They may not admit it, but I have never met anyone who doesn’t know THAT feeling. It is an inner thing, like a gulp - the same kind of gulp that forms a lump in the throat when we’ve been found out. But this lump usually forms deeper than the throat, felt instead in the chest, the solar plexus or the gut.

It usually creates anxiety, and it happens when we are challenged. Sometimes the challenge is not all that deep, but inevitably, if you keep going deeper and deeper inward, you are going to encounter it. Got a tough change or improvement to make? It’s always there. Getting bit by the same thing over and over? It will easily defeat you. And typically, when it flares up and exposes itself, the recoil occurs. “I’m outta here,” we say. Placed there like a traffic barrier, its presence detours us from going further down the inner road.

Putting on a happy face on the outside, but life’s not quite right on the inside? This inner recoil is one of the greatest problems we face. And we nearly always deny we are recoiling.

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