Happy New Year!!!! Life feels like it’s moving so fast these days. I remember when I was just a wee little pumpkin and adults would tell me that time moves much faster when you’re older. I didn’t get it then, but holy moly do I get it now.
Let’s crush 2017 together. If you thrive when you receive support from a sparkly unicorn (me) and you love structure and guidance, Rock Your Year is a three week course (starting on Monday) I’m offering that gives you everything you need to create your most magical year yet. Learn more and sign up >>> HERE.
You will declare an intention that you want to manifest in 2017, create an action plan to implement it and receive all the tools and support required to achieve it.
Since the year turned from 2016 to 2017, I figuratively felt the earth shaking ferociously under my feet so hard that I fell on my sweet ass a couple of times. Moments later I saw in the distance a tidal wave that was threatening to crash down on me. I felt paralyzed and considered just standing there allowing the wave to sweep me away, but today was not the day I was going to drown in the emotion ocean.
Instead I hanged ten on my surfboard and rode the wave of all the feels all the way to shore. Cowabunga dudes!!!!!
How to feel all the feels (an excerpt from my book The Sweet Ass Self-Help Book: A Practical Guide to Turn Your Life From Sh*t to Sparkles)
As humans we experience all kinds of feelings, yet some of them are considered wrong by society. Anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, grief and hopelessness are just some of them, and many of us have been told things like, “don’t cry,” “you’re over emotional,” or “just get over it already.” There are many ways to hide your true feelings from being shown. Drinking alcohol, taking drugs, binging on food, purchasing stuff you don’t need are all ways that can numb your feels, give you a fast high to feel good for a sec, or hide them from coming to the surface all together. You may find it works for a little while. Until it doesn’t and the time bomb that was ticking away inside of you finally goes off. You may find yourself punching a wall, picking a fight with a stranger, having a mental breakdown, in rehab, morbidly obese or ridden with disease.
Throughout my life, I stifled my emotions to protect those around me.
I truly believed it was unsafe to be emotional and I didn’t want to burden people with my problems, so I hid it away.
Crying in front of people was a shameful act, so I always choked back my tears. I meant well, but it didn’t do me or anyone else much good because I had uncontrollable temper tantrums well into my teens, during my college years I suffered major digestive issues while battling one illness or another, and in my twenties I allowed an abusive man to be my boyfriend for over four years. Those were just some of the symptoms that showed up because of my emotion dodging. Instead of allowing myself to drown in the emotion ocean, I needed to learn how to surf the wave.
I named all my feelings and treated them as if they were my friends instead of my enemies. Angry Alex, Sad Sadie, Fearful Frankie, Anxious Andy, Happy Hilda, Annoyed Annie, Joyful Johanna, Pissed Off Peter and Peaceful Petunia are some of my besties. My BFFs had a lot of messages to share with me that I had ignored in the past. Angry Alex told me to take action instead getting taken advantage of again. Sad Sadie told me to cry it out, slow down, and allow myself to heal.
My emotions would hide in my neck, belly and lower back so I knew when they were acting up, I was hiding something. Once I felt something physically, I would feel the sensation without judging it, making it good or bad, or making it mean something. Eventually the pain would fizzle out instead of manifesting into a full blown ailment.
Instead of avoiding my feelings at all costs, I felt my way through them because all of those feels had some major wisdom within them just waiting to drop. When I can’t shake a feeling, I ask it what it wants me to know. If my mind is too busy to get an answer, I’ll go for a walk, meditate, dance or do some yoga. Once I feel even a little peace, the answer often reveals itself. I’ve started to listen to it even if I don’t like what it has to say and I’ve learned so much.
This practice of feeling all the feels instead of letting them fester inside of me, was a key move I made that turned my life from a shit storm to a sparkle party.
Funks still show up once in awhile, but I know how to get out of them so they aren’t so debilitating and they don’t last as long.
Sometimes the feelings aren’t even your own. If you define yourself as a sensitive empath, chances are you’re lugging around other people’s emotions too. Being one myself, I have a couple of tools in my box I use to empty the dufflebag full of other people’s feels I carry around with me. I picture a disco ball in front of me. I visualize all the emotions that aren’t mine and I put them in that disco ball. I grab it with my hands, toss it into the air, and watch it spin so fast that everything inside of it it transforms into glitter that rains down on me. A second tool is to take a shower and picture everyone’s emotions washing off of you and watch them go down the drain.
The waves are going off. See you on the beach.
The magic in me sees the magic in you,
