This year has brought to us a great many changes, paired with a great many pains. From pandemics, to global injustices, we as human beings are being pushed to grow.
On a universal level, the boil has been made to burst, and in doing so we have experienced two things. The first, heartache for the wrongs being called and brought into the light. The second, a surge in voices and action. A change bringing to us an age of healing.
But as one who has had experienced the journey of deep healing, I know from personal experience that healing is not all smiles and happiness. Truly deep healing covers the width and breadth of human emotion. It hurts, it itches, it can be bothersome, and frustrating. Then at last, what is left is a scar and a smile.
As this year brings with it inner-reflection, wounds seeing the light, and change larger than many have known, knowing how to keep demonstrating that self-love can be challenging. So today I want to focus on the emotions that have been triggered within us these past months and weeks.
What It Means To Honor Your Emotions:
In choosing to love ourselves, we create a relationship. Checking in and listening to our inner selves we learn who we are and how we are doing. In this process we start to demonstrate that self-love we have. One of the ways we accomplish this is through the actions and words we choose, to address and honor how we are feeling.
If you think back to childhood, we would smile and laugh in moments of joy. We cried when we were in pain, and we sometimes screamed, when we felt anger that knocked us down due to the force and sincerity.
As time passes, we are taught self-control which has an important role in our lives. But just because we no-longer hit someone in order to honor and convey the hurt we feel, it doesn’t mean that we no-longer honor what we feel.
When we choose to honor what we feel, we are choosing to demonstrate self-love. We are making choices that address and include our emotions into our daily lives.
How to honor your emotions:
Whether it’s the joy we’ve known or the sorrow, each emotion we experience is important. When we choose to demonstrate self-love, this means choosing to honor each emotion we feel. Even the icky ones.
These icky emotions, as I call them, play a role in our human experience. There are times when these emotions are the only feelings that match the experience.
As the world seems to be turning onto its head, I encourage you to keep honoring what you feel. Then I ask that you take this demonstration of self-love one step further.
Honor your emotions in a healthy way, that is good for you and for the world.
The Steps To Honoring Your Emotions In A Healthy Way:
Knowing how to approach our emotions is something that we each must learn. While some have a more natural affinity for those icky emotions, knowing how to honor them in a healthy way comes through exposure and knowledge.
If you have never been exposed to this information, I want to share it with you now. In this way, we can help heal our own wounds and the wounds of the world in a healthy way.
One- What is the situation & What is the emotion?
We each of us encounter a different world. From the state or country, we live in, to our age, race, perceptions, and opinions we share a world that also displays different sides to each of us.
Due to this, we each of us experience our own lessons, experiences, and moments. When they happen, we are presented with options. Choices on how we wish to act, think, speak, and feel.
Which emotion we choose is determined by social rules, our own morals, as well as past experiences and opinions.
Two- How will I choose to honor this emotion?
After we have encountered a situation and chosen which emotion best connects and relates to that moment, we then choose how to honor that emotion. In this way we demonstrate self-love and choose which path we will take next in our life.
While some actions or words we choose to take to honor that emotion will not impact our life greatly, there are other times when what we choose to do will determine life as we know it.
For example:
This can be seen in relationships, when we choose to allow rudeness or stand up for ourselves. The choice we make on which emotion to feel, as well as which course of action or words we choose, will impact the relationship moving forward.
We can teach the one we’re with that their rude words/actions are acceptable or not acceptable based upon how we respond. We can also end up, ending the relationship.
When we experience an emotion, we get to choose what we do about that. If we ignore our own needs or if we honor what we feel and our own well-being.
Our Emotions Are Our Choice:
Our society teaches us that we can “make” others feel and act how we choose. As children we see the phrase, “he made me do,” often. But despite society’s culture and the words of children this does not make it true.
We do not possess the power to make others feel anything. In each situation, each person responds differently. Why? Because it was their choice on how to respond.
Just as it is your choice on how to feel about any situation. Whether you will react or respond. If you will be a person of honor, equality, and compassion or if you will be vengeful, jealous, and greedy.
The Impact of Our Choice:
These choices we make, about how we will feel and respond to each moment in life informs us and the world around us, as to who we are. If we are the kind of people who will bring healing and happiness into our life or pain.
Not only that, but in bring healing into our own life we not only experience the joy of healing, but we bring this mindset and energy into the world around us.
It is in this way that we heal as individuals and as a country. When we bring the best of ourselves to the choices that impact the world around us.
Three- Release.
Following the choices we make about a moment in our life and then honoring the emotions that fill our heart, we need to release that emotion. In pain as well as happiness, we need to release the emotion after we have honored it.
In this way, we are then open to the next moments of our life. We are open to the new emotions and to honoring them. As a result, we live in the moment and don’t get stuck in the past.
When we choose to take this path of honoring and releasing what we feel, we flow within our world of change. We ease our way, providing an example to those around us, and help the world to ease its way into this new age of healing.