The Forcing: What Happens When You Stop Trying to Make It Happen
This week on Permission the Podcast, we got into forcing — the specific feeling of pushing against the current instead of moving with it, in a workout, a job, a relationship, or a life you built a long time ago and never stopped to re-examine. The episode started half as a joke (we briefly considered renaming it "The Force," Star Wars-style) and turned into one of the more honest conversations we've had about control, timing, and what it actually costs to keep pushing on something that isn't moving.
The Round Peg Problem
Our working definition for the episode: forcing is going against the natural flow of energy — trying to fit a round peg into a square hole by shrinking the peg to make it work. We opened with a story from a recent trip to Lima, where one of us led a workout and kept pushing the other to go up in weight. The instinct to keep up was there, but so was the awareness that one more rep at that weight meant real risk, not just soreness. Scaling down instead of forcing up turned out to be the stronger move, not the weaker one — and it echoed a separate memory of getting hurt in a gym years earlier by ignoring a warning sign in favor of looking strong in front of a room full of strangers. Paying attention to your body instead of your ego, we agreed, isn't just a fitness principle. It applies to health, career, and relationships in exactly the same way.
Staying Because It's Comfortable, Not Because It's Right
A lot of the conversation circled around career, especially the version of forcing that looks like staying somewhere out of fear rather than desire — the job you keep because you know how to do it with your eyes closed, because the vacation days are good, because leaving means stepping into the unknown. That instinct shows up constantly in the high-stress, high-performance tech and finance world one of us works in clinically: the golden handcuffs, the fear of what happens to the lifestyle, the identity, the sense of security if you walk away. The point wasn't that everyone should quit their job. It was that there's a real difference between staying because it's genuinely right for you and staying because the alternative is unknown, and unknown feels dangerous.
You Can't Force How Someone Feels
Relationships came up as the place forcing shows up hardest, maybe because we care about them the most. You can create opportunities for connection — show up, communicate, make space — but you cannot force someone to feel what you feel, match your effort, or move at your pace. We talked about the real cost of stepping outside traditional relationship structures: if the default container (marriage, convention, whatever the inherited model is) isn't holding the relationship you want, you have to build your own container on purpose, with real boundaries and real intention, instead of assuming it will hold itself together. That takes communication, not assumption — making sure the message you're sending is the message that's actually landing.
What Surrender Actually Looks Like
The clearest example of the difference between forcing and flowing came from a recent trip to Peru. One of us had wanted to do a plant medicine retreat for roughly a decade, and spent years trying to force it into existence — researching retreats, vetting options, never finding the right fit. This time, the invitation arrived unforced, almost out of nowhere, and the entire experience — down to a stranger on the flight home wearing the identical ring, who ended up in tears over how connected she felt to the same land — felt aligned in a way the forced version never could have. The lesson wasn't that waiting guarantees magic. It was that there's a real, felt difference between making something happen and letting something arrive — and the body usually knows which one it's in before the mind catches up.
A Few Questions We're Both Sitting With
Is this something I actually want, or something I think I'm supposed to want?
Where in my body am I feeling resistance — and what have I been doing instead of listening to it?
What am I afraid will happen if I stop pushing?
Am I forcing this because it's right, or because stopping feels like failing?
None of this means force is always wrong, or that waiting passively is the answer. Some things still take real effort, commitment, and follow-through — showing up for the people and the projects you've already said yes to. But there's a difference between doing the work and white-knuckling an outcome that isn't ready, isn't yours, or isn't actually what you wanted in the first place. We're both still figuring out where that line is in real time — in a new business, in future relationships, in our own daily routines — and we'll keep bringing you along as we do.
New episodes of Permission the Podcast drop every Tuesday — listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
If any of this resonates and you're ready to talk it through, you can book a consultation with Dr. T here.