How to get off the fence and LIVE!

I was having a conversation with my daughter today about some tough decisions that she is facing. The main thing that is making the decisions so difficult is that, no matter what choice she makes, there is the potential that she may feel regret, guilt, sadness or hurt. It is also possible that she will have to deal with someone else’s feelings of hurt, sadness or anger.

There have been many times in my life when I have avoided taking action or delayed making a decision because I didn’t want to face unpleasant feelings. I would subconsciously decide that sitting on the fence and staying stuck was at least a familiar kind of pain.

The pain of inaction when we know, with every fiber of our being, that we need to make a decision, can take a serious toll on our well being. When we push away unpleasant emotions, we deny a huge piece of our human experience. Despite what the pharmaceutical companies would have us believe, we are not meant to feel joyful in every moment.

We are born with the innate ability to move through our emotions without getting stuck in them. When my daughter was little, I would marvel at the way she would cry and seem inconsolable in one moment and the next moment be joyfully playing with her toys. Her body automatically gave her instructions on how to respond in the moment. “I feel pain = I cry.” “Pain is over = I move on to the next thing.”

As adults, we drag a myriad of past experiences with us. We tend to base our decisions on these past experiences instead of accurately assessing what is true in the moment. In order to shift this tendency, we need to cultivate a practice of mindful awareness that keeps us present to ‘what is’ instead of ‘what was’ or ‘what might be’.

Bottom line…IT’S OKAY TO FEEL!!! This is what makes us human! Know that any emotion, even the deepest sadness, grief or anger, will move through and out of us, if we give ourselves the space to express it.