So Much Happier Blog
Who Do You Choose?
“So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”
The friends we surround ourselves with are a powerful factor in the quality of our everyday lives. If yours are negative, cynical, and needy, you'll have one kind of experience when you relate to them. If they're bright, enthusiastic, and generous, you'll have another kind of experience. Chances are, your friends are all a mix of many qualities, because humans are messy! The trick is to keep an eye on the balance of your friendships as a whole and make sure it's supportive to you. Each friend and each friendship will be unique, which is part of the magic of relating to another human being. Each friendship will have its own rhythm. You'll want to spend a lot of time around some friends, whereas others you may appreciate best in small doses. Some friends will be so busy at certain times in their lives that you may have to accept a lot of rain checks. Each friendship may have a fairly specific function, as in allowing you to have company in a specific kind of activity, or a conversational partner for discussions around a certain kind of subject. Some may be highly versatile. Having friends who fulfill different roles for you brings a healthy variety of influences into play that can make you a more stable, understanding person.
We've probably all had the friend who we appreciate, but no no one else really likes, and this kind of relationship is fine too. If both parties enjoy each other's company, it's a wonderful thing! Not everyone is going to be your cup of tea, but conversely, your relationships don't have to make sense to everyone else you know, either (as long as the reason no one else "gets" this person is NOT because they're abusive, controlling, or otherwise truly unhealthy for you).
You may have heard the concept popularized in recent years that you become a sort of amalgamation of your closest friends—that you are pulled into the gravity well created by each of their personas to some extent, and your own personality is shaped by theirs over time. That's obviously a generalization, and the extent to which it's true will depend on how much time you spend with each and the malleability of your personality, among other factors, but it's definitely worth thinking about which influences you invite in to your head and heart to roost. Someone can be fun to be around, but leave you feeling guilty or just unsatisfied about the behavior they bring out in you. Some people will tempt you into corners of yourself where you don't want to be. Is this really what you want for yourself? Or would you rather have fun being around someone who draws you forward into being more of what feels like your best self?
It can be illuminating to think about how you make decisions about the friendships you'll invest in. Do you wait for someone to be enthusiastic about you and reach out first, and say yes to everyone? Do you look for someone who makes you laugh till you cry? Shares certain specific values? Is it more of a case-by-case intuitive process for you? I was recently thinking about this myself, and I realized that my friends tend to be people who astonish me (to be clear, in a good way, not in a random or train-wreck sort of way!) I seem to seek out and invest in people who are smart and driven, who are talented or accomplished in ways that challenge and inspire me, because they have strengths I don't. This keeps me fascinated by them, and their points of view; it stretches my ability to see the world through new eyes and recognize the breadth of human experience, which helps to keep my life interesting. It also helps me to cultivate a deeper understanding of others who are different from me. Having recognized this, I plan to tell friends more often about exactly why I value their part in my life so much.
When you think about who your closest friends have been, what do you notice? Which of your values have you prioritized in choosing them? Once you have a better idea of how you make your decisions around friendship, is there an emerging pattern that you need to address? Perhaps there are friendship categories that you'd like to expand. A little reflection here can clarify a plan of action that would make your universe of friendships more whole and satisfying.
In the meantime, who can you tell this week about how much you appreciate them and why? As a bonus, you'll feel some extra satisfaction in focusing on some of the great people in your life, or remembering those who have been a part of it in the past. Friendships are to be savored. We're so lucky when we cross paths with those who can see who we are and love us for it. We're blessed to be able to spend time with people we appreciate and admire.
Energy Psychology
“We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.”
This week, I want to simply recommend an article that covers a history of "energy psychology," (which is a broad umbrella that includes Tapping as well as many other modalities) and how various types of such interventions have been shown effective in trials: Fighting the Fire: Emotions, Evolution, and the Future of Psychology. One of the most interesting takeaways for me is the link between emotional trauma and major diseases, but there are many interesting points made that I thought my readers would find interesting. Take a look and let me know what was most interesting to you!
Being Stuck ≠ Failure
“Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.”
Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a project that started to seem like it would never end? In my experience, this is what stops people from getting to their goals more often than anything else. Once you start telling yourself that you'll never arrive where you want to go, your energy and creativity will dissipate, and you'll probably quit on your project and feel like you failed.
Most likely, what actually happened there is that you encountered a problem you didn't know how to solve. That's it. Nothing irreparable happened, you just couldn't see a way forward, you panicked, and you jumped to a conclusion that may not have been true. The problem isn't that you had the thought that your project was over—we all get discouraged sometimes—the problem is that you didn't have the coping mechanisms in place to weather the emotional storm and come back to the table in a sufficiently calm and creative state to rejig your plan.
This happens to the best of us, but it doesn't have to be a permanent state of affairs. We fall into this pattern and then do what we do for a few main reasons. Once you understand what they are, you can review them when you feel stuck to see which one applies, and most likely find a way around the problem.
- Reflexive self-judgment. This is a bad habit we pick up from others when we're young, and if we don't find a way to arrest it, it remains a corrosive force in our lives. One of the reasons regular meditation can be so helpful is that the mind naturally has a tendency to assess and judge—that's what it's good at, and it's a helpful talent! Unfortunately, humans also have a tendency to believe that the mind is the totality of who we are. It makes sense, after all, given that the mind is a loud, constant voice that is always demanding our attention. Until you learn to calm it down, it's difficult to hear from the body, the heart (emotional self) or the spirit. Becoming aware that the analytical messages from your mind are not absolute truth, and can and should be rejected purposefully if they're not helpful, is a skill that takes some doing. It's also necessary if you're going to get out from under the thumb of the negative self-talk that the mind will blare at you when you're uncertain about what to do next.
- We have evolved to be highly risk averse. This also makes a lot of sense when staying alive is a daily struggle, but for people in developed countries that are not in the midst of war or other constant violence, our first reactions may be unnecessarily limiting; being outside one's comfort zone and trying new things can bring up intense fear that may be irrational, but has the power to stop us nonetheless. One of the reasons I love Tapping so much is that it can assist us in calming this fear/stress response when it's clearly not necessary or appropriate for the reality we're facing.
- The gap between who we currently are and who we'd need to become in order to finish the project seems too large, and we get overwhelmed. In order to progress in any process, we need to be able to toggle back and forth between the big-picture view and the granular view in which only the next task is primary. If we only look at the big picture, it's easy to become overwhelmed with the sum total of all things you still need to do, some of which you probably don't have any idea how to do yet. On the other hand, if you get too bogged down in the details, you'll start to get annoyed, lose inspiration, and want to throw in the towel. You need to remember that other tasks are coming, some of which will be more fun, and refocus on what you're doing it all for. A little fantasizing about reaching the goal can bring back the positivity you need. Knowing which view is most helpful at any given time takes practice, and it's a skill that, like any other, can be learned. We can also choose to get help with parts of a project we don't want to do! There's no rule that we have to struggle in silence, though we may have become convinced by someone else's poor belief system that receiving help is a sign of weakness. Cooperation helps everyone to win bigger and faster. It's smart to leverage it when you have the opportunity. Find someone with knowledge to share, find a buddy to help you stay motivated, find a coach or adviser to review overall strategy and implementation, or find a partner to share the burden and the glory of your project. Frustration and overwhelm can both be improved by teaming up with others.
These may not be the only things you feel stop your progress, but I bet they cover a lot of your most treacherous ground. Giving up on a project completely, or for the foreseeable future, may very rarely be a wise choice, but most of the time it leads to unnecessary heartbreak and disappointment that can be hard to recover from. Before you consider quitting, take some time to breathe, think, rest, and allow your creativity to return. There's probably a solution if you're willing to persist.
Stalking the Wild Motivation
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence —that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
Motivation is a tricky animal. Just the concept of it tends to conjure up feelings of overwhelm, fatigue, and sometimes even shame as we remember the times we've tried to whip ourselves into shape in the name of it; many of us have been taught that motivation means harshness, activating our inner drill sergeant to yell repeatedly at us that life is not yet the way we want it, and we don't measure up, so we better get up and march. We think we need to hold on tight to disappointment, self-recrimination, and the knowledge of just how far we are from our goals—otherwise, we'll be lazy, useless people. Right?
Wrong. This is the best wisdom we've come up with over the course of thousands of years of hierarchical thinking and a habitual, homicidal imbalance between masculine- and feminine-energy processing. While this is not the worst effect of this long-term imbalance (not by a long shot), it is definitely counterproductive. It's not that there's no place for the inner drill sergeant, but over-reliance on it to the exclusion of other approaches to motivation will leave you exhausted and dispirited. It will also feed a vicious cycle in which you think the problem is hopelessly you: You're not good enough, you're not capable, you're just lazy, and on and on.
Most people are actually far more motivated by positive feedback than by blame and negativity. Think about it—during the times in your life when you felt most fired up, energized, and active in the pursuit of a goal, was it because others were constantly berating and insulting you, or was it because things were going pretty well already and you felt a charge of optimism and excitement about a positive vision? If you're like most people, the answer is option two.
Natural motivation bubbles up from a wellspring of creativity and optimistic desire within. If you want to nurture it and foster its long-term health, look to divert anything that will disrupt its otherwise perpetual motion: Memories of past difficulties and the negative beliefs about yourself you've formed as a result; others' careless comments or active sniping at your goals that tempt you into destructive cynicism; bad habits that steal your physical vitality; the overwhelming noise and distraction of a busy world. We've examined all of these in previous blogs, so you can look for clues there as to how to minimize these distractions. Staying motivated is mostly about removing inappropriate influences and feeding your creative energy. This is your new job. Learn to love it and become expert at it.
If you find yourself trying to grit and muscle yourself to greater productivity, take a time-out and ask yourself why you don't want to take on your tasks right now. If you can acknowledge the reasons, you can do something about them. Are you grumpy because you skipped a meal and you need to eat something? Is it because you aren't getting any time to work on the things that actually excite you? Are you low on energy because you're sleep deprived? Are you resenting an interaction with someone that keeps playing in your head and distracting you? Are you afraid of failing? Whatever it is, maybe you can take action on it before you proceed. If not, you can at least start thinking about what changes you can make to help yourself out going forward.
The more you clear away what's in the way of your natural enthusiasm, the more you automatically wake up with a pleasant desire for putting in some work toward what you want to create. Sometimes, you'll need to work on reprioritizing and giving your schedule something of a makeover. Sometimes, all you need is a few minutes of daily Tapping to express built-up emotion and relax your body (or meditation, or journaling, or painting, or prayer, or something else expressive and/or relaxing). We sometimes need to do things we don't enjoy in order to live and keep the lights on, but we always have power over how we're thinking and approaching our tasks. As we make more supportive choices, creativity and motivation can thrive.
Stopping the Insanity
“For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”
In recent weeks, we've been touring the kinds of pressure we're all under in living a modern-day life, and there are many! Any time period in history has its challenges, to be sure, and living in these times is far from all bad; we can now benefit from many innovations that dial down the difficulties of just surviving in a way that previous generations could not; in fact, the knowledge that the Internet has made available on virtually all subjects has been a massive game changer that allows us to solve many problems much more quickly and thoroughly. It also allows nearly instant communication around the globe at low cost. This has fostered greater cultural understanding and cooperation than has ever been possible before. But as previously discussed, this new day has its own particular downsides. The pace at which we now live is causing a panoply of problems born of the stress of being pulled in so many directions at once.
So what do we do about this? Most of us know very well that we're stressed out way too much of the time—it feels like there's never enough time. And time is one of the only things we still can't manufacture. It seems like an impasse, a problem that inherently can't be solved.
It's easy to become frantic in trying to keep up with everything and then just lock into autopilot and repeat. This right here, friends, is the status we most need to disrupt. There are solutions that will work for you, but you'll need to proactively stop and take some of that precious time of yours to consider what they might be. Your presence, your intent, your actions, remain incredibly powerful. If you feel hopeless and frantic, it's because you've forgotten about them and become mired in other people's worlds.
The single most useful thing you can do is consider who you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses, and what you truly want at the deepest levels. This can sound like a radical proposal (doesn't this make you selfish, and really, how will it help anyway?) However, it's only by asking these questions that you find where you can be most effective. We all can't be good at everything, and the things we're not good at, or just flat out don't like, drain us of energy and motivation. Doing things we like and are good at, conversely, inspires and energizes us. We're more productive, we're happier and more pleasant to be around, and we can better adapt to challenge when we're not exhausted and dispirited. This is pretty common sense, but it can also seem too simple.
Then, you must take action. How can you support your long-term passions and goals on a day-to-day basis? Marking out time on your calendar for specific activities is also necessary if you're serious about making progress, because if you don't prioritize, you won't end up with any time for your high-importance activities. Further in this direction, decide to start noticing when you're on autopilot and remind yourself that small decisions matter. It may not always be clear what steps will help you to further your goals while still satisfying the important responsibilities you need to maintain, but you have to play if you want to win! When you're learning to tip the balance of your life toward conditions that support you, you will have to learn by doing, so just try something. Others may have helpful ideas for you, but only you know for sure what works for you. Over time, you get better at making good decisions as long as you're staying focused on your goals.
If clarity is your first need, your second is flexibility. It's hard to shake off daily disappointments, annoyances, and unfairness, but if you don't find a way, the changes you want to make will be over before they start. The experiences that life brings us, both good and bad, are extremely vivid, and letting go of the past is both a huge challenge and a necessity for maintaining a happy focus on goals. While there is a lot of information out there on how people stay calm and present in every moment, most of us are not actively taught these skills.
There are many approaches you can take to learning skills in this area. I suggest learning some sort of meditation technique (Tapping counts!), moving your body to stay healthy and generate endorphins, and getting adequate sleep and the best nutrition you can for your personal needs. Doing all of this together will build your ability to be flexible in the face of daily challenges. That may sound like a very tall order if you're currently living each day as a mad dash, but by using your priorities as a guide and making more of your decisions consciously, you can find ways to slowly whittle down the distractions bit by bit. You can reduce the pace at which irrelevant information and demands bombard you and guilt you into acting against your own knowledge about what would be best for you.
Most of us are hampered in our health and happiness by frequent overwhelm. We must take back our decision-making process from the chaos. We all know what it's like to wish for magical, total solutions, but life so rarely hands us those! Counting on one just showing up is a lovely fantasy, but not a good strategy for living the life we desire. With this in mind, what can you do today to make a new, more supportive decision about your tomorrow?
Powering Up
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
When you're working on goals that are important to you, no matter the area of your life under which they fall, you're always going to need as much energy as you can muster to keep moving through challenges that will inevitably arise throughout the process. If you can't keep up with the demands of your project physically (in which case your clarity of thinking, willpower, emotional stability, and ability to have faith that your daily actions will build to a final result will also suffer) then you won't have a chance of staying in the game long enough to win. Many of us have heard things like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead," or "I don't need food, just more coffee" uttered as a brag, but imagine what those fueling their lives on bravado and nutritional vapor could do with the support of better choices, and how much happier, healthier, and more stable they could feel while doing it. Not to mention how much more pleasant things would be for those around them! Living out a constant cycle of mania and crash, or just one big crash created by years of imbalance, means that whatever your level of achievement, it's not sustainable. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be unstoppable for as long as I have left on this planet.
Some things we know about energy:
- Sleep is incredibly important for the human body, including the brain. If you don't get enough, the body doesn't heal and recharge itself, and you won't be able to think straight or exercise logic or self-control, not to mention creativity
- Move it or lose it. The more sedentary you are, the less energetic you will feel. You don't have to run marathons, but you need to move and stretch your body every day if you want it to feel good. Check out this article for some compelling information pulled from scientific studies about the incredible ways in which exercise helps you, and some tips on how to get the amount you need to achieve your health goals.
- In order to power all the activity your life requires, your body needs fuel, and not all fuels are the same. Will you fill it with dirty, gunky fuel that will stop up the works (cheap fast food loaded with synthetic chemicals and bad fats) or clean, whole foods that it will recognize and utilize as highly beneficial nutrients? If you want more energy, you know what the answer is. Now, I know that nutrition is one of the most confusing subjects out there for people, because there's so much conflicting information out there. Some of that makes more sense if you follow the money. In any case, I am convinced that the future of nutrition is customization for each unique person, because my body and lifestyle is not yours. My best recommendation is to make a commitment to eating organic, whole foods no matter what, and to experiment from there until you find what works for you. A visit to a professional nutritionist who is familiar with any dietary restrictions you may be working with (allergies, illness, religious restrictions, or what have you) can be one of the best investments you'll ever make, because in the quest for energy, many factors may change, but you will always have to eat.
- The last of the most basic fuels for sustained energy is a sense of purpose. Quite simply, if you don't know what you're doing it all for, you'll give up when the going gets tough. A good life coach or other counselor can help you clarify this if you feel adrift, and help you stay focused on it over time. Any positive vision can provide this sense of purpose, whether it's focused on yourself, people you know, strangers in need, or the world. You decide what vision excites you, plus your level of commitment and the amount of effort you will dedicate, but you must be working toward something, or you'll feel blah and unmotivated.
Next week, we'll look at blocks to sustaining your energy that are less within your control, and how to deal with them and keep moving. Until then, pick an area mentioned above and take some action toward creating more energy!
The Functional Value of Compassion
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Every major world religion upholds the importance of extending compassion to others. Usually, this is presented as the right and virtuous thing to do, to be done for its own sake. There's much to be said for that, but there's an additional argument to be made for the importance of compassion that is more mechanical, more specifically practical: Without coming to a place of compassion for another person, it's not possible to fully forgive them for wrongs they've done—and without forgiveness, we remain both bound to and continually irritated by that person and their wrongs. In this state, we can never be free.
Compassion, then, becomes a way in which we give to ourselves, paying into our own freedom from the burdens of the past. If you want to lead a happy life, you can't dig in your heels and hold onto resentment against everyone and everything that ever contributed to your discomfort. In fact, that's pretty much the recipe for a very unhappy life. On the other hand, it's usually not enough to decide with your conscious mind to let someone off the hook. If you want to do a thorough job of it, you need to get your subconscious on board, and its job is first and foremost to protect you. Legitimately finding compassion for someone else requires that you heal sufficiently from the ill effects of their actions to be released from the hold of your own trauma enough to see beyond it. From a more whole perspective, you can see that this person is flawed, like every other human you know, including you. It becomes possible to understand, at least a little, what might have possessed them to behave in the way they did. This willingness tends to build momentum if we let it, reminding us of episodes precipitated by our own less-than-fabulous life choices, which in turn reminds us of how similar we all are, and primes us to let go of the past and want what's best for everyone in the future.
This is a very natural cycle, and becoming efficient at moving through it is one of the greatest keys to happiness you could ever find. The tough part is the personal healing. Frankly, emotional technologies have lagged so far behind physical, mental, and spiritual ones in modern society that there isn't a lot of guidance on the specific hows of accomplishing such healing. This is why I find EFT/meridian tapping techniques to be so exciting—they simplify the processing of events with emotional impact, facilitating rapid broadening of perspective in ways that are gentle, , and organic, and appropriate for the individual. This is what true emotional healing looks like, and most of us have been taught to struggle toward it by attempting to will it into being by sheer force. Sometimes people get there by persistence, through clear intent and continuing to stumble toward the goal, but this is a long and painful way toward forgiveness. When better ways are available, I want to make them available to others, and this is why I do what I do. The personal empowerment that results when you can step yourself forward at will through such a process is so freeing, and the world would be a vastly better place if no one felt stuck and alone with their most difficult emotions. Tapping can help to spring us all from the old, outdated ties that mold us into the shapes born of past trauma.
Compassion and forgiveness are certainly virtuous on their own merits, and thinking of them as always the goal is a good way to keep ourselves on track to avoid the regrets that can result from our own actions. However, we cannot avoid the importance of emotional healing, and the self-serving bonus to our own happiness that accrues when do the work to facilitate it. It feels so much better to have the wherewithal, the resources, to extend generosity to others than to remain stuck in the tension and misery of trauma and resentment. The more you practice moving through the cycle, the more of your own energy you free up to spend on the things that bring joy and meaning to your life.
The Essence of Red
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
This week marks the annual return of Valentine's Day, when we focus on love and romance, or on trying to ignore the explosion of candy and red flowers, depending on our situation. This day can be fraught with memories of loneliness, unmet expectations, relationship awkwardness, and more. However, at the core of it is a simple truth. We humans desire the state of being loved, appreciated, and even celebrated, understood for who we are and cherished. This is normal and nothing to be ashamed of. At the same time, it won't always be what's happening, whether we're in loving relationships or not. For greatest happiness, we must learn to grant ourselves the constant love and appreciation we want to feel.
Just as no one's childhood is perfect, and part of maturity is realizing that you can take on the role of being your own ideal parent to give yourself in the present what you wish you'd had in the past, you can learn to love, approve, and advocate for yourself as your biggest fan would. You can shower yourself with approval and tokens of appreciation for all the best parts of yourself. In fact, learning to treat yourself with the love and respect you want from others puts you in the habit of expecting it, and makes it easier to notice and reject behaviors that reveal incompatible intentions from others. The ability to do this consistently increases your odds of nurturing happy relationships, since you no longer waste your time on low-quality ones.
In the face of challenge, some people will choose to ridicule people who have succeeded where they have not, or disparage the things they most want but haven't figured out how to get. While sometimes it can be fun to humorously reject societal expectations and make your own contrary traditions, as some people like to do around this holiday, rejecting the notion that love is important to you is not healthy. By all means, rail against those who enjoy something you want, or the unfairness of life, now and then if it feels good to vent, but then get back to learning more about how others have succeeded so that you too can eventually have it for yourself. As Tony Robbins says, "Don't get mad, get curious." If anyone has ever had what you want, it's possible, and others can give you clues to the way forward.
Incidentally, some of my very favorite people waited decades for love, finally finding a match in their 40's or 50's or 70's when everyone else seemed to have paired off years earlier. Sometimes the things we crave take way, way longer to arrive than we'd like them to, and sometimes there's just no discernible reason for that. In order to deal with long-term ups and downs, we may need to resort to a variety of coping mechanisms, and that's ok. If you want a loving partnership, or more self-love as you pursue other goals, just try to keep reaffirming an openness to new ideas, and a sense of humor that avoids malice to keep you laughing and returning to greater positivity. Keep your life interesting by doing fun activities that help you meet new people now and then. Celebrate all the loving relationships you've ever had, even the platonic ones, especially the ones you have now. Most important, practice loving and approving of yourself on a daily basis, so that when you meet someone who treats you properly, they'll feel like home.
I hope you find something fun and romantic (appreciative) to do this week, whether with others or by yourself, and that you make it light-hearted and fun. I wish you all the love and companionship you desire.
How Do I Work This Thing?
“The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.”
I'm often asked by clients, and those just starting to use EFT/Tapping, how they should Tap at home. You might know that it helps, and want to do more of it, but feel awkward about starting to use it more regularly. (This is normal when we're starting almost anything new—most things feel unnatural until we've logged some hours of practice.) Here's my advice, and I hope you use it to get more out of the time you have to rest and recharge each day.
First of all, a quick disclaimer! Keep in mind that you should never tackle anything that feels too scary or overwhelming without assistance. Trust your judgment and intuition. If you become uncomfortable while Tapping, stop, breathe, and get help. Otherwise, you can't do it "wrong," so just do some when you have free moments, and you'll grow more comfortable with the process.
One of the easiest ways to start is with a simple "tap and rant" approach. When I first started Tapping, I did pretty much only this, and it felt great! The vast majority of us have been taught in so many ways and for so long to hide, disregard, and denigrate our emotions that we're used to shoving them down and doing our best to ignore them. This takes a ton of energy! When you start to let some of that built-up pressure vent using this technique, you'll likely find that it's pretty fun. All you have to do is tap on the points in the sequence for EFT and say whatever comes to mind, like "OMG I can't believe he said that to me! And how dare she behave like that? Who does she think she is? I'm so tired of all this. I just want to go back to bed and stay there for a week. And politicians, don't even get me started," etc. Really let it all out (and you should always do this where you won't be heard--whisper if you have to. You don't want to be editing yourself because someone else might hear you, and you also don't want to be causing stress to your relationships because someone heard something that wasn't meant for their ears when you were just blowing off steam).
There may need to be a lot of complaining mixed into your stream of thought, and that's perfectly fine; in fact, it's necessary to start with a statement of "what is" for you in order to get the best results. Often people are reticent to really indulge this, as it seems so negative, but if you go ahead, how you feel will usually quickly change. You may find surprising bolts of insight occurring to you, seemingly out of nowhere, that help you to change your perspective. But even if Tapping only seems to help a little, I'm always happy to take small gains too! Sometimes a small change is the difference between feeling completely overwhelmed and being able to move ahead with something or other that will create some positive momentum in your day. Baby steps are better than no steps!
Another simple technique is Tapping on body sensations. Say you've had a stressful day and you feel like there's a knot in your stomach. You can just describe the sensation as you Tap on the points, and allow yourself to notice if there's a particular emotion that seems to be associated with the physical sensation. If there is, you can describe that along with the physical feelings. Be as specific as you can, and feel free to throw in your observations of any images, colors, shapes, textures, or sounds that help to describe the feeling. If you observe addition aspects of how you feel that seem separate from the first thing you noticed, you can put those aside for further Tapping after you get relief on the first item. Keep in mind that when we Tap, we enter a space where the subconscious has a chance to speak to us, and not everything that comes up will make sense. Even if what you observe doesn't seem logical, try to go with it and follow where it leads. Sometimes within a few minutes of doing this, the feelings will change, and that's good. Just keep describing what you sense and Tapping, and before long you'll probably feel a lot better.
These two methods are the easiest ones to start with, but they're also just the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more to learn! Sometimes these bring you great relief; at others, you may plateau and feel stuck while using them. Usually this happens because there's a deeper issue underlying your current symptoms whose resolution needs a more nuanced approach. Sometimes you're just tired or dehydrated and need to take a break so you can come back to this later with more energy and patience. Resolve to keep practicing and learning, because facility with EFT can bring such transformational power to your life. Check out EmpowermentStrategies.net if you'd like further information.
The Nefariousness of Boredom
“When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.”
As you work on projects that are important to you over time, sometimes one of the hardest things to do is to resist overthinking things. Once you've determined your overall path and you've gotten down to applying yourself to your next steps, there are phases of a project in which you're working away, but not yet seeing results. Depending on the scope and complexity of your project, these can last quite a while. Since humans tend to prefer instant gratification, staying focused and energized throughout can be a challenge! The mind will tend to kick into high gear at some point and try to convince us that we must be doing something wrong. It shouldn't be taking this long! We should change something up, because this clearly isn't working!
In today's frenetic world, it does seem as though everything happens quickly, and that's what we should expect from the world and from ourselves. And yet, even those who seem to have attained easy success have tales to tell about preparation they've done in the background, usually over the course of many years. The current technological climate wants to convince us that every shiny new toy just pops into being as soon as a good idea is established. We're shown quick and glamorous paths to glory, but again, these are never the whole story. It's easy to measure ourselves against all these flashy examples and decide that there's something wrong with us when nothing is so easy in our day to day. It's easy to become frantic as we feel the passage of time and to decide that we need to pick up the pace, even when there's a well-considered plan in place and it's unfolding accordingly.
Drawing up a realistic plan takes work. Educating yourself on what steps will be needed in order to accomplish new goals and setting out time lines that are challenging, but still possible, takes boldness and vision. Most of us don't do this enough, nor maintain a rhythm of checking in often to adjust and rework that vision. But even if we do, it still takes discipline not to freak out when the process is boring and throw it all out the window. Sometimes it's easier to deal with adversity than it is to deal with boredom—at least with adversity comes a certain amount of drama, which can bring a sense of zest to life even if it's unpleasant. The periods in which the plan requires constant application but little reward can be the most treacherous, the times when our continuance is most precarious.
Since any big project has these periods, we need to find ways not to work up frustration or ennui so thick that it cancels out our momentum. One of my recommendations here may sound a little silly, but it works, so I'll offer it anyway: Be willing to be a little stupid. Refuse to ruminate at length on your state and just keep going, even when it feels like a slog; when you overthink, you'll just annoy yourself and have a tendency to talk yourself out of both good moods and your commitment to the long haul. Try distracting yourself from the boredom with some planned rewards. These don't have to be anything grand or expensive—just playing some inspiring music every day can help buoy your spirits when it feels like you're going nowhere. Planning some time with friends you always have fun with is key. Taking a little time to move your body every day helps bust stress, and I'm not talking about running marathons (unless that's something you love). You might just want to move and groove to some music when you take breaks from your project, because it feels good and gets some healthy blood flow going. Take a walk around the block or to do an errand here and there. Do some light reading or watch a movie to give your mind a break from your efforts. Whatever it is, just keep in mind that when you're working on the more thankless parts of your project, you'll need some extra support to keep yourself going, and plan for it.
No matter what you're working toward in the long term, there will be times when the slowness of your progress will become demoralizing. It happens to the best of us, and it is completely normal to become somewhat annoyed at these times. If you can't seem to enjoy the work you have to do, then find other things to appreciate and enjoy. Usually these dips will automatically correct themselves before too long if you're giving yourself support to get yourself through the difficulty. Know that you're not alone, and remind yourself what's at the end of all this effort, and why you wanted it in the first place. Above all, keep going. When you stretch yourself and refuse to give up, you do eventually get somewhere worth being, and that's what it's all about.
The Accidental Maze of Meaning
“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”
I've written before about the importance of writing down your goals and periodically checking in on them so you can stay focused and adjust appropriately as conditions change. One of the most important reasons for this need is that the mind is constantly busy interpreting the events of your life, choosing meaning to assign to them in an effort to help you make sense of your world an keep yourself safe by learning from your experiences. However, this doesn't happen in a vacuum—it happens through the filters of all the previous choices it has made, both consciously and unconsciously, about the meaning of past events, and the stories it has evolved using all that assigned meaning using the data available to it. The interpretation is assigned so quickly, and beliefs based on it spring up so seamlessly, that we're generally not even aware that any of this is happening. We don't often feel a sense of involvement in the process, or the power to understand and change any of this, unless we're specifically working at being conscious of it. We certainly don't receive much instruction on it in the course of a standard education. And yet, intervening in this process for our own good is not outside the realm of our power, and in my experience, it's one of the most empowering things we can learn to do.
There are various techniques we can use to become more aware of our beliefs, as well as the interpretations from which they spring. Meditation, for instance, is an effective tool for becoming aware of many areas of your experience once you've built some basic proficiency with it, and decided where to point it. Talking to a friend with great listening skills, or a cognitive therapist if you need a professional, can help you to gain perspective on your beliefs. A skilled hypnotherapist can be a great help in this. Even just deciding that you want to become aware of this stuff and giving yourself some quiet time every day to jot down any realizations that come to mind can accomplish a great deal. My personal favorite method for increasing self-awareness is the use of Tapping techniques/EFT. I love it because it's a relatively simple self-help technique you can use anytime, and it facilitates the rise of understanding that would be slower to acquire through other methods; because it is a somatic technique (meaning it involves the body), it facilitates access to connections that techniques led solely by the mind never can.
When we use EFT, the mechanics of how we've assigned meaning to past events can quickly become clear in startling but cathartic ways. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself, or heard clients saying something like, "Now it all makes sense!" Realizations arise is organic ways we cannot plan, ways that are in appropriate timing for the current capacities of the person doing the Tapping. It's rare that in an hour-long session some doesn't include one of these illuminating moments. From here, we can look at the effects of previous choices and whether or not they currently serve us. We can keep the wisdom that resulted from past events, but make new decisions about what they mean, and what is possible, as well as how me will behave, in the future.
It is entirely possible, and sometimes even necessary, to realize or choose new meaning for a past event in order to move forward with your goals. Some beliefs are so foundational that holding them means you will not be able to get "there" from "here" because you believe you can't or that it's not safe to do so. While the conscious and unconscious self-sabotage that results when this is the case is often incredibly frustrating, it happens because the most primitive parts of the self are so strongly focused on self-preservation, and will use all means necessary to help us stay alive and safe. This is a worthy goal, obviously, but sometimes unconscious attempts at achieving it are misguided and rooted in outdated information.
If you are not regularly reviewing the state of your goals and of yourself in relation to them, how will you notice when you're stuck in a rut of past (many times unconscious) decisions about what's true and what's possible? Life is always changing all around us. There are sometimes conditions that seem to refuse, unnaturally, to change for an extended period of time, but how will you know when they finally do if you're not looking? How will you notice and leverage emerging opportunities if you're assuming the present will always be just like the past? (Hint: You won't!) When you do engage in this process, you notice when you keep coming up against barriers to progress in a specific area. With this awareness, the problem solving can begin, and we can keep track of whether our efforts are working as we continue to check in on progress regularly. While none of this is glamorous, nothing gets done in the long term without some version of this process being in use. The more you commit to doing it regularly and on purpose, the faster and more streamlined your progress can be. If you haven't already, write down some goals, and decide how often and when you will review your progress toward them. You may feel like you don't know what you're doing, but that's ok. You learn as you go, and you're not alone. In today's world, there are so many resources available to help you whenever you get stuck, but you have to start by admitting what you want and being willing to take some action and keep adjusting course to get there.
Refocusing to Win
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”
Since many people are working on new habits this month, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that starting a new habit, or ending and old one, is hard! There are degrees of difficulty, obviously, but usually the things we tackle at the beginning of the year are the bigger challenges that we didn't find the gumption to address throughout the previous year, so I'll assume that you might really be challenging yourself right now. In that case, it will behoove you to accept that you may need some extra support to keep yourself focused on and engaged with the task at hand. In order to help you see that need for yourself, consider:
- When you're stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone toward a new state of being, you are likely to have at least moments in which you feel confused and overwhelmed. You don't really feel like the self you've previously known yourself to be, but you also don't yet feel like the "new and improved" version of yourself for whom the new habit is no longer a challenge. In fact, sometimes the path to getting there looks long and treacherous, and highly uncertain, right about now
- To state the obvious, being outside your comfort zone is uncomfortable! No one likes constant discomfort, and it's tough to endure unless you can see the clear link between it and the rapid approach of something you deeply want. If you're not doing things to keep that focus, it's easy to get knocked off track by the loudness of the discomfort in the moment, and by how much you don't like it. Even if you stay on track, constant challenge without instant gratification can be pretty tiring. You may find that you have less energy, and therefore productive time, for other things until you get over the hump in solidifying your new habit
- Many people are exercising more right now. Even though this eventually creates more energy than it uses if you stick with it, in the beginning, it doesn't feel good at all. Until your muscles strengthen, they hurt and protest. Toxins and hormones stored in fat cells hit your bloodstream and change your chemistry until they're processed out of your body. You need more rest to recover and keep going, and you may feel weaker than before you started exercising. Unless you're careful, methodical, and quite physically self-aware, it's easy to injure yourself when starting a new exercise regimen.
So what can we do about all of this?
- Actually write out (or type up) a statement of your goal and why you want it, in other words, include all the great feelings you'll feel if you achieve it. Yes, you, and yes, on paper or a computer, so that you can review it every day and remind yourself what all the effort and discomfort is for when the going gets tough. This will get you up and going when you really want to go back to bed rather than face the work your goal requires. Reading it will send a wave of positive energy rippling across your day, as long as you don't spend any time worrying about how you haven't achieved your goal yet—those thoughts will do the opposite. If they come up, acknowledge them, but don't indulge them
- Write out your top personal values in as much or as little detail as you like so you can read those daily as well. This will help you to remember who you really are when the outer stuff is getting rearranged and you feel confused. This is powerful. Don't discount it
- Give some thought to a few things you can dial back so you have more energy for making change in the early stage of your project, when it's most challenging
- Tell the important people in your life what you're doing so they can support you where possible
- Consider specifically not telling people you know who will not be supportive (or might even try to derail your progress). You have no obligation to cater your life to people who try to wreck the best efforts of those around them
- Team up with someone else who you can talk to about the ups and downs of what you're doing. Just being able to share what you're experiencing with someone else who is working on their own projects helps you to feel understood and seen as you work
- Make sure you add opportunities for fun into your schedule. Taking on new things shouldn't mean that you have no time left to blow off steam, rest, and rejuvenate. Striking a healthy balance is important for the long-term viability of your projects, because if you become exhausted and demoralized, your projects will be dead in the water.
It's great to meet a new year with enthusiasm, just make sure you're allowing yourself a little time to plan for the support you'll need in seeing your projects through to the successful outcomes you want. A lot of good intentions will fall to the wayside by the end of this month. With some planning and reinforcements, yours need not be among them!
Surge Forward or Have Patience?
“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.”
Because we live our lives in a constantly changing landscape of influences, we're always learning about the possibilities that are open to us, and the new ones constantly appearing through the creativity and interactions of the billions of other people who share the planet with us. The flow of ideas through which we move makes it possible for us to be learning things without even realizing it. Our minds are continually synthesizing everything they take in, giving us access to the building blocks with which to come up with our own new ideas. Often we disregard such ideas without even fully vetting them because of old programming left over from the past; this slows down our own progress, as well as the progress of humanity as a whole, by depriving it of your potential contributions, which is why it's a good idea to stop sometimes and take stock of what you really want. You may find that your old goals no longer satisfy. When you really open your mind to what would excite you most to work toward, you may find that it's time to make adjustments.
If you never do this, you may find your energy and enthusiasm tanking without realizing that it's because you're not moving toward anything that feels truly inspiring. For instance, I have a client I recently worked with who had been starting to yearn for a particular change, but hadn't really admitted this to him/herself until we sat down together and there was some dedicated time and space to say, "You know, I think what I really want most right now is this." It turned out to be something quite achievable, and within a week, everything was being arranged in a new way to support the stated goal. This person was relieved and energized, and couldn't wait to do the work of actualizing the new plan. And isn't that where we'd all like to be—enthusiastically meeting life every day and enjoying the tasks we take on?
On the other hand, it's also very possible to be vigilantly on the lookout for new opportunities and feel that they're not showing up, which can be particularly frustrating when we see how quickly everything is changing around us, including for other people we know. My best recent story about this is my own. I had been looking for ways to make a change in a particular area of my life for what felt like way too long without feeling like I was getting anywhere—despite doing everything I could think of that seemed in line with my desires. When a new opportunity finally did arise, I had an epiphany about why the process I'd gone through to get to that point was actually going to end up being important and useful in ways that were previously unforeseen.
Without telling the whole long story here, I'll just say that that the new state of things included a resolution to something old and very thorny that I'm still not finished dismantling, but that will feel like a great accomplishment to me when I am. It wouldn't sound all that splashy to everyone, but I feel like I've gained higher, more satisfying ground and a deeper understanding of the good that can come of something that has been extremely difficult for me for a long time. I see a bigger, and quite expansive, picture now of where this fits in the context of my life, and there were times when it seemed like this story would never make any sense. All this is really to say that sometimes the only thing to do is persist, because the alternative is to lie down and give up. If you do persist, the creative, constantly aware parts of your mind that are always working may eventually reveal patterns to you that you did not see coming at all. The moment when it all coalesces can be a gorgeous, stunning thing that is worth the wait. I'm still not super psyched that this whole thing took as long as it did for me, but feeling like it was all to a purpose makes all the difference in the world.
Sometimes one of the hardest things in life is to know whether you should be surging forward or waiting for opportunities to align. This will always be individual and therefore mysterious, something no one else can dictate to you. But I think finding the balance here involves both making space for awareness by reexamining your circumstances with regularity to find what's true for you in the now, and being willing to persist and have patience when it looks like there's no possible resolution to your problems. Things will keep changing, and eventually, those changes will align to help your cause if you're paying attention and ready to seize the moment.
Where in your life do you think you need to reexamine right now and where do you need to have patience? This is a question to ask yourself often. It can really get the creative parts of your mind activated and working for you. You might want to do this with someone else, taking turns talking through both sides of the question. If you try this and have any useful realizations, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section below. I hope you end up with new realizations that keep you moving ever onward and upward.
Dancing with the Gods of Mischief
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to 2018! In the first week of this new year, many of us will be thinking with renewed fervor of the creation of our most cherished goals. This week may bring you a fresh, more hopeful perspective on what's possible for you and for the world, which feels great. But you know how some years you decide to work toward new things and become quickly derailed from your forward motion? And then that kills your buzz and your motivation to keep at it until you actually get what you wanted? In the interests of helping you to preserve your happy sense of possibility, which is the motivational equivalent of perpetual motion, I offer you these thoughts this week.
We feel the sense of hopefulness about a new year in part because we can look ahead at a familiar unit of time with an intrinsic structure that has become familiar to us—seasons we've come to know, with their attached holidays and weather, clothing and habits, and it's fun to fill that container with an ideal vision. Creating something beautiful, something that sparkles with promise and expresses who we are at our very core, reminds us of the very best we carry within us. Of course that feels great! (Research has shown that the vast majority of people are far more efficiently motivated by positive feedback than by negative experiences, so this makes perfect sense.) At this particular time of year, we allow ourselves to get swept up in the the optimistic moment. Yet, as the year progresses, and our perfectly imagined plans start to go off track (which is inevitable), the structural integrity of our confidence begins to break down along with the structure of our idealized vision of the year.
Instead of taking developments in stride and using them as an impetus to make course corrections, we may decide that we're falling behind, there's not enough time left to make the year into something satisfying! We succumb to the mounting pressure to rectify the differences between vision and uncertain reality on a tight timeline. Sometimes we don't even notice how much we're measuring our intrinsic value against how much of what we want is unfolding according to the schedule we imagined for the current year. Just as age is only a number to which we attach conditioned meanings, often, without thinking, we may decide that not having accomplished something by a certain time of year must MEAN something about us or about our ability to accomplish it at all. If we allow this measurement to remain unconscious, we're far more likely to grind into the end of the year frustrated, grouchy, and not in the mood to celebrate the numerous holidays we might otherwise enjoy with gusto.
Even for those whose lives look easy from the outside, it's very rare that any longer-term plan ever goes as expected. The nature of being human includes navigating constant surprise. The scope certainly varies, but unless you're a hermit, the constancy of the need to confront this dynamic does not. Since this is a common denominator, it doesn't actually "mean" anything about you except that you're human. Success is not keeping every variable in your projects an inescapable chokehold—it's created by a willingness to confront every day's surprise with a willingness to put together pieces of a constantly morphing puzzle in the most constructive pattern you can engineer in that moment. The more you try to cement the pieces to the game board, the more likely it is that the whole thing will rupture under unsustainable pressure and blow up in your face.
Here's what I recommend you do in order to keep up with the pace of natural and inevitable change that will permeate all your projects while constantly feeding your enthusiasm:
- Plan to actually write down what you would most like to have happen this year and read this every day. The point of this is NEVER to make you feel anxious about what's not happening, but to remind you what's important to you, keep you focused on it, and galvanize your creativity around what you can do today to make some progress toward goals that excite you. Not because you really should, or you must, or you're a mess if you don't, but because this helps you to feel that you're really alive.
- Plan to take stock of where you are in relation to where you'd like to be at least once per month, perhaps on the first of the month so it's hard to forget. If you're disappointed about your progress, first of all, admit it! Then do something to address the situation. In light of the current factors in play, decide on a new timetable that seems challenging but possible. If you're stuck somewhere, do some research. Talk to someone you know who has applicable skills. Talk to an expert. Get help brainstorming from a group with diverse viewpoints. In short, reset and keep moving.
- Do something to address the emotions that have come up around what's happening or not happening. If you just let them sit there and fester, pressure will build and you'll be careening toward that grumpy-end-of-year situation, and worse, an unwillingness to persist for as long as it takes. What helps you to feel better? Do it!
- Hint: Exercise. Talk or write out your feelings. Allow yourself to mourn anything that's truly lost. Use Tapping/EFT to help you move through your emotions more comfortably, and regain balance and perspective.
- Not everything can be solved with more or harder work. We need to balance out our effort with play and restoration, which primes the pump of creativity and keeps us healthy. We need to breathe, laugh, and connect with others sometimes before we can solve intractable problems. We need sleep and nutritious food and plenty of water to be at our best. It's a lot to balance, to be sure. That's why improving your ability to greet each day with calm observation of what's happening before diving in is so important to constructing a productive response.
- Even if they're not what you envisioned, find ways to keep enjoying the seasons and their particular rewards. There's something deeply satisfying about marking the passage of time that affects us all if you allow yourself to appreciate them.
It's great to use a new year as inspiration for new projects, but keep in mind that rigidity around deadlines you have chosen out of preference will demoralize you. Letting yourself become rigid is the one mistake that causes more people to quit positive new habits than anything else. The most successful people build confidence through constant interaction with changing circumstances. The more you challenge yourself to keep coming back to the table with constant effort despite confusion and setbacks, the more capacity you build for solving problems and racking up accomplishments. No worthy goal comes into being without the completion of many actions and small milestones along the way. Most goals take much longer to finish than we'd like them to, and must adjust to disruptions that feel like attacks on our free will and our happiness. Life isn't easy, but we persist because refusing to try to improve our lives is no fun. It's sad, boring, and feels like a waste of time to live without direction, and who needs that? Whatever you are able to accomplish this week, this month, this year, celebrate it, and all you've learned and become as you brought it forth. This learning is just as important to your happiness and future success as the product you were able to create, and as you keep at it, you grow more skilled and efficient and creative, and life grows ever more fulfilling.
Exploring the Emotional Jungle
“If you don’t think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days.”
One of the things I've learned about working with emotions is that they exist in a complex, ever-changing ecosystem, and interrelate with many elements of the self and dimensions of one's outer environment. This may seem to be a fairly obvious statement, but I find the degree of complexity of these interactions to be well beyond what most people have had occasion to deeply consider and fully realize. In a culture that tends to sweep emotional experiences under the rug as unimportant and even sometimes shameful, we are not taught how to value the emotional realm and healthfully integrate it into our daily experiences. Beginning to do a better job of this requires that we respect the complexity and the mysterious non-logic that governs emotions, as well as become open to adventures of a new an unfamiliar kind as we learn to effectively navigate this jungle.
In the subconscious, where the vast majority of resistance to change and progress originates, the coin of the realm is emotion; the subconscious speaks in symbol and color, in the way our bodies feel, and in the way our emotions mysteriously interact with all of this. A truth that can be maddening to the logical mind and the ego is that it takes openness to a more feminine-energy process than the analytical mind can comprehend to make progress in these shiftings sands. We're all familiar with the concepts of structured goals and linear processes to get to them, because these are all we've been offered. In fact, we've been so entrained by millennia of masculine-energy, logical-mind-and-discipline glorification that we think to enter the mysterious waters of the subconscious and to let a helpful process evolve organically (which, for some goals, is absolutely the most useful process) is folly, weakness, wishful thinking of the most ridiculous kind. After all, this period of history has given us some excellent understanding about how to use logic and discipline effectively, and there are many great success stories that have resulted from these methods. And yet, when you invest some time in getting to know the vicissitudes of your emotions, you find that there are actually discernible patterns that can guide your journey through them into greater wisdom and effectiveness on a whole different level than can be accomplished only with the accoutrements of the conscious mind.
No matter how much you "understand" where your resistance comes from, as my partner Andrew likes to say, "the mind is not the right tool for every job." You can't "think" yourself out of the physical and emotional effects of trauma, for instance. No amount of pure logic will dislodge entrenched emotional patterns that you learned before you were old enough to notice what was happening. This is what cellular biologist Candice Pert was getting at when she said, "The body is the subconscious mind." Bruce Lipton, another cellular biologist, writes about how the subconscious mind is like a tape recorder. Yelling at the recording won't accomplish anything. If you want to change the recording, you have to overwrite it, and that can happen only at the level of the subconscious mind, which is very much connected to the physical body.
To make things more confusing, though, emotions can be influenced by thoughts, experiences, and words we've encountered at any point in our lives, whether or not they were even ours. When we're children, we pick up a great deal of our learning through observation, and we don't yet have the awareness and intellect to discard the rubbish that gets thrown into our paths. The untold number of chemical reactions and communications going on in the physical body at any given moment influence emotion in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, some of which we can influence with factors like food and exercise. Our emotional habits draw us in certain directions. What's going on around us, including the macro of world events all the way down to the micro of how those closest to us are feeling, influences us. How energy is moving through our body's meridians affects emotion. All of these together form the basis of interactions so complex as to be nearly inscrutable. It can seem as though our emotions behave like wave forms as random as crashing surf on an uneven coastline.
If you want to master the art of working with your emotions, as with any worthwhile goal, it does take some time and commitment. It also takes familiarity with tools designed for this purpose. There's a lot of great information out there on ideas for accepting and working with this essential part of yourself, and I encourage you to seek methods that appeal to and work well for you, realizing that learning anything complex may require trial and error. For me, the use of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) has been revolutionary because it elegantly incorporates so many essential pieces of the emotional puzzle, surpassing the utility of anything else I know:
- It calms both the body's physical fight/flight/freeze response and the amygdala, the limbic center of the brain (which deals with emotion)
- It helps energy to flow more evenly through the body's energy meridians, which Traditional Chinese Medicine and other systems have recognized as key to the maintenance of human health for thousands of years
- It gives you a strong, calming focus for your mind, acting like a moving meditation with extra benefits
- It facilitates the opening of a conversation with your subconscious mind, allowing game-changing bolts of insight to surface about the origins of your habits/patterns, and your resistance to the changes you want to make in your life
- Overall, it helps you to quiet noise on all levels and get back to feeling a sense of clarity about yourself and your situation, as well as build confidence that you can accomplish the goals you seek
Wherever you are currently on the scale of comfort and facility with your emotions, I hope you find ways to move forward in your exploration, as no one can be whole without greater-than-average skill in this historically neglected area. If you befriend your emotions and learn to value them for the valuable guidance they can offer you, you actually open up new abilities to blaze trails more quickly and with less resistance and confusion and mess than ever before.