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Things To Think About, Monday, January 28th, 2019

Don't send the pain below

broken image
My dreams are an ongoing joke in my family. When I was a little girl, they were a great stalling tactic for having to go to bed. My dreams are notoriously long and very detailed. I gave up journaling them since they took about thirty to forty minutes to record. I will make an exception and give you the cliff notes of one I had this week. We were in a house, and there was a little girl who told me that her favorite poem was about butterflies, but it made her sad because they do not stay. Spoiler alert, she had died, but no one wanted to acknowledge it. Once we accepted it, we could see the house as it was - abandoned and dusty with tape outline clues about how she passed.

Happy Monday, or whatever Monday you choose. Stressful emotions can be like the events of my dream. Sometimes we ignore them because we think it will be too painful to feel them. I know this blog is supposed to be motivational, but motivation is not always about living a sunshine and lollipops life. Sometimes we have to motivate ourselves to do the heavy lifting. In the case of strong emotions, we have been lifting these emotions and carrying them with us instead of laying the burden down. We are so focused on continuing on our journey that we tell ourselves we do not have the time to deal with them. Not dealing or feeling them can blind us to our actual situation. It is similar to making a decision when you are hungry. Be gentle with yourself and give yourself the space to feel those emotions. If someone has hurt you, let go of the resentment and grudges and move on. Holding on to what no longer serves you weighs you down unnecessarily on your journey.

But, and there is always a but - you feel stuck. You do have a choice. You can go forward or continue to look back. I like the meme of only giving people two options, "Do you like it, or do you love it?" How are things working for you currently? Is avoidance a successful strategy? Everything is in the palm of your hands. You can dive into the lake of your feelings or climb the mountain. How you choose to deal with them is up to you, but I do hope you decide to deal with them and lighten your load on your journey.

Are you viewing yourself as a victim? Is "why me?" on auto-repeat in your song list? Ask yourself why not me? What am I learning from this? Give gratitude even for tight situations. In my life, they have allowed me to think about how to get out of the box. I stopped framing things as "I can't" and when viewed as "I don't want to" it allowed me to reflect on the reasons behind the thoughts. From there I could determine a strategy to get to the next level.

What's next? If we continue with our road trip analogy, we have reached the proverbial fork in the road. If you are uncertain about which way to go, that is okay. Sometimes we need to pause and recalibrate. How have you enjoyed the journey thus far? Did you see any new sites? Did you try anything new? If you stopped at the usual rest stops, did you still enjoy them? Are you making this decision while hungry? Maybe at this juncture, you will make the decision to explore the sadness, or grief, or anger, or pain. The stoplight is not always green. Yellow tells us to slow down. Running the red lights in our life can lead to a spectacular crash. As Diana Ross sang from the theme song to "Mahogany" -

"Do You Know
Where you're going to?
Do you like the things?
That life is showing you
Where are you going to?
Do you know?"

Source: Songwriters: GERRY GOFFIN, MICHAEL MASSER
© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Data From: LyricFind