Most people are raised to believe the goal in life is to be happy ALL the time.
The reality is………life is 50/50.
The reality is………in life, you will experience a mix of both positive and negative feelings.
Some things that can trigger different feelings could be a baby being born, going through separation, falling in love, getting a cancer diagnosis, winning the lottery, your child leaving the nest or getting a new puppy.
Throughout your life, you will have a lot of both positive and negative feelings.
Happy
Joyful
Content
Excited
Sadness
Frustration
Hard
Shame
This is the normal human experience. Both the negative and positive feelings wrapped up together is what life is all about.
Yet we want life to be perfect and happy all the time. We even say things like “in a perfect world……”
I am here to tell you in a “perfect world”….life is 50/50. Meaning, you will feel both happy and negative feelings. This is what makes life whole and complete.
Down deep inside of us we know and understand life won’t be 100% perfect and happy, but we still believe it should be. This is called a thought error.
Our conversations might look like:
I wish things were different
I wish this was not happening to me
I wish I could change the situation
I just want to hurry up and get through this moment in time and move on
This is what creates our emotional suffering and ends in resistance to feeling negative feelings.
I also think in this day and age with the popularity of social media, and how it paints a picture that life is all roses and daisies…..this is not mentally healthy for us. You scroll Facebook and you see happy after happy after happy pictures…..and then when life hands you a normal negative moment……we have a tendency to say “why me?” and compare ourselves. We have a tendency to say “I wish this wasn’t happening to me”…..and this is what creates emotional suffering.
Think about at an early age when your child falls down, what do you say to him/her? “Get up, you are ok”. At an early age we are starting to learn to push down and not feel negative feelings.
Slowly over time, a belief is created around negative feelings and when you feel shame, hurt, anger, anxiety, fear or sadness to name a few, you start to resist the negative feelings, you avoid it, you suppress it.
And lets be honest…..negative feelings a lot of times, if not all the time, feel like shit inside our bodies! Allowing yourself to feel a negative feeling without resisting it is not all fun and games. And this is where buffering comes in.
Buffering can look like:
Eating
Drinking
Scrolling social media
Being a work dog and over working
Binging on TV
Shopping
Whatever it is that you do to avoid negative emotion.
If you accept life as it is designed to be….50/50….then there is no need to try to get out of avoiding, resisting, denying or escaping negative feelings.
When you accept that life will always have negative moments….and by accept I mean “feel” the negative emotions, there is no need to escape.
As Life Coach Kara Loewentheil says......... “There is no exit ramp off the experience of the human life.”
Negative feelings and emotions are a part of life.
When you accept that life is 50/50, you are then living life fully and getting the full human experience. This is a beautiful thing……when you accept life as 50/50.
Hugs,
Coach Kammy
PS: If you would like to work with me, sign up for a free discovery call!
PPS: Be on the lookout for the next blog titled “How to feel a negative emotion”.
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