![]() ![]() Which is why it’s so important not to let your fear of appearing weak or needy keep you from reaching out and sharing the truth of your life. As I’ve found so many times in my own life, including the recent hospitalization of my husband for Covid-19 (thankfully, now fully recovered!), we connect far more deeply through our vulnerability and struggles, than we do through our victories and success. Human nature being what it is, often when we are going through a tough time, we can feel inclined to put on a mask and withdraw from the very people who could help us get through it better. ![]() Various studies including the Harvard Longitudinal Study found that people with strong social connections were more resilient when life’s pressures mounted than people without them. Is a burden shared really a burden halved? Who can say. Perhaps those storms you think have come to disrupt your path are really just revealing it. The most valuable chapters of our lives often don’t get a title til much later.Ĩ- We are braver together than we can ever be alone On the flip side, operating from fear will just shrink it. ![]() As I wrote in You’ve Got This!, daring to have faith that everything will ultimately work out for your highest good will expand your bandwidth for seeing the good - and making the best - of even your greatest challenges. Having faith that some higher order is at work doesn’t remove your challenges, but it transforms your relationship to them. So keep faith that as messy as your situation may be right now, in the longer arch of time, the dots will connect. We can only connect them looking backward. We can’t connect the dots moving forward. The emotions that you don’t own, will own you.ħ- Faith doesn’t remove your problems, it transforms them Whether you’re feeling sad, angry, disappointed or just super despondent about your future, extend compassion toward yourself and give those emotions the space they need. After all, pretending to be strong is still pretending. And don’t pretend to be on top of things when you’re feeling weighed under. So don’t beat yourself up for not feeling upbeat. “Negative emotions are necessary for us to flourish,” wrote Barbara Fredrickson in her book Positivity. It just makes them bury deeper until they eventually get expressed in unhealthy and destructive ways. Denying, minimalizing and masking the difficult emotions that naturally rise up when we are facing challenges doesn’t make them go away. You can still be positive person and be having a tough time.Īll emotions are legitimate and need to be validated. So if you’ve been feeling bad about feeling bad, give yourself permission not to feel like you’re on top of the world, all day, every day. Unfortunately though we live in a culture that often does positivity to excess and suffer from the phenomena coined ‘toxic positivity’. MORE FROM FORBES Beware Toxic Positivity: It's Okay Not To Feel Okay By Dr Margie Warrell These emotions are part and parcel of the human experience. Not to mention the hundreds and thousands of lives this crisis has claimed and will claim -from the virus itself and from the poverty and despair resulting from the measures used to contain it. Many have also lost their businesses, jobs, livelihoods and future plans. Many of us have missed out on experiences we would have treasured due to this pandemic. I am sure you’ve experienced your own sense of loss in recent times. While we focus on how much we have to be grateful for, he is still sad about this. My son will be graduating high school virtually. To quote Mark Twain, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Focus your attention on what is in front of you today. Yet because our brains are wired to focus more on potential loss than on potential gains, most of our fears laden worst-case outcomes never actually eventuate. The more uncertain our future, the more prone we are to turning our forecasts into fearcasts, conjuring up all array of imagined troubles. It’s not your adversities that shape who you are, but who you are in the face of your adversities. Don’t let your problems be your identity.ĥ- Nothings robs your peace of mind faster than fear ![]()
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