YOUR FEELINGS ARE NOT THE ANSWER
In my many years coaching and working with all different kinds of people, one of the things I find as the greatest obstacle to creating #Happiness, #Prosperity and #Love is that people to not have an effective relationship with their #feelings. Most people are simply not effective at managing how they feel.
They wake up, they feel good, they're on fire! They take on their work like a boss. They are kind and generous in their relationships. They are extremely effective. They handle things masterfully. This is on a good day.
On another day, they wake up, they don't feel so good. Life is challenging, maybe stressed out about family or a big project at work. Maybe they're feeling guilty about going out for pizza last night, or a particularly busy week has caused them to get less sleep than usual. No matter who you are, we can all relate to days/weeks like this.
There is nothing wrong with feeling good, I love to feel good. The problem is our dependence on feeling good. Most people, when they are not feeling good, they live in what I call survival mode. It becomes, "let me just get through this day. Let me just make it till 5 o'clock. Let me just do what I have to do so I can relax- and what they mean is disconnect."
If we were to really look at our lives and look honestly, we must admit that a significant portion of our time is spent this way. For many people this has become the primary place they operate from. Even the most effective of us must admit that we find ourselves here sometime.
The mistake we make is that so much attention is given to feeling good that people have not learned how to be with feeling bad. Rather than working with the negative feelings (or the less than excellent feelings), people have developed a strategy of, "let me just get through this and then I can feel good again." We miss out on so much Life waiting for the next "good feeling" rather than diving in and learning from the negative one.
In The Living Relationship, we say that the pure essence of Life is Alive in you always and this essence does not feel bad, or tired, or sad, or angry. Whenever we feel this way, this is a huge sign! An opportunity to really be with, "What have I put in the way that is obstructing my ability to really be Alive in this moment?" And what a gift each of these opportunities can be!
FINDING YOUR PEACE
There is a place in you, in all of us, that is so much greater than our fears. It's greater than all of our problems, our insecurities, our doubts, and our sadness. Learning to be in touch with this place, training yourself to want to be in touch with this place, and learning to choose from this place are the most important skills you can ever wish to master.
The next time you don't feel so good, just stop and take a moment. Take some deep breaths. Ask yourself, "Why don't I feel so good?"
Ask, "What is more important to me in this moment than happiness?"
See if you can actually identify something. Some examples may be:
I'm angry about what (insert name here) said or did. They don't deserve my happiness.
I feel bad about what I said or did, or didn't do. I don't deserve my happiness.
I feel like (name injustice) was wrong. And if I'm happy that will excuse (said injustice).
Life is unfair, cruel, hard etc.
Most people think that they feel however they are feeling "just because" and that is actually very incorrect. Feelings are a response to a very specific stimuli. To a degree, that stimuli can be life-imposed such as what someone said or did, lack of sleep, illness etc. To a far greater degree, the primary stimuli behind our feelings are the thoughts that we entertain and the choices we make about how to perceive a situation.
People are living in an "I like this" and "I don't like that" relationship with Life. There is nothing wrong with preferences, we all have them, but to the degree that our desire to have our preferences trumps our desire for peace we will find ourselves unhappy. The situation that so many of us find ourselves in is that when I have my preferences I am happy and when I don't I am not. The sad trick about this is that happiness is actually the state in which we are most likely to be innovative and effective in having our preferences turn out. Not only do we miss out on our happiness in the moment, but we render ourselves powerless in our ability to create the most desirable life conditions.
For example, let's say in a marriage, one partner gets short and snappy with the other and they are offended. In the moment that the other takes offense, what they have actually done is made the unconscious choice that their preference of being spoken to kindly is more important to them than having a happy marriage. Let's say they become resistant to their partner, frustrated, or feel like they are a victim. They have now created the conditions in which a happy marriage is not even an available possibility. If before reacting, they had taken a moment to connect with a deep and powerful place within themselves, they could have made a different choice. Maybe, how can I be there for my partner? What is it they need from me right now? What does Love look like here? In doing this, they have created the conditions in which a happy marriage can in fact emerge. If they remain consistent in this choice, it will.
The ability to shift these subtle habits, will literally impact every moment and every #relationship of your life. Being able to find your peace, in all circumstances, and designing your life from there is what leads to happiness, prosperity and love.
Shane Kohler is an international consciousness trainer, coach, teacher and The Creator of The Living Relationship Curriculum. #thelivingrelationship
To get more information on this curriculum, visit www.thelivingrelationship.com
To schedule an introductory session with Shane click HERE