Hard Emotions as a Path to Bigness

One of the most toxic messages we've learned from the culture (speaking generally and collectively) is that we should feel good and happy 100% of the time and if we're not, something has gone terribly wrong.

I know I've fallen into this lie, and I know where it has led me: to spiritual bypassing, denial, fragmentation, and smallness.

I also know that feeling hard emotions is a powerful act of realness, self-love, and power.

Every time I do it, it reminds me I'm big enough and brave enough to do hard things and feel hard things, and this deepens my experience of life.

Of course, there are things I can do alleviate emotional suffering (mostly working through my thoughts and stories that create them), but this is always after I feel and allow what's present and real in the moment.

(And also: sometimes our emotions have no deep reason and just want to be felt so they can move on).

Embracing this both/and in my emotional life and landscape has led to so much goodness and richness because in the process, the good emotions have a deeper, vaster space to land and be absorbed in my system because there's more room for everything and everyone - the sadness and the joy, the frustration and the delight, the fear and the comfort.

And all of it together makes for a rich and deep life and a big and brave self.

Returning to the Basics

This year, I’m reminding myself to return to the basics.

Because in the journey of deepening into who I am (sharpening my devotion and commitment to what matters, becoming a more effective life coach, growing spiritually and emotionally, etc.), I’ve noticed a temptation to bypass the basics (the work at its most fundamental level) in search of the next practice, insight, method, framework, or idea that will (magically) take me to new heights and depths of connectedness, joy, and wisdom.

And while seeking out new opportunities is part of the journey, it’s usually not what I most need.

Usually, if I’m craving connection or seeking transformation, I find I need to deepen into the basics of what I already know (and know to do).

For me, it’s the trifecta of awareness (body, emotion, and mind):

1) Getting grounded and checking in with my body, experiencing and settling into my embodied energy, listening and responding to what my body has to say.

2) Letting myself feel and have embodied experiences of my emotions (without needing to make them mean anything).

3) Managing my mind and working with the thoughts I think and beliefs I carry that keep me small, suffering, and stunted. Basically, identifying those thoughts/beliefs and doing to the work of choosing better ones.

All of this is infuriating simple (which, just to be clear, is not the same as being easy).

No matter how much I grow, transform, or deepen into this experience of life, I still have to be with myself, feel what’s happening inside, and question what I think.

No matter how much progress I make, the starting point is still more or less the same: breathe, sit, feel, connect, question. (It's pretty much always unhelpful to skip these steps.)

All of this reminds me that there is infinite depth in what is already here and available – and infinite possibility in the simple, foundational, unsexy work I know is mine to do and know will take me where I most want to go next.