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Tag: Analogies

Swollen Emotions

Published on April 6, 2022

Undesired emotions left untapped, swell.

The more those undesired emotions swell, the worse they become.

With mindfulness, we can tap into that swollen reservoir and give those emotions the path they need to flow.

This path allows the body to drain those unpleasant feelings, energy-guzzling thoughts, and hazy perspectives that make the emotions so undesirable.

But, worth noting: this doesn’t make them “bad” or “negative.” For the very nature of an undesired emotion is to signal to us that something is wrong.

And knowing that something is wrong is vital for our survival as humans.

So pay your undesired emotions some mind. Give them the light of your attention. Allow them some space in your day. The longer the emotion(s) get(s) ignored—the worse that “wrong” thing will get.

Remember, once they feel heard, they will flow.

Which will allow space for the opposite type of emotion to grow.

And this is what allows for the real transformations to take place.

Becoming An Emotional River

Published on April 5, 2022

If we don’t give poignant emotions space to move, they collect and become static—like a lake.

This is a problem because lakes have no means of filtration. They just collect and hold—trash, toxicity, diseases, and all. This isn’t a good formula for life.

Life is movement. Death is no movement.

The problem escalates, of course, when what opens up into our lake is a sewage drain that pours in more toxicity via news, media, gossip, drama, and hate.

…And then we wonder why we can become so overwhelmingly anxious, irritable, and befuddled inside?!

The solution, then, is to become an emotional river instead.

Rather than allowing what’s emotionally swelling to be suppressed, we should find ways we can give those feelings space to move.

Space that doesn’t come from distraction (anything that pulls our attention away from our emotional awareness is a distraction), but space that comes from a place of careful inward mindfulness.

Writing, meditating, therapeutic conversations, etc—are all great examples.

And just a few minutes a day can give emotions the space they need to keep flowing through (and eventually out from) our systems.

Carving Doorways

Published on April 3, 2022

One of the most beautiful things you can do when you’re overly emotional is carefully describe what it is you’re feeling.

Not only does this practice help you, but your account may carve a doorway where, for another, existed nothing but walls.

Forced Clarity

Published on March 24, 2022

You can’t force clarity.

Clarity is something that needs to be surrendered to.

Like when you’re in the middle of a big life decision—stuffing more “solutions” into your mind will probably only further confuse the matter. When what’s really needed, in most cases, is less stuff altogether so that the quiet, unmistakable voice that speaks from deep within can offer its solution based on the depth of knowledge that’s already there.

Try to force the mudded pond to settle and you’ll mud it more.

Surrender to the settling process and the pond floor suddenly starts to come into view.

Social Media Mindfulness

Published on March 22, 2022

To be mindful is to observe and label thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the body in an objective manner.

When we subject ourselves to the firehose of information that is social media, we lose touch with our objective understandings and become distracted and manipulated.

…We’d be naive to think our current state(s) isn’t being affected by our digital environments.

And regardless of the type of information (not all media is created equal), the real problem is in the wildly disproportionate amount of time people spend consuming vs digesting.

The reality in today’s world is that people’s appetites to consume is ever growing and the time they’re allotting for digestion (of said information) is ever shrinking.

And without digestion, consumption can have harmful, toxic, dire effects—which is precisely what many of us are experiencing.

If we’re going to use social media mindfully, we need to establish boundaries from the consumption and make more space for digestion.

This means space minus the phones. Conversation minus the screen(s). Walks minus the ear buds. Showers minus the Siri and Alexas. Waiting minus the feed-refreshing. Driving minus the podcasts. Experiences minus the highlight reeling…

…Life without the penetrating influences of everybody else’s life experiences.

Time to just settle and be.

Exercising Your Advice

Published on March 14, 2022

You can only help in so far as you are strong.

Those who never build their own strength remain weak—and their ability to help others remains weak, too.

Imagine a person who has never lifted a weight running around a gym, giving people 20 minute lectures on how to lift weights.

Now imagine a jacked person who is usually quietly focused in the corner walking over to you and offering you a quick, 20 second correction on your form.

Which would you prefer—the 20 minutes or the 20 seconds?

Of course you’d prefer the 20 seconds.

Because the advice is coming from a place of strength.

And in order to build that strength, what did the jacked person have to do?

Avoid running around the gym giving people 20 minute lectures on how to lift weights and focus on him/herself!

This is the oxymoron of helping others. You can only help others better when you become better. And the only way to become better is to focus on yourself—and occasionally ignore the never-ending call to help others.

Don’t run around offering help to people if you haven’t spent time helping yourself.

Quietly stay focused in your corner until you’ve reached your point of being full.

Then, pour from your full cup the full strength of your advice.

Sculpting Legacies

Published on March 13, 2022

The problems of our lives are the very material with which we get to sculpt our legacies.

The harder the problems, the harder the material.

And the harder the material, the longer our legacies have the potential to last.

When you only have to face “soft” problems and you don’t put much effort into shaping them—your life legacy is a wad of Play-Doh.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you opt to face “harder” problems and you work hard to shape them into something remarkable—your life legacy results in something more along the lines of a chiseled statue from marble.

Worth noting: this is not a call to make life as “hard” as possible.

Because without the proper tools, a huge block of marble is unsculptable—and that’s not a legacy worth aiming for either.

The goal is to stop complaining about the material we’ve been given and to start finding ways we can sculpt what we have into something we’re proud of.

Unfortunately, we can’t always change the material we’ve been given: life is wildly unfair in that sense.

Fortunately (especially if you’re reading this), we do have the ability to upgrade our tools and materials to make even harder, more exquisitely detailed sculptures.

Wisdom is the ultimate means for upgrading those tools and materials.

And your life’s legacy is worth an investment into the finest.