Category: Healing Not Healed

A bad mood is like your car’s check engine light.

They both say: something is off.

Instead of plugging in a device to run a diagnostic as to what’s wrong, however… you have to plug in your awareness to your inner state to gain clarity.

And sometimes, this takes time. But, after enough dedicated diagnostic analysis, lo and behold, your reading will appear.

Unplug too soon, as it is with the device that plugs into your car, and you’ll leave with no more information than you had before.

Stay patient and committed, however, and the reading can come out just as clear as it would on the machine.

Without this information, all efforts will be guess work and may even make the problem worse.

With this information, all efforts can be pointed and deliberately focused on doing precisely what will help.

Too many people skip this diagnostic/ inner work step and then wonder why things only seem to be getting worse the more they continue to “drive their car.”

Want to save time, energy, and effort in your life? Get in the habit of not skipping step 1 in solving inner world problems and do your due diligence in obtaining diagnostic information.

Step 2 becomes exponentially easier when you do.

A martial arts friend of mine lost his dog last week.

In a post about it, he said, “Honestly, there are no words for what I’m feeling right now. Like I said in an earlier post, if I want to talk about it, I will. But please don’t leave the usual comments—’Sorry for your loss,’ ‘He’s in a better place,’ and so on. I know people mean well, but those words just pick at the wound and make it harder to heal.”

I know this pain all too well with how I ended up losing my dog, Stella.

And while I, too, have no words for getting through this type of pain or how to deal with these types of emotions… what I can say is that presence is the best gift any of us can provide.

And not necessarily presence in the sense of being with him in person… I know that wasn’t what I wanted when I was going through it—I wanted to crawl into a cave and wall myself in.

I mean presence in the sense of keeping them present in your mind and actions. By embodying the best of what each of them represent and passing that forward in the best way you can. By engaging with the material that’s posted and finding ways to celebrate the life of an animal that meant so much. By showing up and being there in person when it’s appropriate and well timed.

Sometimes words just pick at the wound.

But presence… the energy that’s felt when another enters your awareness… when it has the right intention and vibration… is generally received as a healing warmth.

After the death of her mom, Cheryl Strayed turned devastation and grief into self-sabotage.

She blew up her young marriage, estranged herself from her family, and started doing hard drugs—including heroin.

“I tried to wreck my life as a weird way to honor the death of my mom…” she admitted as she reflected back on that delicate time many years later at a live talk here in Buffalo, NY.

…Which I think is a very natural, knee-jerk kind of reaction to such overwhelming pain due to loss or grief in general.

We want to show how much we cared for a person—how much we loved them—by showing how deep our pain goes. And so we make this perverse decision to self-sabotage and wreck ourselves and our lives to display this deep love and care.

…But—and this is such an important but to consider when dealing with a blinding and unrelenting force like grief…

“…What we really need to do,” Cheryl said from the clarity of her further healed and more deeply considerate mind, “…is thrive.”

This is how we really honor the ones we love.

Not by causing further depths of pain and hate.

…But by embodying the depth of that love and becoming the living legacy of the absolute best version of that person. Spreading not more pain into the world—but, joy. Spreading not more hate into the lives of those around us—but, love.

…Leaving us not nearly dead and alone with a needle sticking out of our arm—but alive and thriving and accomplishing unimaginatively impressive feats that’ll inspire not only those around us today… but those in many generations to come.

After dancing almost nonstop for seven hours this past weekend… I looked at a friend I was with and said, “I can’t believe there used to be a time when I was too self-conscious to dance.”

The inner work I did to overcome that first hurtle of hesitation—and dance as uncaringly as I was able to on that first night (linked above)—was like a bud sprouting from the shell of its seed.

But, like the growth of any plant (and where a lot of people get inner work wrong)… sprouting isn’t the end… it’s only a beginning.

And since that sprouting, I’ve done my best to grow away from that shell of self-consciousness that was holding me back oh so tightly before… and strengthen the root and body of that flowering thought with as much uncaring dancing as I’ve been able to add to my lifestyle.

And this past weekend, it was as though I had a potent moment of realization that… damn… I think the pedals are starting to show.

---

P.s. ICYMI you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

I went to swat the ball out of another player’s hands while playing basketball the other day and I either bent my pointer finger in a way it shouldn’t have or jammed it real good (or both)… because it was immediately very painful after that swat.

After finishing the game (and when the adrenaline was wearing off and it started to swell), I quickly got it on ice and rotated back and forth between that and movement for about an hour… and then just kept moving it as much as I could after that.

The idea was simple: ice constricts blood vessels which reduces swelling. Movement keeps things, well, moving in the area so that, again, there’s less swelling (pooling) and fresh cells can continue to make their way in to heal and repair (no traffic jams).

When you get hit with emotional type pain in life (or do the hitting which results in pain) following a similar type of response can be helpful.

We ice emotions (cool off) to constrict overwhelmingly unnecessary responses… so we can choose other than a regretful, knee-jerk response… so we can prevent any unnecessary life swelling that might happen when we allow ourselves to act when fully heated up.

We then keep the emotions moving so that we can prevent pooling which can turn suppressed emotions toxic… so that we can create space for other emotions to arrive (healing and repairing type emotions)… so that we can fully feel (and eventually fully release) what’s meant to be felt.

And we do this with space… with journaling… with meditation… with walks… with inner work…

And when we don’t… we get badly swollen and bruised instead.

My dad once remarked that I was as “focused as a laser” when I was around 17. And he commented on how remarkable it was for someone at that age to be like that…

• I was excelling in school.
• I was in a serious relationship with an amazing girl.
• I was three years into a job I loved and knew I wanted to make into a career.
• I was competing at high level martial arts tournaments—and succeeding.
• I had an incredible group of friends who knew how to have a good time.
• And I had the most supportive and loving family throughout.

In hindsight, when I think back to this time and everything that would soon unfold over the next several years, I would probably tell myself to relax that laser a little and enjoy being a 17-year-old more.

…Because while being focused like a laser is a gift, so is wandering, exploring, and spending time experimenting while life is simpler and you’re living on somebody else’s dime.

Do I regret living how I did at 17? No. I know it’s precisely what made me into who I am today and I know that if I changed myself back then, the butterfly effect would probably have me in an upside down life that I actually did regret.

But, what’s important to remember is that my 17-year-old self is still inside me somewhere. As is every other version of who I’ve been in the past. And inner work conversations like this, with them, is precisely how my today self grows into the evolved version of that 17 year old…

…So I can live with that hindsight wisdom—today.

After getting divorced when I was around 11 years old and both having gotten remarried, my mom and my dad announced this week that they’re playing together in a band, at what’s going to be their official public debut, on my birthday, this month.

To add a little more context, my parents were in a folk band with several other friends when I was a child, that slowly fell apart as life happened to the band mates. Fast forward to around two decades after their divorce, and my dad reached out to my mom to see if she wanted to join a little band practice thing he started in his basement with a few other friends. She eventually agreed. The band grew. The practices continued and the sound kept improving. And now, today, they’re ready to share what they’ve created with the public and jam again.

The reason I share this with you is to remind you that when you can confront your pains, learn to forgive and find common ground, evolve/grow, and lead with compassion and understanding… you get to move on and do other things with your life. Things that don’t revolve around the ruins of the past, but feature new growth that sprouts into the future.

---

P.s. This is their announcement poster and band name (lol).