Last weekend, I found myself in a MAJOR funk. Certain events triggered some pretty deep feelings of sadness about my mom, who - as many of you know - we lost to suicide just over four years ago. At this stage, I'm usually able to quell those sad feelings, but this time I found myself completely preoccupied thinking about how Mom must have felt not only that horrible night, but how she felt her whole life leading up to that point.
I'm a big believer in the philosophy that we have the power to choose our thoughts and our attitude in any given situation, but gosh dang it, this was one of those times when walking my talk was a heck of a lot harder to do in practice than in theory. I tried to distract myself by getting the chores and groceries done, going to yoga, and watching a movie with my son, but the more I tried to squash the sadness the more insistent it became on pushing itself into my presence.
Then I remembered some advice I shared on my blog last year, when I wrote about how to care for your emotions by allowing yourself to "FEEL what you need to feel, THEN decide how you want to DEAL." This week's post elaborates on that bit of advice with four steps on how to 'feel and deal':
4 Steps to Free Yourself From a Funk:
Have a Pity Party. One of my dearest mentors, life coach Barbara Sher, coined the phrase 'pity party', and it is essentially the 'feel what you need to feel' piece. You can only stuff your feelings for so long before they either burst out inappropriately or turn into some kind of physical ailment, so if you're sad, grab a box of tissues, bury your head in a pillow, and cry it out. Put on a sad song if your tears need a little coaxing to come out from behind the dam you've built up to protect yourself. If you're angry, go ahead and stomp your feet, pump your fists and take it out on the sofa cushions. If you're like me and grew up with it not being ok to show any kind of 'troublesome' feelings, it might be tough at first to allow yourself to do this. But when it comes to emotions, you can only truly get past them when you move through them. It's just feelings, and it doesn't hurt anybody when you let them out (provided, as I told my son when he was a toddler, that you don't hurt yourself or anyone else. But sofa cushions are ok.) You'll feel better once you've gotten the feelings out, so go ahead and let 'em rip.
Shake it off. Literally. I know from my studies and experience that our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies are interconnected, so once you've spent your pent-up supply of tears or anger or frustration, do something physical to shift your emotional state. Shake your arms, jiggle your body, take some deep breaths or do a silly dance (preferably without an audience, for completely uninhibited silly dance freedom). Don't just take my word for it: even Personal Power coach Tony Robbins advocates that "emotion is created by motion", so start to move yourself into more neutral and then positive emotional space by moving physically.
Look for the lesson. When you experience something upsetting, it's easy to point the finger at someone or something else as the cause for your pain, but instead of placing blame - even in situations when someone else has actually hurt you - look for the lesson you can glean from the experience. And I don't mean looking for the cynical 'lesson', like "don't trust other people", or "life is just unfair"; instead, look for how you must change if you want things to be different. It could be a lesson about standing up for yourself or about the ways you allow others to treat you. Maybe it's a reminder about certain values you want to uphold, or responsibilities you need to take in your own life. Look for where you're being called to grow because of the experience.
Apply Newton's Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. While this law classically applies to the motion of physical objects, we can benefit immensely when we apply the principle to our negative emotions. Once you realize the lesson you're supposed to learn from the experience, decide what you can do now to move yourself out of that negative experience into an 'equal and opposite' state of being. This last point may or may not be something that we can make happen immediately, but we can take steps every day toward creating the opposite circumstance of our negative one, when we are clear on the lesson from #3.
In my case, I could have decided to be angry or disappointed with my mom, but I've long since realized the deep and agonizing pain she must have been in to do what she did. Instead, I took the lesson last weekend to be a reminder of what feels like my purpose in this life: to seek out, find and share ways that we can all live the very best life we are each capable of.
In my work producing the Optimal Living TV series and here on the Dreamsmith blog, my intention has been to share with you tools and resources that will enable you to design and craft a life you are thrilled to be living. Besides exploring ways we can eliminate or minimize the things we don't want, I also want to focus on how to amplify the things we do want...because that really is the fastest and most fun way to building a life you love.
With that intention in mind, I'm working on creating a new program this Fall that I'll be excited to share with you when the time comes. If you're on my mailing list you'll be the first to hear about it.
More importantly, if you have a friend who could use a hand getting out of a funk - because we all fall into a funk from time to time - please offer them a helping hand out of it, and share this post with them. It may be just the boost they need.