“If you don’t enjoy your life, something else will —-despair, sadness —.” ~ Anonymous
Recently, it feels that many off us are being affected by uncertainty or loss. This is certainly showing up a lot in my caseload, and my extended family.
Part of life is experiencing ‘unwanted’ circumstances. There are many emotional stages related to our internal processing. I am an expert because I have been through them all! We can be dealing with feelings of disbelief, denial, anger, sadness, despair and more. It takes some time to move into acceptance.
One of the most important things I have learned from myself and my career is that we can determine the amount of time we spend in each stage. Our beliefs, the perspectives we hold and our philosophy can profoundly affect our emotional processing. I have seen this over and over again.
There are two tools I am sharing with you today which recently helped me navigate through the ups and downs of life.
Overwhelm is an emotion we all often feel when facing an unwanted circumstance.
An important resource for managing overwhelm is and exercise called Releasing Internal Pressure. This is pivotal. We can’t move into perspective, recovery or wisdom until we have released all the churning thoughts and opinions that are swirling around inside of us.
I know this is true for myself. When there is internal pressure inside of me my nervous system kicks up, and my mind gets very opinionated and active. Neither are peaceful states! A mistake that I have made many times is assuming that the internal pressure will just go away on its own. Or if I distract myself, it will fade. No, it just pops up again. I have tried avoidance, and I certainly don’t want to drown in uncertainty.
I personally release internal pressure by doing continuous writing. I have an old exercise book, and I keep it just for my continuous writing. I write non-stop and quickly – its more like a scrawl. I can say anything I want because no one will read it. I can swear, have gobs of spelling mistakes, use judgement, and just emotionally vomit.
When I was working in Australia I learned that they call continuous writing a “technicolour yawn”. Great description! Some of my continuous writing is juicy!! You keep writing until there is absolutely nothing more to say, and your breathing deepens.
Then start again the next day, depending on what internal pressure comes up. This is very cleansing. It also keeps us in integrity with how we really feel, rather than trying to avoid it in some way or move to a higher level too fast.
The second pivotal tool is not letting our minds run ahead of us into negative thinking. This can be a real challenge. I know it has been for me. Our minds, when worried or scared, can go all over the place. In the past (how could this have happened?) or in the future (will it be alright?). We usually leave out the present moment. This creates added stress, and slows down our resources – either for ourselves or for someone we love.
Our minds try to figure life out, and are tying to protect us. So they get busy. That’s where the habit of a busy mind develops. Now we have “habit” overlaying initial cause.
Our power exists in the moment. That is where our strength lies. Bringing ourselves into the present is a powerful way to downregulate anxiety and worry. Another tool I like to use is called the Internal Flashlight. I find it gives me extra focus and support.
We can’t control our outer world, but we can our inner world.
When we understand that it is our internal world we want to focus on first, then navigational tools to help us with that become really important. I only go the outside, once I have cleaned up my inside…or as much cleaning up as I can do in this moment.
It is a really good feeling to have an expansion of our internal resources in life. It gives us more peace of mind.
