Allowing the Emotions to Flow
The human condition is characterized by a spectrum of emotions. Everything from anger and sadness to joy and exhilaration can be experienced by one and all, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity. When it comes right down to it, your ability to feel all of these emotions is what distinguishes you from other living creatures.
This ability, however, is often seen as a bit of a curse. While humans can, in fact, experience any and all of these emotions, the tendency is to only allow a few of these to be okay. Generally speaking, people are more inclined to allow feelings such as joy, excitement, happiness and love, while trying to avoid or stifle emotions such as sadness, fear and anger. Why is that?
Well, one reason is obvious…the feelings that arise with sadness, fear and anger are less pleasurable than feelings of happiness, joy and love. Given the choice most people would naturally lean towards the joyful end of the emotions-continuum than the sadness end. The challenge, however, when you only allow one end of the spectrum is that you actually start to deaden yourself to life as a whole. There’s a way in which, denying the feeling of any one emotion lessens your ability to truly feel other emotions.
To paraphrase Deepak Chopra, life is an experience in contrasts. If you truly want to feel happiness — and appreciate it — then you’ve got to be willing to feel sadness — and appreciate it. Now admittedly, trying to appreciate sadness or anger or fear can be challenging. Sometimes, when feelings such as these get overwhelming, it can be difficult to determine what to do with the emotion. You need to take care not to let it cloud your judgment and move you to make harmful choices. That being said, when you can allow yourself to simply be with the sadness, to feel the anger or fear, more often than not, it will dissipate and naturally give way to more pleasant feelings. In other words, allowing the emotions to flow — whatever those emotions are — can actually move you to genuine happiness, joy and excitement quicker than trying to stifle them ever will.
The bottom-line is this: despite our social conditioning to deny certain emotions in favour of other ones, it actually serves our experience best when we can embrace it all. There actually is room for it all. And all emotions serve, when you allow them to flow and be without judgment.
When You Can’t See What’s Ahead
A couple of years ago, I was driving with my family on our first-ever March Break trip to Disneyworld. The excitement in the vehicle as we drove on that first night — a 4 hour stretch, just to say we were on our way — was palpable. My husband was the only one of us who had ever been to Disneyworld, and even he was tingling with the anticipation of reliving the magic with all of us.
That first night we stopped at a hotel, enjoyed a relaxing evening complete with popcorn and a bit of TV before going to bed. When we awoke the next morning, we were in the midst of a major (and I mean MAJOR) snowstorm. Now, for us, being from Canada and specifically southwestern ontario, snowstorms aren’t necessarily a huge deal, so we just ate our breakfast, climbed in the van and headed on our way. Well, we weren’t on the road for more than 30 minutes before we were all feeling more than a little nervous, and that’s putting it mildly. There was a ton (more or less) of snow on the roads, plows hadn’t been by in who knows how long, and every few meters there was another vehicle in the ditch. The windshield wipers were freezing and becoming so snow-covered that there was no way of knowing what was ahead. The only thing we could see was what was right in front of us — and the screen of our GPS. And the only thing we knew for sure, was that at some point, if we kept driving, we would be out of the storm. So, white-knuckled, my husband kept his hands on the wheel, his foot on the brake, and his eyes on both the road and the GPS. By doing this and staying calm,he managed to get us safely through the storm and onto clear roads (granted it was a good 2 1/2 hours later till we were on clear roads, but clear they were). My job in all of this was to ensure that the children stayed calm and occupied — so out came my bag of activities, the in-car movies, and my own calm-factor (albeit with perspiration on my forehead).
Why am I telling you all of this? Well, this morning it occurred to me that life can, at times, feel exactly like that drive to Disneyworld. There are times where the storm clouds of life come in and you cannot see what lies ahead, no matter how hard you try. All you know for sure is that if you keep moving forward, the clouds will clear and all will be fine in the end. In those circumstances, the key really is to stay grounded in the here and now, taking one step at a time, and re-adjusting as necessary. Granted, this can be challenging in the heat of the moment. You may well want to “take the nearest exit” as it were, crawl back into bed and try to out-wait the storm. What I know for sure, however, is that in most cases, simply standing in the knowledge that the storm will pass, and taking whatever small steps you can to move forward in the meantime, is actually more productive.
Bottom-line: anyway you look at it, keeping your focus in the present is the option that serves best. Always. And especially when life feels cloudy.
Learning to Bless
As is normal for anyone engaging in the process of living life (I mean REALLY living, not just going through the motions), I seem to be in a constant state of evolving and learning. Moment to moment, day to day, things are constantly shifting in my world, and what I know for sure is that’s a good thing.
Sometimes, the changes can be overwhelming, however. Sometimes, it feels like evolution is happening so quickly that I barely adapt and assimilate what’s transpired before I’m on to the next stage. In moments like that, what often happens is that I feel unprepared for this next stage. It’s like I’m being asked to use new skills without having adequately practiced them in a safe container. At least, that’s how it feels.
This has been the scenario for me for much of this past week. Even as I stand in a place of gratitude for all that has transpired, and a place of curiousity about all that might yet be, I find myself being thrown into uncomfortable circumstances with a sense of trepidation — it’s like I’m not quite sure that my fresh learnings will actually work.
Well, one of the things that I’m playing with — and it’s actually serving me to play with this learning in these trepidation-filled scenarios — is the act of “blessing”. When something comes at me that feels less than comfortable, when I’m feeling like I don’t want to be with something or someone, I’m learning to bless the circumstance, the person, the thing in question — send out an abundance of love — and trust that all is unfolding as it’s meant to. What I’m noticing is that as I bless things rather than curse or question them, my focus shifts. I no longer stand in problem-solving or frustration; instead, I stand in a place where I can hand the situation over to be dealt with by a higher power. When I bless something, I can actually disengage from what might otherwise be a negative interaction, and engage in a more positive way. Learning to bless all that is in my life becomes a blessing in and of itself.
Admittedly, this requires a bit of conscious effort on my part. Sending blessings — especially to things, people, circumstances I don’t like — has not been my pattern in the past. And I’m noticing that it actually serves my life better than anything I’ve tried so far.
Bottom-line: the ability to bless and send blessing, ultimately liberates me from the place of fear. And that’s a good thing. I just need to keep practicing 
Opening Yourself to Joy
Joy. Today, I’m feeling called to write about joy, and more than that, to experience it, to savour it. Of course, even as I feel called to joy, I find myself getting curious about what it means. I mean, I know what it feels like, I know what I feel as the quality of joy. But what is it outside of myself?
Free Online Dictionary defines “joy” as “intense or especially ecstatic or exultant happiness” — yeah, that works for me. And when I think about how others describe their joyful moments, I feel like this definition works for them too. There is something that goes beyond mere happiness that is found in the quality of joy. Joy is happiness enriched, heightened, and magnified. In other words, it’s like the best of happiness, concentrated. Yummy.
One of the things that I find myself currently curious about, is the “how” of things, in this case, “how” to experience joy. I mean let’s face it, some moments are joyful, others are not, some are in between. And while I do hold as truth the idea that all moments are inherently good, even when they feel icky, I’ve gotta confess, I do prefer joy — I am human after all. So if I can find out how to experience more of the joy, I’d like to do that.
A couple of years ago, when I was engaged in a leadership course, one of my journal entries explored the nature of joy. And I remember writing something which still feels like a paradoxically simple yet profound realization: the key to experiencing joy can be found in the acronym of the word “joy” itself. “J.O.Y.” can be used as an acronym for Just Open Yourself — and my experience, when I bother to examine it and contemplate it, reflects this instruction.
When I just open myself to life experiences, when I stand in a state of openness to the world around me, I inevitably invite and experience more joy in my life. In truth, I experience more of everything when I open myself to the world — and joy becomes part of that. I guess what I’m realizing is that, in order to experience more joy, I must open myself to all of life, knowing that experiencing joy requires me to experience more of life as a whole. The condition of being joyful, implies and indeed requires an openness of heart — and openness to all that life has to offer, so that joy can be experienced fully.
My bottom-line today is this: you can’t open yourself to only one aspect of life. When you move through life in only a semi-open state, you only experience a semi-life. In order to experience life unequivocally, you must open yourself unequivocally and see that all of experiences, even the icky ones, lead to joy in some measure. Just Open Yourself. Joy is yours when you do.
Receiving the Gift of Time
We live in a fast-paced, busy world. This likely isn’t news to anybody. If you look around, it’s easy to see that people are constantly racing against the clock, trying to fit a myriad of tasks into a seemingly little amount of time, and simultaneously complaining about the busy-ness of it all. I’ve experienced the same busy-ness, and I know you have too. What I’ve also discovered, however, is that there actually is a way to increase the time available to you — or at least make better use of what’s available to you. Simply put, if you want to increase the amount of time in your day, RECEIVE IT.
You see, while it is true that there are 24 hours in any given day, and 60 minutes in each of those hours, the way in which youopen yourself up to that time determines in great measure how your time will unfold. If you approach each day (or whatever unit of time you care to use in this example) with an attitude of “there’s not enough time” — well, there simply won’t be enough. If, however, you apply a perspective such as “time expands as I need it” (a mantra which I have used with huge success in my world), you’ll start to notice that time does indeed seem to expand.
The only explanation which I can offer for this is to say that time, like everything else on the planet, is subject to the Law of Attraction. So whatever you focus on, even with respect to time, is what you get. Put your focus on the lack of time, lack is what shows up. Put your focus on the abundance of time, you have more time than you’d have imagined possible.
When I align the simplicity of this learning with what I see out there in the world, and indeed with what I periodically experience myself as a “time-scarcity” I have to wonder, how open are people to receiving the gift of time? How attached are they to a particular view of time that implies they must be constantly on the move, with no room to breathe? What I know for sure is that, when I allow myself to stand in a perspective of abundance with respect to time, time shows up. Time becomes available. Time does expand as I need it. And I find time available for my use where I couldn’t have predicted it would be.
Bottom-line: there is more than enough time in the world for everything that you want and need to do. The question is this: are you ready and willing to receive it?
When You’re Feeling Disconnected…
…reach out and get connected. This is a learning that I gained several years ago. At the time it felt simultaneously simple and brilliant. I remember experience the learning as a “light-bulb” moment. “Of course”, I said to myself, “when I’m feeling disconnected the obvious remedy is for me to reach out and connect with someone. That will solve things instantly!”
Since that time, I have had numerous “disconnection” experiences, and been able to play with this learning as a result. Oftentimes, the simple act of reaching out garners an almost-instant reconnection, both with myself and the specific person I’ve connected with, or even the world at large. Sometimes, the reconnected feeling is a while in coming. And other times, reaching out feels like an act I simply can’t undertake.
In the latter case, what I’ve noticed is that there’s a way in which my reaching out doesn’t seem to be received or welcome by the other person, and this stops me from taking the necessary first step. I get the impression (or am told flat-out) that they’re too busy to make the time, they don’t want to have a conversation, they’re not into giving or receiving a hug (because sometimes, for me, a silent hug connects me quicker than any conversation ever could). In these moments, when I’m wanting or needing to connect with a specific person, and the need isn’t reciprocated, I find myself withdrawing from the world as a whole. I guess it’s a defensive strategy. The irony is that in doing so, I become even more disconnected and isolated, feel more alone, and eventually get into a really stuck space.
Well, here’s the extended learning that I’m getting regarding the feeling of disconnection: while the disconnect may arise through the relationship with a specific person, regaining a feeling of connection doesn’t necessarily have to involve that person. You can actually reach out to SOMEONE ELSE, connect with that someone else, and thereby reconnect with that essential human energy and experience that energizes your daily tasks. Once you’ve done that, you can then determine if, when and how to reconnect with the initial person.
Granted, I’m finding that this takes a bit of commitment on my part. Sometimes, withdrawing (especially on a cold, snowy, wintery day) really just feels simpler. And simpler doesn’t always serve. Sometimes, simpler leads to angst rather than ease (it’s a bit of a paradox, I know).
Bottom-line: if you’re feeling disconnected, just reach out and connect. With someone. With anyone. The human experience is meant to be a connected one. Reach and engage. It’s the critical action required to get you unstuck.
A Mountain Out of a Molehill
Or a “hole in the ground” beneath the molehill. That’s actually what it feels like in this moment. Yesterday I blogged about taking a big risk and contacting (or at least leaving a message for) Arlene Dickinson. While I haven’t yet received a response from here one way or the other, I’ve been allowing my brain to replay the message I left over, and over, and over again.
Not too soon after I began the “replay game” as I call it, I became aware of saying something which I tell myself was WRONG. Nothing offensive or inappropriate, just a weak phrasing of what I was going for and why. This is the “molehill” in question. The “mountain” that I created out of it was a big, icky, berating of myself that lasted for several hours — yes, I’m human and I can dwell on stuff, even when I know it doesn’t serve. Since then I’ve inverted the mountain and I’ve pointed that mountain downward, so to speak, so that now I’m hanging out in a “hole in the ground”, burying myself as it were, in a place of embarassment and shame. Which, I totally get, does NOT serve me or my mission in any way, shape or form. It just allows me to escape for a while.
I’m blogging about this simply to be transparent, to share my humanness, and to take away the sharpness of the sting. I have no idea how my supposed “weak phrasing” is going to land on Arlene’s side. I have no idea what her response to my request will be. I know what I want it to be. AND, how that shows up is now out of my hands.
So, now that I’ve hung out in my “hole in the ground” for a bit, I’m going to let that all go (at least mostly) and move on to the next tasks in my mission. I’m going to continue to stand in the place of service, and choose my “to-do actions” from there, rather than from the land of “should” — I know from experience that this is what works best for all concerned.
Bottom-line: neither mountains, nor molehills, nor holes in the ground are going to move me forward. Service and gratitude will. So I’ll hang out there. Will you join me?
Big Gulp, Big Risk…Big Leap Forward
So, I did it. For a number of weeks now I’ve been working on completing a survey of women leaders. Actually, I’ve been working on it since early October, but then had to abort the mission for a little while when I got sick. Once things got back on track, however, I kept moving along at a fairly steady pace, garnering participation from a wide array of women leaders, and noticing some interesting trends and issues for this demographic.
As I’ve entered into February, my goal is to complete the survey in its entirety by month’s end. Furthermore, I want to round out the survey by getting some higher-profile leaders to share their insights. Why? Because I want to be sure that my results do in fact pertain to the general pool of women leaders, rather than to a subset of women leaders (e.g., mompreneurs only, or committee chairs only).
So, this afternoon, I did it. I took the big gulp, took what felt like a big risk (at least to me) and made one call that I’ve been putting off. You see, I think speaking with Arlene Dickinson (one of the Dragon’s on the Canadian televisionn show, Dragon’s Den and CEO of Venture Communications) would give my survey some real “oomph.” To me, she’s a pretty high profile leader, and to be able to pick her brain would be a privilege to say the least. The risk for me lay not so much in picking up the phone, but in actually putting myself and my work in front of her, on the line so to speak. I realize that if she doesn’t agree to participate, I could go to a lot of places with that. In fact, my inner saboteurs could easily take me down the path of self-ridicule to the umpteenth degree. That basic story is what stopped me for so long.
Having just made the call, however, I realized something afresh: taking the big risk actually paves the way for me to move through an obstacle (or two or ten). You see, now I can let go of the possible self-ridicule and choose something else. Something more empowering and something that serves the bigger picture. For example, I can choose to stand in the knowledge that nobody is off-limits to me — I can actually reach out and make requests of all sorts of people, regardless of what their answer might be. I can choose to affirm over and over again that I am just one phone call away from talking to a “big wig” — which means that, really, I can consider myself a bigwig too (if I want).
Bottom-line: sometimes, you’ve just got to take a big gulp, take the big risk and know that the result will be a big leap forward. Trust me — the feeling’s exhilarating.
I Know You’re Right…And What If You’re Wrong?
This is a question that I love to ask. Whether I’m working with a client or just evaluating a personal circumstance, exploring the possibility of being wrong can offer incredible insight in a situation. All of a sudden, what seemed so cut-and-dried 30 seconds ago, becomes less so as you entertain a new vantage point. Believe it or not, possibilities open up, friction fizzles away and tension disappears when you can be with the idea — or at least hold it as a possibility for a few seconds — that you might actually be wrong.
Asking yourself if you might be wrong is another strategy for “walking a mile in another person’s shoes” or finding another perspective. You see, there’s a teaching I once heard which says that there are always at least three sides to a story: yours, mine and the truth. The funny thing is that both you and I believe that we’re privy to the truth, to the “rightness” of the story. The challenge of course is that any time you find yourself entrenched in an “I’m right on this issue” perspective, you actually close yourself from being truly engaged with whatever’s going on. You’re so busy “being right”, that you start to alienate the world around you, and truly miss the point.
The key to holding the question of right and wrong is to do so with a sense of detachment, a letting go of judgment. Admittedly, when you’re in the land of “right and wrong” letting go of judgment seems counter-intuitive. And yet, if you can actually find a way to hold right and wrong lightly, without making either position “good” or “bad”, you can start to be with the world in a more constructive way. You can actually move through conflict and disagreement with a sense of ease, knowing that whether or not you’re right or wrong is less a matter of judgment, and more an opportunity for self-growth and evolution.
Bottom-line: let go of believing that you’re absolutely right, and entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. Don’t wait for everyone else to be wrong — believe that you might be wrong too, and watch the truth reveal itself in a new light. My guess is you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Trying On Another Set of Lenses
As a life coach, I do a lot of work with my clients around “perspectives.” Fundamentally, I’ve come to hold the belief that your experiences really do take on a different feel and flavour depending on the perspective from which you view them. I mean, really, if you’re standing on one side of the fence, you’re going to see something different from what can be seen on the other side of the fence, right? Sometimes, though, it’s not so much about switching vantage points, as it is about switching lenses.
Let me give you an example. Most people will willingly concede that the sky is blue on a bright, sunshiny day. This seems to be the general consensus certainly. What I know for sure, however, is that if you view that same sky, on the same day, with yellow-tinted lenses, you will see the sky as green. “Yellow and blue make green” is one of the first things we learn when experimenting with blending and mixing colours In other words, while you can get a different take on things by physically switching your vantage point, sometimes you don’t have to actually move — you only have to switch your lenses.
Through what lens do you tend to view the world? What would you notice if you changed it up? what would become available to you– what insight, what piece of information, what understanding?
What I know for sure is this: as much as it might be easier to believe otherwise, the world does not exist in black and white, right and wrong, you and me. The world exists, instead, on a wide scale of possibilities. Taking the opportunity to view your experiences with different lenses from time to time can actually make your experiences richer, provide more texture, more breadth. It may not be something you want all the time. And, it absolutely can enrich your life. So what lens will you try on today?