Feeling Bad About Negative Feelings

It’s okay to feel bad. Sometimes, the motivation to be positive or to consistently be a good influence on those around you can make you feel like you cannot allow your positive persona to be interrupted by feeling negative. If you do have negative feelings, you might like to cover it up or push it down, and for god’s sake don’t let anyone see your emotional falter because you wouldn’t want anyone to misinterpret any upset in your powerful baseline as weakness.

Are you a human being? Don’t you think others might be able to feel closer to you if you occasionally allow your humanity to show through? You are not a deity. You are a man or a woman making your own way through this life, just like anyone else. Yes, you want to remain positive, but you don’t want to separate yourself from the rest of humanity so much that you are no longer a member of the human race.

There are few cases in history where the attempt to do so wasn’t met with severe emotional conflict. A mentor of mine used to say, “Don’t become so spiritually-minded that you’re no earthly good.” Be in the world but not of the world. In essence being here but also maintaining a residence elsewhere simultaneously.

Here, amidst humanity, we all express a wide range of emotions, and you must find a way (or ways) to express these emotions. To not do so is a denial of the human condition, and your psychology and physiology will deteriorate, health will decline, and you may put yourself at risk of disease, psychotic breakdown, rapid aging, or a premature exit from the human condition altogether.

Yes, being positive and maintaining high vibrational states is preferred. St. Paul encourages us to fix our thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. To think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8) which is integral to the maintenance of higher vibrations of the power of love.

You must also allow for the natural ebb and flow of life, especially if you intend to grow because the greatest growth spurts take place in the time of struggle, when things appear to not be going so well. You need both the good and the bad to move to the next level, sometimes more than others.

This complexity in life gives us the ability to enjoy all the richness this life has to offer. This contrast, as Esther Hicks says, “knowing what you don’t want helps you to know what you do want.” This is the balance of life, enabling you to know what it is that you want less of and what you desire more of in your life. You, then, can make the necessary adjustments in your life accordingly.

Your intention to remain so positive can keep you from seeing potential obstacles or danger. It is prudent to keep one foot on the ground, aware of your surroundings in the “real world” to avoid finding yourself in an undesirable predicament, or to find yourself falling into complacency.

Adversity leads you into growth, allowing you to come to increased clarity about what you want, empowering you to delineate specific goal for further advancement and achievement. In essence, being able to squeeze all the best juiciness out of all this life has to offer, all thanks to those less than desirable moments in this life.

A natural emotional response to not feeling right, or having negative emotions, might be to reject these feeling or to push them away but they are really an attention-getting pique to your awareness if instead, you start to look within, rather than to become defensive.

Since these feelings are in contrast to what you want, it is an exciting opportunity to break your positive flow, which is just comfortable enough that you can glide unaware of your surroundings, in a kind of sacred trance. This interruption can break your state or being just enough to look for new opportunities for potential alternative exploration, growth, or expansion.

The more you push against a thought with your consciousness, the more it expands in your unconscious mind, where the lower vibration undermines your ability to remain in higher vibrations in the background. This is why the Law of Attraction doesn’t care whether you want a thing or don’t want a thing. It is attracted to you whether you want it or not.

It’s like telling yourself not to think of a lemon. The more you resist a thought, the more apparent it becomes either consciously or unconsciously. This is also the nature of nightmares, where your unconscious mind runs rampant, unbridled by your conscious mind’s ability to squash your thoughts.

There is wisdom in inviting and allowing the negativity to flow over you, even to allow yourself to be fully engulfed by negative emotion for a predetermined period of time. In a sense surrendering to it in an effort to fully feel it. After fully expressed, you can examine the source, or look around for new opportunities which may be trying to expose themselves to your awareness.

In some cases, just letting it out and letting it go is all that is necessary.

Looking within yourself when your regular flow of life is interrupted by negative emotions might be the door through which you must pass to become aware of some lingering deep inner work longing to be addressed.

You might want to find or create a safe space or the company of another who will hold the sacred space for your expression of these negative emotions without fear of judgment.

Embrace the fullness of life, the good, the bad, and the potential for change, growth, exploration, and expansion.

An amazing journey lies ahead.

Flip the Switch

When you find yourself amidst a bad experience, drowning in a sea of despair, sinking in helpless solitude and it seems as if all hope is lost, flip the switch.

I’m not suggesting a lackluster or empty parroting of, “look at the bright side,” that would be disrespectful. I do not disrespect your pain, I honor it. And so should you. It is in these moments that we are transformed into a higher version of ourselves. Not to sound cliché, we grow and expand through the pain, where we meet an enlightened, newer version of our self on the other side of tragedy.

A Tale of Two Vics

Vic is a forty-year-old Cancer patient, who lost his wife. She died last year of advanced liver disease which was undiagnosed until in its final stages. He confronts his son who is also reeling from the loss of his mother and encourages the reluctant youth to find joy in life and go to the prom. The proud father finances his son’s tuxedo and is happy seeing his son embracing life as he and his date go to the prom. That was the last time Vic saw his son alive, as they were killed in an auto accident. After laying to rest both his wife and his son, Vic all but left his life, as he hid inside his home, until his lifeless body was found.

Another Cancer patient also named Vic, whose wife committed suicide following his diagnosis, following his son’s death, killed by a drunk driver, found a renewed sense of purpose, answered the call and started a local crisis line, created a parent-founded limousine service for local high school students, and travels the country giving hope to those whose lives have lost any sense of reason… and his Cancer is in remission.

One Vic is the victim, the other is the victor. You choose which Vic you will be, even if you cannot find a way to resonate with such a thought when embroiled in the passion of the moment.

When you are in the eye of the storm, it is unlikely that you can see a way out, and it appears there is little hope of the storm passing.

If you are faced with life circumstances that appear to be insurmountable, this is the calling forth of the hero who lies dormant within you. This is that critical moment in time, will you fall victim to the circumstance or rise and find a way through the challenge to emerge passionately victorious, a light to others who would otherwise be lost in the darkness of the deepest moments of life’s night.

All of us face these moments. What will you do? Will you collapse in sorrow, a victim of allowing the victim’s mentality to overwhelm and engulf you until there is nothing left, or will you answer the call and emerge victorious?

All you need is a few precious moments to gain enough perspective and composure to attain enough balance to launch your process of dealing with and overcoming the challenges. You can do this. You were born to face this moment and you were given all the tools necessary to deal with every obstacle you encounter in this life.

All you need you have and it is available to you now in this moment. Do not disrespect the bad things, instead flip the switch and find that small ember and nurse it into your barn-burning celebration.

If we embrace the bad things that we encounter throughout our life’s journey, and move on through the transformative movement, we can be the lighthouse to others lost in the storms of life.

You are the lighthouse.