Thoughts on life, purpose, mindset, health, and happiness.
We live in a world that is not easy to feel successful in. We are constantly being judged by the wrong qualities and measures. As a result, we are far too hard on ourselves. We live with an internal dialogue that is often far more critical than it is praising. We take stumbles to our core, attaching them to who we are so deeply, that they become our yardstick for whether or not we are a good person.
Everything ends. The parts of your life that you love and the parts of your life that cause you great discomfort. So how do you reconcile this? How do you come to terms with both sides of life’s coin?
This simple experience showed me how much our efforts to control the flow and outcomes of situations can cause us stress. The reason for this is simple: when we try and control how something goes, we immediately put expectations on its outcome and, by doing this, we set ourselves up for either succeeding or failing. We build a wall made up of some arbitrary standard against which we measure our performance against and, as such, we can either win or lose, succeed or fail. Think about something in your life that you are currently fighting against? What would it look like if you loosened your grip on the reigns and just allowed?
As a young child, if you get told, whether directly or subtly, that expressing who you are in a certain way is wrong, what message is that communicating to you? And, furthermore, what behaviors do you then adopt in order to self-correct?
It’s hard to accept that life is as it is meant to be when everything is hard. It takes a trust in the universe that is often beyond our strength. But there is always an uphill to get to the view at the top and there is always a winter before the magic of spring. In the cycles of your life, perhaps you are exactly where you are meant to be.
I am an empath. After years of wondering why things seem to affect me way more than they do others, I discovered this word. Empath. It now all makes sense. I grew up in an environment where my emotions were criticized and tossed aside, while at the same time having a significant person in my life who needed a lot of emotional care. The combination of this lead me to feel a lot for others, carrying their hurt, and then judging the emotions I have in response. If you too are an empath, you know it is not an easy experience of life. So many things hurt. I have memories of sobbing when a fish was caught in front of …
And how I am changing it for good It’s 5:50am when my alarm goes off. It startles me; reminding me once again to finally try and figure out how to get the volume down. I roll over, creatively coming up with all sorts of reasons why I deserve to sleep in this morning. And then it comes flooding back… Images of the ice cream I decided to eat last night right before going to bed. The slice of bread with almond butter I thought was an acceptable choice at 9pm. Or, if it was a particularly bad night, the full pizza I consumed despite my body telling me that I was full after the 4th slice. It’s like a steamroller …
A week or so ago, I wrote about how “my balloon popped” – roughly translated into me sobbing in the bathroom as all of my emotions erupted in a sad and personally disappointing way. A week later, I am living in a state of deep-rooted bliss. I have spent each day feeling energized, productive, fulfilled, joyful, more patient, proud, and motivated. What’s changed?
Yesterday was not a good day. The balloon burst. I’ve been telling my kids that my head is like a big balloon – it gets filled with air and, if it doesn’t get a release, it will burst. The meaning behind this metaphor might seem obvious, but let me explain. To say I like quiet is definitely an understatement. It’s more than that, I’ve come to realize. I am enormously triggered by noise stimulation. Now that I think about it, this is not a new thing. Back in my younger days, I was always very party-averse. There was something I just found very uncomfortable about being in an environment that was loud and busy. I always left those situations feeling …
Every time you say yes to doing something, you are saying no to another. And, is this “no” an acceptable sacrifice?