I’m a pretty positive person. I like to see the bright side of a situation because I know that good begets good. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have shitty days where I want to crawl back into bed, pull up the covers and pretend that the world outside my door doesn’t exist.
If you’ve done any type of self-development, you’ve no doubt discovered that you can attract more good into your life with a positive attitude. I’m sure you’ve heard that there’s a lesson behind every situation and that if you look hard enough, you’ll know there’s a reason things happen. Even the shitty stuff. I’m sure you know that gratitude is a powerful force and can change your entire perspective when you’re feeling down. And I believe all these things are true but…
Before we rush ahead to find the silver lining, before we get back on the positivity bandwagon, before we make of list of what we’re grateful for, we need to feel through the discomfort.
Tell someone who’s just lost a loved one to focus on the good. Tell someone who’s just been diagnosed with a disease that there’s a lesson in the news. Tell someone who’s just ended a 20-year marriage that there’s a silver lining.
There are pivotal moments in our lives when everything appears to crumbling at our feet. Those are the moments when we question everything – where we begin to wonder if we can ever really know anything for sure at all. Those are the moments that, looking back, could’ve broken us into a million pieces but only made us stronger. But things only make us stronger in time.
When we ignore raw emotions because they’re tough to face, we ignore a necessary part of the healing process. When we shove feelings down and pretend they’re not there, we’re not doing ourselves any favours by trying to bury them. We can lie and try to convince ourselves that we’re over everything when we know deep down inside that we simply chose to gloss over the hard edges.
Things make us stronger when we can lean into and dwell with the fear, the pain and the loss. Things make us stronger when we let the anger bubble up to the surface and face it head on.
Things make us stronger when we allow ourselves to feel what we need to feel and we make the choice, when we’re ready, to move on. Tweet that.
And that’s the key – to feel what you need to feel and know when it’s time to move ahead. Sometimes we need to dwell in a shitty moment for a day or an afternoon. Sometimes it takes way longer and sometimes it takes way less. We need to make the call when we know it’s time to make our peace with something and go back to feeling good again.
We need to trust ourselves enough to know that we’ll know when we’re done feeling those feelings.
We need to trust that we’ll know when we’re overthinking things as opposed to healing from the heart.
We need to trust ourselves to know when it’s time to move on.
We need to trust ourselves to know when it’s time to let go.
Much love, XXX
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