Ugh! New Year’s! Why does everyone make such a big deal about resolutions and why do we all start off so motivated and excited, but by Valentine’s Day, we all seem to be buying those damn big boxes of candy? I’ll tell you a secret! Our emotions are in the driver’s seat of ALL resolutions. Doesn’t matter how strong our will is, in the end, absent emotional understanding of ourselves, our emotions are the trump card.
SO HOW DO WE TAKE CHARGE OF OUR EMOTIONS?
9 out of 10 times, when we are reaching for something that is not good for us, we are doing so because we have been conditioned to seek that behavior pattern to calm our nerves and manage our emotions. Maybe our dad would come home from work grumpy and our mom taught us early on to stay in our rooms and play quietly to give him space and quiet when he came home. Now, in our adult life, anytime anything mirrors this dynamic we find ourselves “playing quietly” in our room when we want to be working on our goals! It is not enough to tell ourselves that we are not eight years old anymore. Our eight year old self cannot hear us. There’s a disconnect and when times of stress arise, all she wants to do is run to her room for comfort and safety–her fear makes her deaf. So, before we can inform her that she no longer needs to hide in her room, we need to gain understanding of her so we know how to communicate with her so she can hear us! The only way to connect with her and communicate with her is through self-connection.
HOW DO WE BECOME IN TUNED WITH OURSELVES?
STEP ONE: BECOME THE WATCHER
The first step is to learn how to see our inner-selves. Until we are able to identify the behaviors, feelings and thoughts associated with our inner-selves, we will not be able to know what to do next. Observe yourself retreating to your room, take note of the feelings arising within you, pay attention to the thoughts running through your mind. If you feel inspired, begin to write down your observations so that later you can process your experiences. Once we gain insight into our own thought and behavior patterns and can connect feelings with past experiences, we can transition into step two.
STEP TWO: BE KIND TO YOURSELF
Our inclination is often to judge ourselves once we identify behaviors and thought patterns. “Uck! What is wrong with me?” Please do not do this. There is NOTHING wrong with you! None of these things are your fault whatsoever! You were a teeny tiny child when you absorbed these thought and behavior patterns! It’s an eye-opening experience to come face to face with the unconscious. Believe me, I get it! But it’s also a miraculous experience because beyond the UCK is your dreams, goals, and perfect vision for your life! And that is why it is so very important that we are kind to ourselves! Absent kindness and gentleness, we create another obstacle to overcome! As an observer, there is no judgment. All we are doing is taking note of what IS.
STEP THREE: BEGIN TO PROCESS AND MAKE CONNECTIONS
If your childhood experience involved your mom taking out a pint of ice cream anytime she was stressed and now you are watching yourself doing the same, take note of the behavior pattern. You now know why you are doing what you are doing! You LEARNED this coping mechanism! FEEL that! Embrace the a-ha moment! You now know why you are constantly at the table with a pint of ice cream every time you are stressed! The pint of ice cream is simply a coping mechanism you LEARNED! And this coping mechanism is so engrained that now, when you are stressed, the only way you know how to manage the anxiety is to eat the ice cream! It’s the only tool you have in your stress management tool box! If your New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, can you see how understanding this dichotomy is so very essential to achieving your goal? We can increase the tools in our stress management tool box and with the added tools comes added choices and options!
STEP FOUR: DON’T EAT THE ICE CREAM
If you can allow yourself to be overwhelmed only a little, there is much wisdom to be gained. When we make a conscious choice to resist our urges to unconsciously self-soothe and we choose to instead see what our feelings are all about, we take a step closer to being able to clear the block standing in the way of our emotions freely flowing. If you’ve read past blogs of mine, you remember that emotions are just energy flowing. It is our emotional blocks that keep them from flowing. Absent blocks emotions just flow. We were taught to shut down the emotion with the ice cream, with quiet, etc. We were taught to shut down our needs so that our dad could have quiet when he came home, for example. As a result, we learned that emotions should be shut down rather than felt. As a result, a lot of our emotions became stuck and the shutting down behavior became the block keeping the emotions from flowing. That means that the only way to get our emotions to flow is to remove the behavior associated with the emotional shut down. And once we do that, the emotions should automatically flow.
STEP FIVE: BECOME THE WATCHER OF THE EMOTIONS ABSENT THE COPING MECHANISM
What feelings are arising when you do not engage in the coping mechanism? What sensations are you feeling? Is your heart pounding? Are you shaking? Have you lost all ability to think? Or maybe your thoughts are racing a million miles a minute? Is all you can think about getting back into that safe place? Are you able to breathe? If so, try to take a deep breath from your nose and inhale to your belly. Try to hold onto the breath for a minute before exhaling. When you exhale, exhale hard to release all the air. Try doing this for as long as you can to stay present. After the breathing, see how you feel. Do you feel any calmer? Any safer? Any better? Or are you just as anxious and desirous to reach for that coping mechanism? If you are finding it challenging to do this work, reach out to a mental health professional who can support you so you don’t have to go it alone!
STEP SIX: PROCESS OUT THIS EXPERIENCE
What did this experience teach you about yourself? At the very least, are you now able to see the connection between your past and your coping mechanism? If the answer is yes, then you’ve opened a window into your consciousness! Congratulations! Now you understand how the process of self-discovery works! The more that we allow ourselves to experience our emotions instead of shutting them down, the closer we get to self-connection. Once we process out enough of these experiences, we become so confident with the process that we really do not need to read blogs like this one. We will just understand and best of all, DESIRE to do the work. We will see the benefit. We will see our lighthouse (our New Year’s resolution) at the end of the tunnel waiting for us and we will feel our stuck emotions and want to move the blocks so they can flow knowing once they do, we win. Emotional processing is not really as complicated as people make it out to be. The MOST complicated part of emotional processing is our resistance. FEAR stands in the way of so much growth. What we do not know or understand (or believe in) causes us to resist. We believe in our pint of ice cream because it’s familiar and it eases the anxiety in the moment–it works immediately. But afterward, that extra 50 pounds we are carrying around remains the same. We appreciate the self-soothing in the moment, but then fight with our negative thought patterns after when we gaze at ourselves in the mirror, when we struggle climbing the stairs without getting out of breath. This is because we believe MORE in the pint of ice cream than we do in the natural process of self-connection, feeling our emotions and letting them flow. Our environment taught us that the right thing to do was shut down our emotions, so now letting our emotions flow feels awkward because we are so used to shutting down our emotions. Before we can believe in something new, we must SEE these truths and FEEL them for ourselves. Only after we see and feel will we be able to decide for ourselves the cost/benefit of both options.
STEP SEVEN: TAKE YOUR OWN SELF-DISCOVERY JOURNEY
Now that you’ve done a test run, consider taking your own self-discovery journey. Instead of setting a New Year’s resolution that you likely are not going to keep, why not set a Lifetime Resolution to become conscious? As a conscious person, you’ll have complete dominion over your emotions, thought patterns and behaviors and setting and achieving goals and objectives will become a lot easier. You’ll never have to set another New Year’s resolution again because instead you’ll be working toward your best life every day!
FIND YOURSELF, FIND YOUR ANSWERS
Once we discover ourselves, we discover our younger selves and we become able to connect with her/him/they. Connection enables us to nurture and meet our younger self’s needs for ourselves rather than waiting on someone else to do it for us. It enables us to understand our past and present selves. It enables us to have clarity on our thoughts, behaviors and emotions and as such enables us to simultaneously have clarity on best solutions. We are all different so googling “how to self-care” or “how to achieve my goals,” is likely not going to bring us the answers that will best help us. ONLY turning inward and finding ourselves can yield us the BEST answers. EVERYTHING you want to and need to know can be find within you. There is nothing that I can say or do that will be more helpful than what your inner-self can say to you! I am only here to assist you with the work TO unite you with your inner-self. Once you become connected with your inner-self, you will not need somebody like me! And that is my hope for you, Discoverlies! I created this platform because I knew my early struggles trying to find information, trying to find knowledge and wisdom to assist me to calm the war going on inside of me, to ease my anxiety, to change my dysfunctional behavior patterns…to achieve my own New Year’s resolutions. And in the end, that entire journey brought me full circle to myself.
THREE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF
I no longer set New Year’s resolutions. My resolutions are integrated with my life goals now. Here are the three questions that I concluded are THE most important if you choose to kick New Year’s resolutions to the curb and instead make a Lifetime Resolution.
- WHO ARE YOU?
Do you know who you are? Like REALLY know? I am talking deep down knowing. Do you know what your true desires are? Do you know what your personal values and beliefs are separate from conditioning? Do you know your integrity? Do you know your worth and value? Can you FEEL this worth and value? How about your life purpose? Have you reached a place in your life where you have a sense of knowing that there’s a reason that you are here and that nobody can do or give what you can? When we know who we are intimately, we develop an inner-confidence and self-assurance that cannot be shaken by even the darkest critic or fiercest hater. Once we truly know ourselves, we desire our authenticity more than we desire acceptance or approval.
2. WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
Do you know your direction? What path are you on? Do you know the reason you are on that path? Do you know where that path leads and the ends to that path? Is your lighthouse at the end of the tunnel about you are is it about someone else? When we know where we are going, we feel confident and clear on that destination and with that confidence, we trust the destination we’ve set for ourselves and believe in our ability to reach it. While we may be miles from where we are heading, we trust fully in the charted path. And the simple act of having the destination carries us for years and years as we ebb ever closer to arriving at our desired destination.
3. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET THERE?
When I determined where I was going–self-discovery and authenticity–I already knew how I was going to get there. Having been on the path for over a decade, I learned the formula of emotional identification, emotional management and emotional processing. I came to understand relationship management and processing. I gained insight into the importance of priorities and boundaries and the power in slow and steady consistency. Most of all, I learned the power of faith and trust in the universe and its assistance program that is powered by my and other’s personal requests. I need only ask for help and help comes. All I had to do was learn to ask the right questions and develop patience for when those questions would be answered. Sometimes, I have to gain more knowledge and understanding on something before the thing I am requesting gets granted. For example, if I want to eat nutritiously, I first need to understand how my body works, what it needs and how to decipher between what is nutritious and what is not. Furthermore, I need to learn what is nutritious for my body versus someone else’s. It’s a process. And for me, after being on the journey long enough, I simply discovered that setting my goal of achieving something like paying off a debt was not as inspiring as setting a goal of self-discovery. For me, I learned that the more that I know and understand about myself, the more conscious I will become and with that consciousness the more likely I will know what the next best step is. I discovered along the way that I can influence my outcomes through conscious perception. When I can see the next best step, I do not have to engage guess work. And I found that the only way to have such perception is with self-discovery. Self-truth precedes universal-truth, so the more I know myself, the more I will know everything else.
Lifetime Resolutions give us focus. They give us direction. They also give us a lot more grace and mercy. Learning is infinite and only possible with mistakes. We learn through trial and error. And many times, it is from our errors that we see the answer. In my opinion, New Year’s resolutions are a lot of pressure. They require a lot of will power and tend to come with a lot of misery. I remember diets I’ve been on in the past that involved my will power. I despised the kale and spinach and eventually became rebellious and said, “Fuck it! I am having the brownie!” which of course led to more than one brownie and a vicious cycle of self-loathing. Been there done that and never found any self-confidence or self-worth. I found things like self-love, self-compassion, self-understanding, self-care, self-confidence, self-assurance, meaning, hope, faith, and love on my self-discovery journey. And during this journey, I have found that lasting achievement is possible once we are achieving things for the right reasons.
DO IT FOR THE RIGHT REASON
FAR too many of us are chasing goals to be liked, to be approved of, to be accepted, to belong, to be loved…
“If I win this title, everyone will have to love me.”
“If I make this much money, everyone will approve of me.”
“If I rise to the top, nobody will hate me.”
These are the types of thoughts that often propel people’s New Year’s resolutions and goal setting. They are not about self-care at all. And we wonder why so few can achieve their New Year’s resolutions. Long ago I adopted a self-belief that I would rather be alone and myself than with people. The pain and stress involved in being liked and accepted by others was too great. At one point in my life I accepted that nobody was going to like me. I was unlikable. I of course, later discovered that I was likable to the right people, but before I could discover this, I had to be where I was and so, I accepted that I was unlikable. This simple acceptance freed me because it enabled me to drop all the approval seeking, acceptance seeking, people pleasing behaviors that I was engaging in that were draining all of my time and energy. With those behaviors no longer weighing me down, I could use all that time and energy toward pursuits that actually mattered to me! Along the way, I discovered a liking for myself and with this self-confidence, I quickly found others who liked me too! And what a difference it is to be in relationships with people where I can leave the mask at the door! How much easier it is to just be myself than to pretend! I learned that it was better to be myself and have a handful of people who liked me and accepted me than having to wear around a heavy mask and seek after goals that only drained me and left no lasting joy. Instead I decided to figure out what made me happy and what the ideal life was for me. What this taught me is that Lifetime Resolutions give our lives direction and purpose and with them, there is no need for New Year’s resolutions!
EMBRACE YOURSELF
You ARE lovable, Discoverlies! You ARE worthy! You deserve EVERYTHING that you desire and this New Year’s, I want to learn that you are believing in these truths for yourself and taking action to not let another day go by where you are trapped in old behavior patterns! Embrace who you are right now and believe in who you TRULY are! Believe in your worth to discover who you truly are! Once you believe it, all that’s left to do is take the first step.
I believe in you, Discoverlies!
Much Love!!
Self Discoverly 