And while you're sitting on that warm wooden bench, I'd like to tell you about a woman I once knew. I'll call her Anna. Anna was, in many ways, a lot like you. She was clever and kind and tired of the same pattern repeating itself. Every few months, she would start something new. A way of eating. A way of moving. And every time, around the sixth or seventh day, something inside her would fold its arms and say, enough. And she'd stop. And she couldn't understand why. Because it had been going so well. One day Anna was walking in the countryside, and she came across a farmer mending a fence. And the farmer was using an old, half-wild horse to help him carry posts. Anna noticed something strange. Every time the horse was led close to the gate of the field, just before it stepped through, it would plant its feet and refuse to move. The farmer saw her watching and smiled. He said, she was rescued two years ago. She'd lived her whole life in one small paddock. And now, when I try to lead her into a bigger field, she stops right at the gate. Because the small paddock is the world she knows. And the bigger field, even though it's greener and kinder and better for her in every way, is unfamiliar. And her body reads unfamiliar as dangerous. Anna thought about that horse for a long time afterwards. Because she realised, somewhere in a place without words, that the part of her that quit on day seven wasn't trying to hurt her. It was trying to keep her in the paddock she knew. Because the version of her that actually reached her goal, the version who was lighter, freer, more visible, more comfortable in her own body, was an unfamiliar field. And some old part of her had been flinching at the gate. And once she saw it, she didn't need to fight it. She just started talking to that part, quietly, the way you might talk to a nervous animal. Saying, I see you. I know you're frightened. You don't have to run the show. We're just going to keep walking. Now. Your deeper mind is listening. And your deeper mind is extremely intelligent. It understands metaphors far better than the thinking mind does. And so, as you sit on that bench, I wonder if you can sense the part of you that has been planting its feet at the gate. The part that panics when things start going well. The part that whispers, day five, day six, day seven, let's stop, let's go back to the paddock we know. You don't have to argue with it. You don't have to defeat it. You simply have to let it know that you see it. That you understand it was trying to protect you. And that it is safe, now, to let you walk through the gate. Because the field on the other side is not dangerous. The field on the other side is where you were always meant to graze. And there's one more thing I want to tell you. When I was a child, my grandfather had a small orchard. And he told me that young apple trees go through a strange phase. Around the time they first begin to bear fruit, they seem to hesitate. As if the weight of what they're about to become is unfamiliar. And some young trees drop their first fruit early, before it ripens. My grandfather didn't worry about that. He'd simply go out, and he'd tie a soft cloth around the trunk, and he'd say, I know. This is new. You can do this. And the next season, the tree would carry its fruit all the way through. Something in you is a young apple tree. And you have been dropping the fruit on day seven because the weight of actually ripening was unfamiliar. But you are being held now. By this session. By your own willingness to be here. And this time, the fruit stays on the branch. The day seven feeling, when it comes, will be different. It will feel quieter. Further away. You'll notice it, and you'll smile, because you'll recognise it. And you'll keep walking. Through the gate. Into the bigger field.
