While lessening judgment of others is a huge step towards inner peace, to keep the momentum going, one has to eventually address self-judgment. This is way harder.
For me this was tougher, because I was going by the common advice centering on not trusting our emotions. After all, aren’t they fleeting?
I disagree. I believe feelings are valuable information and as I sat with my emotions, instead of dismissing them, I came to a conclusion that the negative vibes were actually pointers to my authenticity roadblocks.
For example, I used to get upset when I saw a person getting promoted for what I thought were the wrong reasons … most typically being an a**hole 🙂
Over time, I realized that whether the person was worthy of promotion or not was totally irrelevant. It actually was the pain of not living out my life purpose, which to stay hidden in plain sight kept channeling my frustrations to without. Because I didn’t know what I stood for, it upset me that I wasn’t collecting enough tangible status symbol to be validated in the eyes of others. Not to mention that even If I got that sparkly object, others would emerge soon after … kind of like trying to win by chopping hydra’s heads off. Even if you do, more grow right back in its place.
While still not totally seamless, I’ve come a long way in learning how to channel these emotions to energize the progress towards starting my own business. In other words, rather than fighting my past hydras, I shifted up to a mindset where I can be a lover not a fighter … I just can’t think of one great thing in my life that came from the place of fear.
And so rather than wasting energy trying to fit in at a corporation whose #1 objective is to grow shareholder value, I choose to walk my talk and start a company that transforms adversity into higher purpose.
These days all the promotion announcements don’t bother me one bit … after all you can’t hit a nerve that’s not there.
Thank you “flaky” emotions.
What upsets you? What does it tell you about yourself?
