Why you’re missing out on the joy of life

If it doesn’t hurt when something you love vanishes, you are missing the joy of them being alive.

Let me explain.

This week I had to come to grips with the possible loss of an exciting partnership. This is something I had been dreaming up for a few months and began to fantasize about all the ways it would answer all my dreams. When I realized it was most likely not going to happen the way I felt it needed to, it started to hurt. I immediately went into the look for the sunny side mentality. Moving forward with my day creating a happy narrative to push the emotions aside. As I was sitting at my desk struggling to continue that sunny side mentality, I tried to process through what I would tell a client coming to me when going through a similar situation. I realized in that moment I was processing it all wrong and in turn, causing more harm to myself. 

In this week’s blog, we are going to talk about the healthy way to process through moments like these.  

Let it hurt when it hurts. 

Don’t try to change that thought so quickly that you miss the opportunity to process the emotion all the way through. Let the emotion be there.

Now, if you’ve gone through the death of a loved one, or you’ve gone through an emotional breakup, or you’re having a fight with someone, it hurts. It’s appropriate for you to set some time aside to really go into the emotion that you need to, whether it’s crying, or just laying still for a while and just letting it ache.

Let it ache.

A pure, clean release of emotion helps it process all the way through. You may feel exhausted on the other side of doing that, but it also feels cleansing. The same is true when you feel anxious. It’s okay to be cautious with yourself. It’s okay to feel anxious, afraid, or overwhelmed. Allow it to be there. Allow it to buzz. Allow yourself to be this alive.

Don’t deaden yourself with food or alcohol or other temporary fixes. Stay alive in the process. No emotion is ever going to harm you unless you allow it.

Suppressing Emotions Pushes Life Away

When we suppress our emotions, push them away, avoid them, buffer them, that’s when they become the biggest problems in our lives. Emotions aren’t problems when they’re felt all the way through. The path is through the emotion, not around it, over it, under it, or avoiding it. 

There comes a time where you’ve allowed emotion, you’ve felt it, and you’ve accessed the thought causing it. There comes a time where there’s a natural progression to change that thought. So the thought can go from “this shouldn’t be happening,” to “this is happening, and that’s okay.” Then you shift that from “this is happening” to “this is happening for me.” But you won’t get to ”this is happening for me” until you go through the emotion. Until you go through the argument with reality, the grief of loss, or the pain of something not being the way you want it to be.

You cannot control the universe, and that can be painful. But you can control the way you process through your thoughts.

Pain Is Inevitable. Embrace It.

We are always going to be passing through painful moments in life. We can’t control the universe. We can’t make other people behave the way we want. We can’t simply wish happy moment into existence. We can’t run fast than our emotions in order to avoid colliding with them. 

As Alan Watts said, “You see, for all life is an act of faith and an act of gamble… But this is the most powerful thing that can be done: surrender.”

If you know that you can handle the pain of being alive, you’re always going to take that risk. You’re always going to be willing to go to the place where you can feel at the highest level of emotion–to be the most alive you can possibly be.

Celebrate That You’re Alive

So what do you do when feelings hurt? You celebrate that you’re alive. You allow those emotions to be there. You process them and then you release them. The better you get at processing your emotion, the better you get at life. Feeling your feelings is one of the most influential things you can do. Because when you’re willing to walk through the fire of the emotion that will be presented to you as a human being living your best life, you will see a world I think that you didn’t even know existed.

There is no emotion that can kill you as long as you’re willing to process it.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• What are the feelings that you haven’t processed through in your life?

• Where is there pain that you need to allow to be released?

• Where is there self-consciousness and doubt and frustration and anger that you’re holding in your body instead of processing it?

When you allow the process, when you allow the moment, when you allow the emotions to go all the way through, on the other side of that is not only the release of the emotion but the strength that you achieve in knowing that you can do it.

Once you realize you can do it, You become willing to do it again and again and again, to live your life in constant pursuit of your calling.

Conclusion:

Feel your feelings. Process them through. Allow there to be pain. Clean, pure, human processed pain. Allow it to be there.

The goal is not happiness.

The goal is not freedom from pain.

The goal is the ability to process it through.

And if you’re struggling to feel your emotions, but want to get better at it, then reach out. We would love to work with you and help you realize how special and unique you are. What gifts and talents you have to change the world and how your True North already exists within you.