Allowing Yourself to Feel
I had been racking my brain for what to write about all week because I like to write about a lesson that is prevalent in my life and that speaks to me. Then, during yoga this morning boom! It hit me. I want to talk about allowing yourself to feel your emotions so let’s get into it.
In life we are constantly going through the motions and never being in the moment long enough to feel what is currently happening. We get into a flow, a routine. Don’t get me wrong I love routines more than most, but sometimes they can harm more than help. We begin to do what we do every morning or everyday. It becomes monotonous and we stop thinking and feeling and just do. This can be helpful when we have been so overwhelmed that we need a minute not to feel what’s happening. Eventually, though, we get into too many routines and our whole life turns into one big monotonous routine that we have no feeling towards. We keep thinking that each event is going to be amazing, but then when we get there, we are already thinking about the next thing on our list that we never enjoy the first event and then this repeats and we end up skipping over half of our lives thinking about what is next.
I realized that I started to do this when thinking about my ski trip that is coming up. I kept saying that I would let myself be excited once I finished all my tests. I just had to get through the week and then I could feel how I wanted to feel about this trip. I then thought, why am I doing this? Telling myself that I have to wait to be excited. That is ridiculous. I think this comes from a place of imbalance. We each need to be able to balance thinking about school or work or the hard things and thinking about the fun things to keep us going.
I also notice this happens a lot with tests. I will be studying super super hard for a test and then I will get it back and have done super well, but I will already be thinking about the next test and the next material that I have to study that I won’t even stop for a second to be proud of myself. This continues until I realize that I will never be enough for myself if I don’t slow down and be grateful to myself. This also brings me to the point that even before we get the grade back or the outcome is revealed, if you put in all the effort you had left in you, that is something you should be proud of. Many times I notice that I am not proud of myself unless that outcome is good, but that is a horrible way to live because the work you put in is way more important than the result.
This brings me to the discussion of effort. We constantly ask ourselves if we gave 100% or 110%, but sometimes we don’t have that much to give. Sometimes the week and the world has taken too much out of us that all we have left to give is 50 or 60% or maybe even less. We start to doubt if we could have put in more effort and we start to feel bad about ourselves, but putting in all your effort doesn’t mean the same thing everyday.
This post doesn’t just apply to happy emotions like being excited or proud, but we need to allow ourselves to feel the not so happy emotions like anger and sadness. If we push away the anger or sadness it will always be there in the back of our minds. We have to confront it and deal with it. It’s ok to be mad and it’s also ok to not know why you are mad. Sometimes I’ll be sad or even crying and I will have no idea why. Then, I will get mad at myself for crying if there is nothing specific to cry about, but guess what? We are all human. We cry when we don’t have a reason. We yell at our parents when it isn’t their fault. We blame bad situations on others. And that’s ok. Don’t push away the sadness because you think you shouldn’t be sad. Be gentle with yourself. Try to understand, try to feel your body out. Listen to what your soul is telling you.
With anger and sadness, we have to find a balance of the right amount of feeling and getting over it. Each situation will differ, but if I am in a bad mood, I will give myself time to feel blah and explore why. Once enough time has passed, I will tell myself that it is time to stop feeling like this and start doing something more about it. If I’m tired I’ll take a nap, if I’m sad maybe I’ll cry it out, maybe I need a dance party to get me going, etc. If the situation is more severe I will give myself a specific amount of time to be sad and to sulk, but then I will know when it is time to refresh and stop pouting. For instance, when I got COVID the day before I was supposed to leave for Mexico, I let myself cry and be somber all day long. I knew I needed a day to feel sad and defeated, because yes, the situation I was in did suck. Then, the next day I knew I couldn’t continue each day like that. I wanted to feel happy. So, I turned to the positives. The point is, I needed to be able to feel unhappy before I could turn that frown upside down.
You may ask, how do I allow myself to feel?
Throughout each day, work on being in the present moment. If you find yourself going too fast through life, or just going through the motions slow day or even throw yourself a curve ball. Change up the routine and be in it.
Set an intention for your day. What do you want to work on? It doesn’t have to be big and it doesn’t have to be little. It can be anything from I want to be a bit more productive today to I am beautiful and I will remember that.
Meditate. You guys are definitely over hearing me say this, but the best way to feel is to meditate. Breath in and out and listen to what is within.
Notice the emotions you are pushing off, and let yourself feel them right now.
Throughout the day ask yourself how are you feeling and put together a thoughtful response.