Emotional Honesty

If there's one area that I feel I've benefited in the most since making mindfulness a central component of my life, it would have to be emotional honesty. Being really honest with myself about what it is I'm really feeling. Because for the longest time that was hard, and to be fair it's still a work in progress.

I've learned that I have a deeply conditioned tendency to want to think my way out of feeling difficult feelings, to want to make myself feel better by putting a spin on whatever's going on. And I know I'm not alone in this. This is true for many of us, if not most of us. But what mindfulness has taught me is that relating to my emotional life in this way ultimately creates more suffering than it resolves.

It exacerbates it. Because if every time you feel a twinge of emotional discomfort, you're diving in to stuff it down or push it away or distract yourself from it, one, it's like whack-a-mole. That discomfort will just pop up somewhere else in a different form. And two, you're perpetuating being ill-prepared for meeting with life's inevitable difficulties.

Emotions are never an enemy, no matter how difficult they might feel. They're simply a natural, non-personal, human response to the truth of being alive. They don't happen because of you; because you're an irretrievably flawed individual. They happen because they happen. They're a non-negotiable condition of being born into this human body with this human mind.

And what emotions need more than anything is to be acknowledged and listened to and seen and felt so that they can pass through more cleanly. And it all begins with us being honest with ourselves about what it is we're really feeling. Now, the way that mindfulness has helped me be more honest about and accepting of my emotional life is by providing a safe foundation from which I can more easily be with whatever's arising and see it more clearly, to hold it in awareness and to just let it all flow.

Not getting drawn into the intoxicating and often overwhelming stories that would otherwise be running the show. Now, it's not always easy, that's why it's a practice. But it's through this practice that I've learned to be compassionate, and to trust that, despite what this little voice has to say, it IS okay to feel whatever needs to be felt.

And when I do, it all tends to get processed more quickly and without leaving too much sticky residue. Of course, this doesn't make life all unicorns or rainbows. But that's the point. If your life is anything like mine, it's both a glorious and a messy business, which is why it helps to have such a supportive practice.

If you want to have a chat about whether learning mindfulness is the right thing for you, then just reach out and let's talk.