So that they don’t wreck you! The best way to know whether you are on the right track is to make some time and look back. It’s hard to take inventory of everything in the present moment. But you can track your patterns, progress, and rooms for improvement after the fact and then plan better moving forward.
Ask yourself the following questions and find out if you are responding and reacting or maybe you struggle expressing yourself. Look at what emotions you lean on in which situations. Are you able to be happy in happy environments and what does your inner voice say during different situations?
What’s working with my emotions?
Which emotions are using you and are you able to transmute your emotions so that you work out in the end? Remember life will not stop happening which means that you need to happen just as much. Imagine you are inside a boxing ring, the whole purpose is to be in that ring and box away. Let’s say your boxing opponent is giving you all of the jabs, what are you going to do? Stop boxing? I don’t think so! Remember why you are here. You are here to live which means you better live and make the most of it.
How can I forgive more?
And why do you struggle with forgiveness and compassion? Are you holding on to the pain, an invoked memory, pride, ego maybe? Because it has already happened why are you still there meanwhile the situation has moved on and is hanging up new curtains already. I promise you with forgiveness and compassion you will hold on to the most precious thing you could ever hold on to and that’s you! Remember why you are here. You are here to be you.
How can I be more compassionate?
Remember when you didn’t know how to open or use a doorknob and all of the adults around you would express their irritation towards your lack of fine motor skills? That one question alone pretty much sums up my point, the adults were mad at you for not having fine motor skills and you really just didn’t know any better. So you continued to bang the door because you didn’t know how to turn the door knob. Now use that same analogy but this time you are the adult and instead of being mad take that same energy and bring plants back to life with it, as in love.
Hey! Hello! I just wanted to let you know that it’s still your life and you need to live it. Living your life isn’t always about going, going, gone. You also need to be vigilant and pause every now and then. When you stop you give yourself time to look, be observant and take account of all your blessings, your oopsies, and your next opportunities.
I know, I know easier said than done right? WRONG! It’s easy, peezy, lemon squeeze it. How else are you going to get that lemonade?
Journaling and meditating are great ways to stop and make time to process yourself. They allow you to release what no longer serves you and make space for more of you.
By documenting you give yourself evidence and data that you can do it. And then you can use that same data and evidence and learn from it at a later stage. Why at a later stage though? Because sometimes you have to live on before you can deal with yourself. So go ahead and start that blog, vlog, journal entry or even a social media post, 6 months from now you’ll be glad you did. Who knows you might even make money off of all of you, your good and your bad.
Now listen to what you were trying to say by going over your entries. This is a great way to also figure out your patterns and your life’s trends. And then honor yourself. You are here as you and nobody is going to do you better than you can. It is your obligation and duty to be you and honor yourself.
I feel what I feel and honor my humanness. I understand that we are all are at different stages of understanding and I exercise forgiveness and compassion. I release the ugliness and I embrace our collective beauty. I recieve love and so much more of my best life and so it is.
I haven’t always had what I have today or been fortunate to experience experiences that I would only see on TV or print media. So once I started to get my mind right, my heart receptive to more of my best life and my life making some kind of sense I wanted to give back or at the very least pay it backwards and forward. I was tingly, feel good kind of excited and I called the one person who would understand at the time this thought, my life partner. And she was in it, for it and about it. She recruited our gracious recipients, she contacted the schools and she spoke to the parents about our commitment. One thing led to another and before I knew it a decision turned commitment was now action and I was an active participant and so was my life partner.
The Journey
My annual homecoming voyage comes around and it’s show time. My life partner has arranged for me to meet the moms, organized an introductory meeting between the wonderful student recipients and I. All of these things I would rather not do and hadn’t really thought of. But being a celebrator of everything I suggest that seeing as it’s back to school why not start their school year with a back to school soiree. Again it’s still in idea phase and my life partner is a great big supporter of it too. So from ideation to commitment to action, the balloons, jumping castle, cakes, and gift bags are arranged and secured. My life partner still the number one supporter and confidant.
Then on the day of the back to school celebrations, my life partner starts to act funny. Funny like sour milk and not def jam or Trevor Noah comedy. She is no longer hospitable or serving our guests that she claimed she wanted to serve. I pick up on her vibrations and I decide I’m not going to add any more sabotage energy because clearly, she has got this one. Fine, sure, no problem the show must go on and it was a huge success. The moms were happy and the girl children, living and loving the celebrations.
Judy Garland remembering home. #khumbula’ekhaya
The afterparty
So after the fact I start to journal to see what worked, what didn’t and where we could grow. The answers were just pouring themselves into my journal as being; the initiative worked, execution energy from half of the executive didn’t and we could grow by having better intentions from the get go.
But I could feel it in my veins that my blood was boiling! My tingly sensation was now full on rage and I was angry at my life partner. Couldn’t she wait until the event was over to start feeling some type of way? How could she treat our guests like thieves? Especially when we invited them?!
What about Anger?
I started to read up on anger because I was trying to understand the situation better so that I could find a better way to deal with the anger I was feeling. A plethora of articles told me that I shouldn’t focus on a low vibrating emotion as it could take and keep me in a low vibration affair. I saw this as a fair perspective because I wasn’t trying to live in this feeling. But I also didn’t want to pretend like I wasn’t feeling this way, isn’t that how pent up anger happens? I’m living differently now and I’m no longer repeating past patterns that I can’t even profit from.
I read a little more and then I read a lot less and then I came across an article that let me know that my anger was ok, it was ok for me to be angry. I read that anger is a direct result of oppression and injustice experienced or boundaries crossed. And it’s that last one that tickled me, my life partner had crossed a boundary and it was the integrity boundary. She was saying one thing about our initiative and turned around and did something else.
Then it hit me again she was open to experiencing new and wanting to do good because we are all inherently good, so good appeals to good but her behavior pattern database had her acting a different way. Then it hit me again she wasn’t updating her behavior pattern files so she could only act from what was saved under ‘recently opened.’
If Arthur can be angry so can you.
Next up Forgiveness and Compassion
Then suddenly I went from angry all the way to ‘I understand and I’m willing to not hold on to the ugliness of this situation through exercising and working on my forgiveness and compassion muscles.’ So I crawled into the bed with her and I asked how she was feeling and I started to listen to her and hear where she was coming from.
It turns out she didn’t mean to sabotage the event. She genuinely wanted to pay her blessings forwards and backward but she allowed a scarcity mentality to interfere with her good intentions. Overall I’m blown away by our initiative and I’m excited for where it’s going to. I’m also glad I didn’t bottle up my feelings, I’m really glad that I felt the anger and the rage so I could move on and be soothed by forgiveness and compassion. It’s because of this work that my idea partner and I are 2 years into our initiative and we are doing great things together. This is only our beginning.
I’m not going to judge you if you haven’t figured out this series’s theme or patterns. Instead, I’m going to embrace the fact that you haven’t read our Work log, you started your work without an affirmation, a declaration or questions to help you find those answers as found on ‘I Work Monday’ and how did you make it this far without a Work-torial?
Now I may not be judging you but she may be.
Anger
Grab a ball that you can hold in your hand and preferably one that you have a good grip on. Get a tennis ball, run it around your hands and feel it. Then write everything that you are feeling on that ball, run the ball through your hands again and feel it once more but with your feelings on it.
Next, find a wall and preferably one that has no windows on because I don’t know how angry you are to be at this point of the series. I’d hate for you to be angry all over again because you had to pay for new windows. Now release that ball from your grip with your might and feel that anger leave you.
Forgiveness
Even if you imagined the anger exercise and didn’t actually do it, it felt good right? Good cause we are going to be tapping into our minds for our forgiveness exercise. Imagine everything that you have experienced that has left you in your feelings. Collect those memories as if cleaning up slime from the floor except it’s inside of you.
Collect it all and deposit it into a balloon (you are still imagining this in your mind) fill the balloon with helium. Tie the same string that is attached to you to the balloon and cut it out. Hold the balloon that you have detached from yourself and say something that you would want to be said to you. Say it to the balloon, say it to yourself, say it to the balloon, say it to yourself, don’t say it to the balloon if you can’t say it to yourself and the let it go.
Public Service Announcement!
Disclaimer! This does not mean that you are watering down the effects that you experienced with and from the contents that you placed into the balloon. It just means that you are ready to pour that same energy that you used on the contents in the balloon and use it on yourself.
Compassion
Remember that time when you didn’t know any better and you acted from less than you were created to be? Keep that same energy and have the same compassion for your foes and mishaps. Imagine someone giving you a hug every time you acted outside of your glory and grace. Now turn around and hug everyone on your list and start with yourself and let redemption collect you in the warm and loving embrace of love because that’s who you actually are.
