Posts Tagged ‘inner work’

We grew up in a world where it isn’t acceptable – as adults – to express feelings like anger. Babies and children have their emotions and express them without judgment. It isn’t until we are adults that we begin to label feelings as good or bad. And, it isn’t until we are adults that we learn to hold back how we truly feel.

So many of us are scared by our emotions. We worry that if we feel what we feel, we will completely fall apart. We bottle up our emotions deep inside. We edit what we feel when expressing ourselves to others. But the true healing comes from doing tough emotional work – having, expressing, and looking at our feelings in order to make sense of ourselves in the world.

Emotional work is not something you get over. It’s something you do if you want to shift or evolve your life. And, it’s difficult to work through “our stuff”, to do the challenging emotional work that will propel us forward towards healthy relationships and a strong internal emotional life.

People always ask me if and when their work, their hard work, is ever going to end. Instead of looking for the end of this work, treat it like it’s a destination. Treat your inner work like a journey of discovery. In this journey, by connecting with your heart, you can find joy and that idea that you are eternal. Why would you want that process, that feeling to end?

Emotion is energy in motion. Feelings change the minute you acknowledge them and embrace them. Most folks attach a story to their negative feelings instead of just experiencing them and processing through the hurdles and bumps. We tend to move around our hearts, skipping over what we truly feel, instead of going through the heart to get another perspective about our emotions.

Winston Churchill said: “If you are going to go through hell, keep going.” For inspiration for our difficult inner work this sentiment can perhaps best be paraphrased as to get out you gotta go through.

Commit to doing the hard work. Commit to go through and coming out on the other side with a fresh, powerful perspective. Commit to yourself. It takes courage and strength to look at all that’s going on inside, experience and process raw emotions, and find core issues and patterns that could change. When you do begin this work, you’ll be on your way to developing your authentic self that can take you to the next level of joy.