I’m probably going to repeat something I’ve said in a previous email, but I had such a beautiful, clear example of this yesterday that I wanted to share it again. It’s the theory of avoiding pushing upstream.
Have you ever had the experience of attempting to do something, and it feels like the entire universe is conspiring against you to make sure it doesn’t happen? This is when you end up pushing upstream. And whilst you might be successful, it’s rarely comfortable. And sometimes, afterwards, you realise that it was also completely unnecessary to expend that degree of energy.
Let me give you a working example.
On a Monday, I take a walk, and as I’m walking, I do a voice recording on my phone, which gets converted into the email that you’re reading right now. Yesterday, I started the process, as usual, thinking about what my email title could be. I hit record on a new software that had been recommended to me by a friend. I checked that it had transcribed my test correctly — which it had. So then, I went for it, recording about a 10‑minute ramble.
I need to look down and see that it hadn’t captured any of what I was saying. Very disappointing. Stupidly, I gave it a second chance — and it failed me again. So at this point, I decided to return to the trusted voice recorder built into my phone, and… got about five minutes into what I’d already been saying, only to discover, in the middle of the country lane, a gentleman standing looking lost, who wanted to enquire if I knew where a local farm was.
So now I’m in the middle of my recording, having paused to help a man in a rural lane, to talk about swimming ball for his first day of labour (I kid you not) in a local hall. I’d been recording, and I’m starting again — except this time, in the middle of my recording, my opening decided it was the perfect time to stop. It was an update. And once again, I lost the recording. I didn’t need the universe to tell me again that I should not be listening to the sound of my own voice today, but instead return to a podcast I’d been enjoying before I set out for my walk in the morning.
If I’d continued to pursue the task of doing my Monday morning email *that very day*, I don’t doubt I would either have run into some bull‑issues, or ended up completing the job — but being extremely agitated for several hours afterwards, because of the force I had to push to make something happen that, quite frankly, didn’t feel like it should be happening that day.
And you’re reading this now because I got on and did it the next day instead. Did it make a huge difference that I waited 24 hours? No. Did my brain have a momentary meltdown because I wasn’t doing the thing I normally do at the time I normally do it? Yes. But in the grand scheme of things, nothing bad happened. In fact, I could probably skip emailing you for a week and nothing tragic would happen as a result.
And so — that tells me that, among all the pressures I feel from life (and there are many), a whole bunch of them are just ones I’m placing on myself. And I’m telling you this because maybe you’re doing the same. If you find yourself swimming upstream, maybe just let go. And go with the flow.
A long time ago, when I did my NLP training, my trainer (very much into that Tony Robbins, alpha, forceful, action‑driven approach) once said, “Only dead fish go with the flow.” But actually, I think maybe the intelligent ones do — in the right moment.
**Rethinking the Upstream Effort**
When you push upstream, what you’re really doing is fighting your own system. You override signals that are there to protect you — fatigue, resistance, misalignment. In reality, momentum lives downstream: that’s where your flow, alignment, and advantage lie.
In my work with founders, coaches, and leadership teams building a **coaching franchise**, I’ve seen that the greatest breakthroughs come when people stop forcing, stop reacting, and start observing. When they notice that the stream pushing back is just telling them there’s a better route.
It’s not a surrender — it’s strategy.
You’re choosing growth by smarter channeling, not by brute force.
**The Hidden Cost of Forcing Forward**
There’s a real price to pushing upstream:
– It increases mental friction and stress hormones (cortisol).
– It causes burnout, overwhelm, and second‑guessing.
– It separates leaders from their inner wisdom and intuition.
I speak to people all the time in the **coaching franchise** world who are burning themselves out because they believe they *have to* do everything at once, in the “right” order, under pressure. But that’s a lie we tell ourselves.
Instead, what if you scaled by *listening* rather than forcing? What if you built a **coaching franchise** that is responsive — sensitive to market cadence, to your energy cycles, to what core clients are gravitating toward — rather than one that bulldozes its way forward?
**Flow, Trust, and the Art of Letting Go**
*Sometimes, the universe isn’t against you — it’s preventing you from doing what’s unnecessary.*
There’s brilliance in letting go of the fight when the path is obstructed, and in making the wiser decision to wait, recalibrate, or redirect. That’s what elevates a leader in a **coaching franchise** — not more hustle, but more alignment.
If you ever feel that you’re pushing upstream right now, reach out. Let’s talk about whether we need to pause, pivot, or proceed.
by Gemma Bailey (with the help of Ai)
