Moving Mountains, and Feeling Feelings
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Hi there!
How are you, really?
How has 2022 been for you so far?
I hope you are taking the time to evaluate how your first month of this year went and embracing any necessary change. Try to approach it with grace and curiosity.
This week on my podcast, The Commitment to Growth Podcast, things got a little personal and I shared an episode that I recorded during a previously tough time in my life in late 2021. Like other newsletters, I wanted this one to tie into this week’s episode and follow a similar idea, but with a bit of a twist.
Here’s your 1 quote, 1 perspective-shifter, and 1 source of growth for this week:
1 Quote:
“You have been assigned this mountain to show others it can be moved.”
- Unknown
1 Perspective-shifter:
This week on the podcast I spoke about strategies to try to help you get out of your head and out into the world when your thoughts become your enemy and you just need a break.
Now, there’s a lot of advice out there saying the same: leave your thoughts behind, lean away from the ugly, and don’t read too much into it because your brain can go on downward spirals making up even more ugly stuff for you to believe about yourself. While I personally do subscribe to this idea, I also think that it’s often necessary, however uncomfortable, to go into those dark thoughts and explore what they’re bringing up for us without judgement. But how do we do that from a place of curiosity and from a standpoint where we can still hold ourselves safely?
Today I want to share this speech with you by Alan Watts on exploring your dark side and why it’s necessary that we become curious about it as human beings. This video spun me around in many directions and had me asking a million questions right before bed when I watched it (you can imagine how I slept after that), and I want to try to get your take on it as well. It sounds eery at first, but stick around until the end and I promise you may just catch a glimpse of something you didn’t expect.
1 Source of Growth:
One of the biggest pieces of learning I have been trying to apply consistently and wholeheartedly since recording the episode I shared with you this week is to be present with the feelings I’m experiencing at any given time. This is tough for a number of reasons: feeling ugly things can make you feel invalid or overdramatic, and sometimes it can feel like those feelings and their intensity could consume you.
It’s important to remind ourselves of the significance of befriending our feelings and exploring them compassion, whether they are “good” or “bad” in our eyes. When we hold space for our feelings and allow them to express themselves freely, we are stopping them from taking hold of us and our bodies later and manifesting themselves in ways that are less than desirable.
To understand just how we can go about exploring our feelings and approaching them, it’s important to define just what feelings are, and what they are not. As some of you may have heard me mention on the podcast times before, Nicole Le Pera has been one of my go-to’s for doing this kind of deep inner work for some time now. Also known as The Holistic Psychologist, Nicole is the bestselling author of “How To Do The Work”, a guide to going deep within yourself to heal to overcome the internal barriers that are keeping you from living fully. In this 6-minute video from her educational YouTube channel, Nicole breaks down what feelings are, why we tend to shy away from them, and how we can approach them safely and with compassion to release their grip over us and become free from the inner turmoil the may be stirring within us.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Hopefully you feel a little inspired to go inwards and explore what’s stirring below the surface. And remember that no matter what that is, you ARE worthy of love, kindness, and respect from others and from yourself. You are living the human experience, and part of that is embracing it for the pretty and the not so pretty- so approach it with grace.
Lots of love,
~ Mariana
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