Creating Clarity in Chaotic Times
Our personal wellbeing requires that we nourish our inner strength and our ability to make timely choices no matter what kind of nonsense is spinning around us. The price for this state of mind is that we must be prepared to acknowledge our attachment to premises that are counter-productive.
There is a part of each of us that fears and avoids change, emotional discomfort, visibility, vulnerability and the unknown. We want to be right, sure, safe and free from pain. We wish that we could find some way to reap all of life’s benefits and avoid any of the prices. We could call this our survival instinct.
We are alerted with feelings of alarm whenever our physical, mental or emotional safety or security seems at risk.
When we expect perfection from ourselves we become hyper-vigilant and use our instincts to scan our performance for flaws, cracks in our armor or potential problems that could leave us exposed and vulnerable. We use our energies to produce a constant stream of judgments about how we are measuring up. Are we good and right or bad and wrong? Are we better than or less than? Are we winning or losing the image game?
Opening to our inner-intuitive message system can only be accomplished when we are willing to shift our focus from over-protectiveness of our established and tested image to a curiosity about who we are today.
The door marked intuition is opened by a willingness to allow our feelings ample expression without being snuffed out the second they don’t comply with our notions of how we are supposed to feel.
“I should” and “I have to” think and feel in a certain way stunts our emotional expression and keeps us frozen in a prepackaged life that is numbed out and deadened to the unpredictable and juicy aspects of our daily realities.
Why would we want to risk the upset and discomfort that unruly emotions bring to a perfectly modulated life? The answer is that we probably won’t want to take that risk unless we have a deep desire to be a person of substance.
Becoming substantial is a desire that often forms out of the rubble of the perfect life turned disaster. Those of us who wished, hoped, dreamed and planned to be perfect and have the perfect life, if we are lucky, get gifted with a second chance to build a life that is real rather than perfect.
When we are fed up with making excuses and tired of evading the depth of our pain, we start the process of becoming visible to ourselves.
The narrow judgments that we have used to muffle our inner voice and cripple our emotional intelligence begin to melt away. What surfaces is an awakening of our true heritage. We accept that it is our responsibility to create a quality life for ourselves.
We begin to securely anchor our thoughts and feelings to intrinsic core values that serve to motivate us to seek out and affirm life-giving choices.
We give up procrastinating and finally decide to take on the challenge to be visible, vulnerable, vibrant and fierce with reality.
Susan has been teaching mentoring seminars locally on the topic of how to Unleash The Power of Your Intuition for the past 27 years. beyondintellect.com
Dear Susan,
Thank you for sharing your wisdom in this powerful and timely piece of writing.
This is exactly the encouragement I need these days. I look forward to reading your book and other columns.
Sincerely,
Debbie Phelan
Vancouver