From a feeling of no control and “stuck-ness” to regaining your personal power and “choice”
The last month hasn’t been the happiest or easiest for me. We’ve had serious health issues face my extended family and as a fairly close-knit family, this has hit us all pretty hard. It has also highlighted just how precious life is and how valuable our time here is.
We all need to remember that every day is an opportunity to live, to learn and to love. Every day gives us chance to reach out and connect with those we love. And every day offers us the opportunities to make someone else’s life a little easier or the world a happier place.
I know that this is all easier said than done. I know things go wrong. So let me ask you, what do you do when things go wrong in your life or the lives of those around you? Do you hold it all in, push it all down and keep chugging along? Do you tell yourself that you don’t want to burden others with your worries, concerns and feelings? Or do you allow yourself to feel the myriad of emotions that may flood your mind, your heart and your body? Do you give yourself permission to share these worries, concerns and feeling with others or even a therapist or practitioner?
One of these options helps us to move forward in life with a strong sense of personal power and the other depletes us and often brings about feelings of stuckness and lack of control.
Give Yourself Permission
I’ve learned over the years that giving ourselves permission to lean into the emotions, and experience whatever is going on for us is the healthiest way to process what we are going through. Giving ourselves permission to feel sad and cry, or feel angry and yell, or feel nervousty (a word my son come up for when he feels more than nervous but a little less then feelings of anxiety) and share those feelings with others, actually gives us back our personal power.
When we say to ourselves, I allow or I choose to feel this feeling, we are also giving ourselves permission to move out of the feeling when the emotions lose their energy or grip on us.
On the other hand, if we deny ourselves the opportunity to feel whatever we are feeling, we push the emotions deep into our body (including our cells, organs and muscles). We are then in a constant fight with these feelings, using precious energy to keep them from surfacing. And as we know in life, whatever we fight, fights back. These feelings will resurface at a later time exploding at an inappropriate moment or worse still, manifest as dis-ease in the body.
The expression of feelings is relevant for both serious news and not so serious news. It is irrelevant what happens. If you have an emotional response to something it’s important to give yourself space to lean into the feelings and allow the feelings space.
Another incident that crossed my path recently was that I found out my Instagram account was deleted by Instagram. Now I’m not sure if I was hacked or someone reported me for not being me (that is the message I received from Instagram and as far as I know I have been me all my life 😉) or if there was another reason. There is just no way I know of to find out why it happened. All I know is that I can no longer access my account and all the time I have spent over the years building followers and content has been wiped in a press of a button by someone I don’t know or an algorithm.
What I do know is that when I realised I had lost access to my account my heart sunk. I did what I could to try to gather more information but didn’t get far. I allowed myself to lean into the pissed-off-ness feelings of losing my years of work, and the feeling of powerlessness of not knowing why it happened or how I could fix it.
Let Your Emotions Run their Course
The power of doing this allowed me to process the emotions and let them run their course. The feelings eventually dissipated and this allowed my mind to find a solution to my problem, as well as feel comfortable in that solution. My solution was that I needed to start again, and I can honestly say that when I started a new account I felt peaceful and confident in my decision. I was no longer allowing the annoyance to hold me back. It was freeing and empowering.
So, the next time something happens which causes a flood of emotions into your life, consider how you can safely lean into them and allow them to run their course. I know that some emotions, like those associated with the news I received about my family continue to come in waves as the issues are ongoing, but the feelings about my Instagram account have run their course.
Another thing to consider is that sometimes you may need help allowing yourself to experience the emotions. If that is the case, please reach out.
Oh, and if you’d like to give me a follow on Instagram, I would really appreciate it 😉 www.instagram.com/empowered.happiness
Remember, Happiness Starts with a Smile and Empowerment Starts with a Choice.
