45 - Finding My Compass

I was sharing an incident with my therapist. A very upsetting event that brought upon myself a barrage of emotions that I was having a hard time controlling.

When I was told what someone had said, I was enveloped by rage.

Not like lava that slowly moves down the volcano, taking everything in its path.

More like an atomic bomb that detonates and eliminates everything.

Except the problem was, and I have mixed feelings about this, I was able to hold most of it inside.

About 99%.

My family knew I was angry, because they know my feelings about the subject. The 1% that I let out contained a couple of strong cuss words that I don’t usually say. Well, not anymore.

The subject is irrelevant. I want to talk about how I handled it.

First, learning to “push things down” has not been very good for me. It’s a technique that makes everyone else feel better, but it makes me a neurotic mess.

Life is hard.

Everyone has different personalities.

Everyone has different capabilities of handling things.

Everyone has different levels of sensitivities.

I am so aware of all of these things, at the same time, that I monitor myself so as not to offend. I suppose that is a good thing. ..maybe..??

It’s good for other people.

But is it good for me?

I am trying (with my family) to speak my mind more. But with that, I also ask that other people speak their mind with me. They may change my mind, they may not. But I enjoy the sharing of perspectives and ideas. All I ask is that I am heard.

Conversations are good.

I have been hyper-aware that people’s perspectives on life are influenced by everything they have experienced. Their childhood, their friends, their bullies, their education, their life. And we all have experienced things differently.

My sister and I. We grew up in the same household, so we understand what that was like better than anyone else. But we are also four years apart. So many aspects of that are different.

Even my identical twin sons. You would think they have identical thoughts about life and how it works. But they don’t. They are similar in a lot of ways, of course, but they are also vastly different in other ways. They have different life experiences that contribute to their outlooks.

It makes you think.

Originally, I thought if I have four children, who all grew up in the same household, they all have the same thoughts and positions on certain topics.

They don’t.

I encourage that. Because I want my kids to be authentic and true to themselves. They all have a purpose to fulfil, and they can’t do that if I am not allowing them to experience the world the way they are supposed to experience it.

Which comes back to stuffing things down. I don’t like doing that, and I need to stop. I don’t need to blow up, but I also need to let it out.

Maybe like a pressure cooker that makes the hissing sound. The hissing comes from the releasing of pressure. Just a little bit at a time. If it doesn’t let out some of the pressure, the thing will explode. And the damage from that would be phenomenal!

So…I should let people know how I feel, not push it down, but also not explode.

And, in this particular case, the offensive person was not someone that I could talk to. I heard it, “through the grape vine.”

What can I do?

I recently (..I’m not sure how long ago it started.. a few months? ..a year? ..let’s just say “a while”..) started doing something that is absolutely crazy! Well, old me thought it was crazy. And impossible.

I started doing it when things were calm. Honestly, that’s the only way to get good at it. Well, for me.

I would sit in a calm space (front porch, my kitchen, the car), when things were calm, and just take a deep breath and blow it out slowly.

SLOWLY! DO YOU HEAR ME?? SLOWLY!!

Sorry. That part is important.

I would try to bring a calm into my being while blowing out the negative.

Since I was trying this when I was already calm, it was quite easy. But think of it like an exercise program. A person doesn’t just go out a run a marathon without training, right? You have to start with a mile, maybe walking. You build up to the hard stuff. And that’s what this is. Training.

So I got into the habit of blowing out negative energy. Even when there was no negative energy. It became such a habit, that I started doing it when there WAS some negative energy. Maybe I was driving and a car cut me off. Instead of freaking out and yelling at them, I would take a deep breath and blow them away from me. At least, mentally.

It became such a habit that I was doing it all of the time.

And the crazy thing? It works!

No, really! I know it sounds ridiculous, but it works!

The hard part comes when there is something that I am really passionate about. There isn’t a lot that will push me over the edge, but when I get to THAT point, taking a deep breath and blowing it out is very, very, very difficult!

But here is what I ended up doing: I pushed it down.

Now, earlier, I was talking about how that doesn’t work for me, but I’m going to tell you a little secret. I pushed it ALLLLLL the way down. I didn’t push it down into my chest, which would give the feeling of indigestion or a heart attack. I didn’t push it down into my stomach, which would give the feeling of sour stomach or food poisoning.

Nope!

I pushed that sucker ALLLLL the way down into my feet AND THEN out of my body! I focused on that crap LEAVING and not coming back! And it worked.

So, you want me to push the feelings down? I can do that now.

Check.

Second, I had a hard time going to sleep that night, but after being upset about it for a little bit, I remembered a “trick” I came up with.

Who is someone that you really look up to? Someone or something you use as a moral compass?

For me, that is God.

So, a while back I came up with this mantra and I say it a lot!

At the end of the day, all that matters is what God thinks of me.

If I had done nothing wrong, but people were mad at me? All that matters is what God thinks of me.

If I had messed up? I apologized and asked God how I could do better.

Every single person on this planet has an opinion. A background and life that shapes their thoughts, their morals, their steps. And none of those opinions are the same. Even if you overlap with a person about a certain subject, you will be on completely opposite ends over a different topic.

I can’t make everyone happy.

I just can’t.

I can’t.

So what can I do?

All I can do is what I can do. And that is to focus on the purpose I was placed here to fulfil.

And to encourage you to do the same.

Stop focusing on what other people want you to do, and do the thing(s) you’re supposed to do.

And that means blowing out their negative energy and focusing on your own moral compass.

We can do this!