Or Before we begin today's letter,
Take a moment to check in with yourself.
Ask yourself,
How am I feeling today?
Then give yourself a chance to notice what comes back.
To the one who's in pain.
You're having a bad day.
The world feels darker,
Heavier.
Everything feels hard and you can't even remember what it feels like to be better.
A lot of people will have a lot of suggestions.
And on the whole,
They are all worth a try.
Make the tea,
Have the bath,
Eat the chocolate.
But also,
Dare to inhabit your own pain.
If it feels daunting to give yourself to these darker places,
Designate a time in your day where you lie or sit still and concentrate on just feeling.
Allow the feeling to fill every inch of your body.
Let it expand.
Let it be as big and powerful as it needs to be.
Notice if the feeling has a weight where it sits in your body.
If it moves or feels very still.
Cry,
Wail,
Punch a pillow,
Dance.
Let the feeling move through you.
And allow it to morph organically into the next feeling.
And then,
Let it go.
Watch your thoughts when you do this.
Do not get into thinking.
Stay with feeling.
Don't feed the pain with a story about why you are in pain,
What happened,
What will happen,
How you can make it better.
All of this will come.
But be sure to give yourself some time where it is just you and the feeling.
Give this guest your full attention.
This practice is powerful because you are learning to tolerate being alive.
This sounds like something that everyone must be doing all the time.
But it's amazing the extent humans will go to in order to avoid the agony of living fully.
The majority of us have such strong preferences for one set of feelings over another that we spend our lives ignoring,
Chasing,
Numbing,
Suppressing,
Never really witnessing the reality of our internal world.
You are the perfect container for your feelings.
They were made for you.
And when felt,
Instead of pushed down,
You will no longer have to live in fear of them.
All this living in fear of feeling anything other than happy is what drives humans to addiction and depression and is why we end up only living a fraction of the life that is possible for us.
So start now.
When you feel awful,
Don't reason with it straightaway.
Don't make a judgment about it being wrong.
Don't analyze why you feel that way.
Just give yourself a few minutes to let yourself feel.
Copyright © 2020,
New Thinking Allowed Foundation.
