Are You Hurting Your Chances for Deep & Meaningful Connection?
Photo by Crystal Shaw on Unsplash
I was talking with a friend ruminating about my last break up for the hundreth time and finally she kindly and thoughtfully said
“Do you think you don’t want to let this relationship go because you’re afraid of letting the good, or something better in — to be vulnerable again with someone else?”.
I was completely nailed. I gave her some quick, b.s. response “No I don’t think that’s it, I’ve been vulnerable with plenty of people since, I have moved on!Trying to deflect the gravity of that truth she just skillfully presented me with. But when I got home I could not stop thinking about her comment. She was totally right, that’s exactly what was happening. Holding onto this old, painful breakup was really comfortable and comforting, I knew it well.
There’s a window of time where we get a free pass to be in the depths of our sadness, wallow around in the “what ifs” and “the whys” — but staying there too long can be dangerous. There comes a point where we’ve got to develop and find tools to take back control of our thoughts, and seek out help from a coach or helping professional as necessary. That’s where our power is, we do actually have a say and can control our own moods — we have choice what we’re thinking about and as a result our overall wellbeing and health! If we’re choosing to listen to sad songs day after day and bringing ourselves into a state that induces us to continuously be in the feelings of our loss, pain, or sadness too much, we’re going to stay stuck. Our thoughts will remind us of what we can’t have, what we lost, how we failed, how we were screwed over, and then the rest of our experiences will reflect back everything “wrong” going on and moving forward will seem impossible.
What are some ways to keep moving forward even after a setback or disappointment? How can you balance feeling what needs to be felt, honoring what was, with also beginning the process of creating something new? How can you tap back into your intuition to hear your own voice and answers again? Fear not, it can be done.
(1) Create practices and routines to track progress
The whole concept behind a ‘practice’ (exercise, meditation, creative) is that it’s something you do consistently enough to see progress. The love hate relationship we have with practices and cultivating discipline is usually because it requires we show up even when we don’t want to. I hear all the time in yoga class “I’ve had my worst days when I thought it would be my best class, and my best class when I had to drag myself in and didn’t want to be here”. However you choose to feel about your practices, we’re all human so to preach that I hope you’re excited 100% of the time is unrealistic, but our practices are something we are always building, growing, and improving. When I’ve felt like complete crap about myself or was convinced that nothing was going right, my practices are what have reminded me that even though I may feel that way, the reality is every time I show up, I improve.
Sometimes (oftentimes) it’s very subtle.
Sometimes it’s a whole new pose I can get myself into or a whole new level of depth I can drop into in my mediation session. My practices remind me I’m a dynamic person, always changing and always growing. That a real, honest life exists in the subtleties, and most importantly to have compassion towards myself and others.
(2) Let your body be a channel, move
Movement is really, really crucial for phase transitions. Our bodies want to tell us things, they hold the answers. My favorite quote from my training as an integrated mental health coach is that “we can’t think our way into a solution” — it’s actually when we’re quiet and still enough, the answers come. Embodying our physical bodies and feeling the sensations of our experiences moment to moment can reveal so much our thinking minds cannot always articulate for us. When we’re consistently and intentionally moving our bodies, our minds are more clear to rationally make decisions, to be more properly guided by our intuition and deeper desires, and to be in response instead of in reaction to our lives. After my breakup it felt like my entire world had crashed, exploded, and I didn’t even feel like I knew who I was anymore. I felt lost, confused, and “broken” but in that stillness after the “crash”,
my body spoke to me.
I got the hit I needed to get myself to a hot yoga class, I dragged myself there not yet understanding. After the first one I got hooked and I kept going. After every class my body craved more. I ended up creating an almost daily practice that quickly evolved into so much deeper growth and my world began to expand. My body had been the compass and I just surrendered to it. It makes total sense in retrospect — there was so much purging that needed to happen, so many emotions and feelings that needed to be moved, circulated, exposed, and cleared in a natural way. My body was literally speaking to me to get in motion, get out of the way, and let it do what it needed to do — it knew what was best. Never in my life have I had an experience like that, of such deep, true knowing and being so connected to my physical body. I am incredibly grateful I trusted what needed to happen.
(3) Allow & open for the good to be able to come in
“We’re our own worst enemies, if we can just get out of the way, the natural order of life will flow into us”. I still can be very resistant to letting go, trusting, and letting things naturally happen even with so much evidence that that is the way things want to happen! But still… when we’re constantly in resistance or forcing and efforting towards an outcome, our life is not in alignment with what is really meant for us. When we’re putting energy in the past, beating ourselves up for our mistakes, or wishing there had been a different outcome — we’re not in the present moment experiencing life and all the beauty and power we have to create and participate in. When we’re living in the future trying to control, plan, or obsess over an outcome that hasn’t occurred yet — again, we’re missing important lessons and what wants to be told or revealed to us in the moment.
Allowing can be really vulnerable and humbling — that’s why so many of us avoid it. It requires we feel what’s happening moment to moment.
A lot of time it’s joy or love that wants to be received or given to us, it requires our attention, not a checked-out version of ourselves we’ve gotten away with showing up as. It requires a new level of responsibility and honesty that isn’t comfortable but necessary for growth and change.
How do you want to make sure to maximize the good that can come into your life this decade? You have more power than you may realize.
Want to know what’s really keeping you from finding love? In my 60 min masterclass How to Find Your Partner in Crime, I’ll walk you through the pitfalls that keep women just like you from experiencing lasting love. AND I’ll show you how to shift your perspective so you can stop repeating sabotaging patterns. Claim your spot HERE to join me live.