Deciphering Our Energy: Anxious or Excited?

Each time we move out of our comfort zone, energy follows. Depending on the situation, we sometimes invite the negative “Who do you think you are?” part of ourselves to pay a visit. We all do it to some degree, no matter how strong we are.

When you challenge yourself, and that energy comes, do you experience a gentle ripple or an intimidating Tsunami? Or somewhere in between? The difference between the two is where we build the muscle to keep challenging ourselves!

When we choose to play small, we get a pay-off in our comfort zones. Safety and comfort are two examples. If we have the slightest tendency to feel anxious and listen to our negative self-talk (aka Gremlins), we may fight with all we have to stay safe and comfortable.

We know that having clarity about what we want helps us to focus. The same is true with clarity of feelings.

Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”

“Is it anxiety? Yes, I think so! And it doesn’t feel good.” So, I choose to take action to stop that feeling, and this action sabotages and thwarts my goals. I stay stuck.

We have this innate desire to reach for more, and sometimes it generates anxiety. At that point, we can go back to our comfortable place and remain stuck there.

Or, we can choose otherwise.

“Is it excitement? Yes! Now that feels good to me!” I will intentionally and consciously act to feed that feeling. I feel motivated and believe that if I keep moving forward, I will accomplish my goals.

What if we always thought of this energy as excitement? We could acknowledge it as the positive energy that it is—an energy that we can strategically feed to create more and more motivation.

When we feel challenged, what if we ask ourselves, “Is there a threat? Or is this feeling/energy excitement?”

Put another way, we can stop and ground ourselves, decipher that feeling bubbling up, and then consciously choose to feed the empowering thoughts (excitement) that move us forward.

When feelings first appear, anxiety and excitement can feel the same. You can find clarity about your feelings when you:

  • Stop
  • Get Grounded
  • Discern/Decipher
  • Choose Positivity
  • Take Action

It’s a given that a feeling will come when we challenge ourselves. If we consciously examine the feeling, we can understand its origin and choose to respond in a way that keeps us growing.

And that, my friends, is downright liberating!

A 2020 Lesson in Gratitude

New Normal 2020It’s that time of year when many people think about everything that they have to be grateful for.

This year—well, this year has been one for the books. Negotiating our way through a historic pandemic and losing our versions of “normal” have generated a new awareness in all of us. What have we lost (if only temporarily), and what do we still have to be thankful for as we move forward?

Thankfulness has enormous benefits for our health and happiness. The practice of gratitude, especially during times like these can really spur us to unpack things that no longer serve us, from negative thoughts and physical “stuff” right down to our ways of being.

What started with fear and mass confusion has brought a lot of knowledge, too. Number one for me is being abruptly reminded of what I am grateful for, want to keep, protect, and treasure as well as realizing what should go.

Imagine that being thankful helps us to pause, think clearly, and to act more wisely. Thankfully, it’s hard to maintain negative feelings when we are feeling grateful.

I think 2020 can be viewed as a massive reminder to be thankful for—or certainly more aware of—our blessings.

What are you thankful for?

What can you let go of?

Recognition: Negative Thoughts to Positive Beliefs

Gremlins. ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts). Cognitive Distortions. Whatever you call them, these unconscious negative self-judgements are at best unhelpful and at worst extremely unhealthy.

Handling gremlins is one of the three pillars of empowerment and goes hand-in-hand with finding clarity and being grounded.

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A gremlin is a descriptive (and uncomfortable) name for thoughts that hinder self-esteem, positive actions, and progress in life. It is an internal dialog that we want to bring out of hiding so it can no longer secretly sabotage us.

The contradiction of gremlins is that they may actually have kept us safe at some point in our lives. We told ourselves stories to keep us safe. Perhaps these thoughts kept us from trying and risking failure, or they provided confirmations for times when we did fail. They became stronger and more and more treacherous—because they became the “truth.”

Similar to a virus, gremlins become more systemic until we believe them! Do any of these statements resonate with you?

  • When you fail at something, you can feel as if you are a failure.
  • When someone else is called pretty, you become not so pretty.
  • When you don’t get the grades, you are stupid.
  • When you don’t make the team, you are a loser.
  • If someone else is called skinny, you must be fat.
  • When you don’t get the position, well of course, it confirms that you just weren’t worthy.

And on we go. We just create more powerful gremlins (stories) to protect us on a higher level. We up the protective (albeit negative) ante and continue to keep ourselves safe and out of the game of life!

What do we know for sure about negative thoughts?

  • We are unconscious of them.
  • They were created to keep us safe from harm.
  • We turned them into a truth—which makes them harder to recognize.
  • They can harm and hinder.
  • They can be changed.

That last one is the key to living the life you are entitled to.

Can you recognize a stuck pattern in yourself? Can you offer yourself compassion and give yourself space and time to choose your next chapter consciously? Self-compassion, love, and self-forgiveness will open the door to forward motion.

We will only grow, dream, and rise in life to the level that our gremlins will allow us to. What we think absolutely has that much power over us. I am convinced that turning negative thoughts into positive beliefs can take years off our journeys to success and happiness.

Understanding where the gremlins come from and how they developed can help us to defeat them. Once thoughts are questioned, new possibilities are not just conceivable; they’re inevitable.