are people who benefit from them not being there. And so often when we set a new boundary or we state a true desire that we haven't stated before, it can ask another person to step up to a truer version or a less codependent version of themselves and of the relationship. And so I say it often feels like a brick wall before a bridge. And so how do we resource ourselves to stay with our truth before we know if we're going to be liked on the other side of it? And what I have found, I can say, I can, I've found in my marriage, is that my husband has chosen to be with the discomfort of me choosing something other than I used to choose. And then his own wounds come forward, and then he can choose to stay with that or not, right? But it is that question or that theory of Glennon Doyle often says, to disappoint everyone before you disappoint yourself. So as we work with loosening our grip on self abandonment, self abandonment, then we say, how do we hug ourselves and our truth and our little one? How do we stay with our little one as we stand in something that's true for us, I would imagine, I hope that just in listening to this mini musing that it has begun to percolate little bubbles of awareness or remembrance of things you've already noticed or will begin to notice so that more and more of your empowerment physiology comes online.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:13]:
And if you want to hear more about this, we'll have three 90 minute sessions. You are so welcome to join me in opting out of a three day free workshop on September 16th, 18th and 19th. Details will be in the link below and I'm going to close with a prayer. I have this question that is forward, which is what is the point of life? Show me the small pleasures that are here now. Remind me that I don't have to wait to come back to myself until it's all done. Surprise and delight me with tiny moments of spaciousness that my system can digest. Remind me that even within opting out of urgency, it's not all or nothing. I am not failing if it feels hard.
Sarah Tacy [00:27:46]:
I am not failing if it feels urgent. Remind me that there are systems. Help me to find myself within them. Help me to notice the co creatorship. Help me to notice the layers of support that are already there. May I tune into my empowerment physiology again and again and again and be so humble as I remember that I'm part of a bigger system, that I have choice that I forget, that I remember, that I forget and I remember again. Peace and blessings. See you soon.
Sarah Tacy [00:28:47]:
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, it's very helpful. You can find it@sarataci.com and if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful, so we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:20]:
If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you.