Notes from the Becoming: You Can’t Force Calm

On the difference between appearing calm and actually finding it.

Have you ever heard of white knuckling peace? Or white knuckling anything, for that matter: confidence, presence, happiness. You get the point. White knuckling implies force. You're going to get it done, no matter what.

Back in the 90s, I was in a rollover car accident. My boyfriend and I were driving on a long, rural road to visit family during a summer downpour. The road was so old there were tire ruts worn into it from years of traffic. A semi truck traveling in the opposite direction splashed the water sitting in those ruts across our lane when he passed us. We immediately began to hydroplane down a hill. When our tires hit the grass on the other side of the road, it slowed the car, but the momentum was too strong, and we rolled several times before coming to a stop upside down.

As you can imagine, every time it rains and I have to drive, I am white knuckling the steering wheel. If you happen to be in the car with me, you wouldn't know it. I appear calm and confident, as if it's just another drive. But on the inside my nervous system is in full freak out mode. I can logically tell myself the roads are updated, I have good tires, or remind myself that I chose to be on the road in the first place. I still default to white knuckling it.

That image has stayed with me for years. Not just because of the accident, but because I recognize that same white knuckle grip in so many of the women I work with. They appear fine, successful even. They tell us they are fine. But the inside is a completely different story.

The problem is, peace cannot be forced.

A long time ago I found myself in a similar predicament, feeling chaos on the inside and forcing - read, faking - happiness I didn't actually feel. I didn't know any other way. I thought if you tried hard enough, it would just…happen.

The biggest change came when I stopped forcing and started leaning into the present moment. I realized that when I forced it, I was still sitting in fear-based thinking, rooted in either the past or the future. It wasn't real. It was only a thought. It wasn't until I began to sit in the present moment and viscerally feel it that things started to change. I no longer felt I was white knuckling my own peace.

I found my way through gratitude. Gratitude forces you into the present moment because it doesn't exist in the past or the future. At first it felt almost too simple; just saying thank you for what was already in front of me. But I read deeply on the practice, including several books by Pam Grout, and slowly it began to work.

It was the first time I felt the outside match the inside. When I wanted to find peace, I would sit in a space of gratitude for what was already in my life, and slowly my nervous system would begin to settle. I wasn't overanalyzing everything or lying awake at night worrying. I was simply sitting in what is. And it felt restorative.

Your peace, your confidence, your presence cannot be white knuckled into existence. Forced calm is just fear wearing a smile. But when you slow down and get present, something shifts. What you've been gripping so tightly begins to arrive on its own.