Your Life: Just Getting By?
It is Your Life
Someone recently commented how much they appreciated that Five Changes helped so many people to ‘cope.’ I was taken aback until I realized that ‘coping’ may be all that many people have come to expect—that just ‘coping’ is enough. Tell me it’s not true for you!
How much does defeatism and resignation play out in your life? In what ways have you learned to accommodate disappointment? We have all felt and expressed negativity at some time or other, often without realizing it. You might even say that it is completely natural – whatever natural means.
But the truth is that we are wired to feel good, not bad, and that in feeling good we function better, help others more, are more creative, see more options and possibilities .. and live as a celebration of life, rather than as a denial of it .. benefiting the entire universe along the way—because in the end isn’t that our imperative – to celebrate, and make our celebration contagious?
It sounds pretty obvious doesn’t it? But there’s more; and I wouldn’t want you to imagine that I am suggesting we take on a Pollyannaish approach to everything.
Negative emotions are not bad, they are simply misunderstood. As Michele pointed out in another piece she wrote, they are opportunities and gifts.
What does your anger, your impatience, your fear etc. tell you about your love, your values, your desires in your life?
What do negative (difficult) emotions tell you about being, living, responding to life in ways that are different from what you are doing in that moment when the negative emotion comes up?
What does your outrage at political hubris, for example, tell you about your love of honesty and integrity?
What does your rage at violence and injustice tell you about your love?
What does fear or frustration tell you about your own talents and creativity, and your desire to express them and put them out into the world?
Recognizing the creative power buried in the negative emotion/experience is the first step to standing in your own authentic power to impact the world .. not necessarily as a ‘leader’, but more importantly, as the leader of your life !
How you begin to harness it is the next step ..
Your life, Just Getting By? How much does defeatism and resignation play out in your life? What do negative (difficult) emotions tell you about living? leader of your own life. Mediation, NLP, spiritual practice, Neuro lingusitic programming, Hypnosis, personal development, unconscious mind.
January 22, 2013 @ 4:38 pm
Important lessons, critical even. So much easier to stop and learn the lessons the emotions the first time around, rather than “cope” and wait for them to come around again! Thanks Cait
January 22, 2013 @ 7:58 pm
My outrage and shock at what some “sane, normal” people have put publicly on Facebook regarding their opinions on Pres. Obama (‘commie’ ‘Hitler’ etc.) tells me that I could never spread hate in any form. Whether the subject deserves to be hated or not, hate breeds hate and the world is too full of it and I simply won’t add to it. Guess that makes me ‘a bleeding heart liberal’ to the haters and ‘tolerant’ to myself and some others.
Good article Cait!
January 23, 2013 @ 11:54 am
This is an important piece of svadyaya, self-study: to examine and accept all aspects of self. Thank you Caitriona, for presenting this great lesson in mindfulness.
February 19, 2013 @ 12:32 pm
Ooh I love this–finding creative power buried in negative emotion! This is so great and makes it much more comfortable to allow oneself to go ahead and feel anger, despair, etc. because there is beauty in that and in recognizing what those emotions say about us. Thanks! I will look at my emotions differently!
February 19, 2013 @ 1:34 pm
Yes indeed, we are a meaning making species, and it is amazing when we can make it work for us rather than…what we perhaps have been badly trained to do:)