Feel it all
There’s a saying I used to think of often that’s on Susan Jeffers’s book cover ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’. It was and is still a useful mantra for me when my anxiety peaked at doing new things or going to new places. It’s the easiest way I can explain anxiety off the bat and explain real-life scenarios.
This saying, as well as other things that have been coming up lately, bring forward the difference of thinking and behaviors I had in my twenties and now beginning my thirties.
Is it that all we are ever doing is unlearning?
It strikes me how much we change, from week to week or over months and years, even in subtle ways. Myself filming a Youtube video 6 months ago is vastly different from the me who filmed last week.
Back to the saying, I’m stepping away from it being my go-to mantra, I’m learning you can feel the fear and have more choices, you can feel fear and do it anyway and you can feel fear and say no.
At the moment I’m feeling it all.
I think my twenties were all about not feeling and instead, pushing down, being in doing mode and now I am acknowledging my feelings and wants and where they do and don’t align.
I feel stuck.
I feel frustrated.
I feel broke.
I don’t feel relaxed.
I feel uncertain.
I feel loved.
I’m not explaining, justifying, or feeling bad for other people feeling bad for me.
I think the journey of a lifetime is to truly discover who you are, though along the way you are going to feel stuff too. It’s going to be a bumpy ride! It changes all the time and unlike the Friends theme song, I’m telling you it may be this way for a while!
Glennon Doyle touches upon this in Untamed that staying on her (yoga) mat made her in her thirties and now at forty: made.
For me:
The twenties: Sadhanas will be the making of me.
The thirties: Feel it all.
I have a hard time feeling it all, so many feelings, all in one place – me! I am learning my feelings are telling me my wants and needs whether it be from a heart place or a bodily reaction. The trouble is I can’t click my fingers like Mary Poppins and make everything clean and bright and beautiful in one hit.
Even though I feel something, it doesn’t mean it will change my external world overnight, only I can do that gradually. Like when I watched Rich Kids Go Skint and a single mum was retelling her experience of being in a hostel with her toddler and finding herself pregnant, she got really still and said ‘At that moment, I knew this was either going to make or break me’ she told the rich kid from her council house with two children playing.
Make or break, well I’m definitely getting to know myself more, I fail, I get up, keep going.
I know my feelings are allowing me to go with hunches and be more honest, without worrying things will fall apart. If and when they do I will walk away or patch them back together with gold like a Japanese bowl.
The most honest words I wrote recently were in an email that nosedived real fast:
I am not perfect and I am a work in progress.
I feel sure about that.
I’ve started listening to Tracy Crossley’s podcast Deal with it! She made some really interesting points in her first episodes on feeling broken then free and to start at feelings, that’s where we can begin from.
This can feel contradictory to our conditioning as an adult we say ‘I feel fine’ go back to childhood we may hear ‘Don’t be angry/sad/moody’ go back to toddlerhood and we may have been told ‘You don’t need to get angry/cross/tantrum about it’.
We do.
It’s ok to feel angry because this thing messed up. You still don’t have the position you want. You feel like shit. Deal with it.
It prepares you to feel and sit, be with that feeling in the real world and get by, that is a gift. I make an effort to talk to SK about feelings instead of jumping to not feeling or focusing on one feeling – being happy.
I hope that above all she is a fully feeling human being because I’ve done so much to avoid it till now. Not only to avoid it but even to feel and not be proactive, vocal, or assertive that my feelings do matter and I will say them even though my legs have turned to jelly.
Feel it all Taran.
I used the word trying a lot last year ‘I’m trying to relax’ ‘I’m trying to understand’ ‘I’m trying to get used to this’ and on and on. Then I said ‘I’m not trying anymore I’m doing, I’m there to relax’. That worked a while though really, I find it hard to relax anywhere at the moment, in Covid-19 stay at home times. I’m really noticing that this lock down has some benefits though Covid-19 in Winter with no clear date of normality set, is breaking the spirit of even the strongest people I have got to know.
Practicing is a better term, I am practicing relaxation through moments of time I am alone, or we are singing and dancing together, drawing slows everything down as does writing. I’m Art journaling regularly too, I have set a goal to complete all three journals this year.
These are a set of hurdles I’m going to keep swinging my legs over, feeling it all.
Do you have something about feelings you would like to share? If so comment below, I read all comments and approve the genuine ones, let’s get the conversation started!
What I noted about and did in 40 days:
