if you’re under a rock & hard place
… meaning stuck between 2 painful situations like if i stay at my job i'm unhappy but if i leave i might struggle financially
here are some tips & insights
when i left my job working in architecture, i had no idea what else to do. i was certain though that having a boss breathing down my neck and designing phallic skyscrapers wasn't for me. i wanted to feel creatively free, fulfilled, and be my own boss.
i tried out different things and places to see what i liked. some things i ok liked. a lot of time i was suffering secretly from feeling dissatisfied with myself and unfulfilled with my circumstances. this suffering kept me on my toes searching for something.
it was inner alignment.
the thing that allows you to live from the inside out. bringing forth what's arising from me out to the world. the place of wholeness in my brokenness i can own and stand by. it's completely opposite from what i was raised to be and do - trying to accommodate the outer by policing my inner.
a major piece of the pizza in order to have inner alignment is emotional caretaking - something i didn't know how to do because i grew up having my emotions dismissed, invalidated, and ignored. my conditioning to suppress my anger had me in a quagmire, but my rock bottom was a wakeup call.
i awakened to the fact that emotions are important and it is important to listen to what they are trying to say, because if i ignored them as i'd been doing, i'd continue to be miserable, lost, lonely, and out of alignment with my self.
emotions are our compass, the way to navigate towards your north star
loneliness is exacerbated when i'm feeling invisible around people by not being authentic with how i'm truly feeling. and that there is no true security safety or joy to be had unless my inner emotional being is seen, heard, and understood.
i saw the suffering of my life as a symptom of this conditioned ignorance, disconnection, denial, and suppresion of the emotional body - of the inner life, of feedback from our source which is what emotions are.
why do i love the process of uncovering my hidden "shadow" self through condemned emotions?
i love reconnecting with my inner children who were frozen in shame, fear, anger. and thawing them with love and care.
giving them a safe space to fully voice themselves helps me feel safe too. i love accessing new information, insights, and waves of compassion thru my emotions and deep yin states. that's why i'm telling you this story.
because the inner alignment you gain from learning how to feel, prioritizing how you feel, and acting on your feelings is the foundation for a life where you're creatively free, fulfilled, and the boss. the more connected you are to your emotions and what they're communicating, the less controlled you are by fear and what others think.
it's freedom.
a few more tips to help you get unstuck:
trust that you'll figure it out. and if you can't trust, even planting a seed of possibility that one day you will be free of this suffering is enough.
ask yourself: what am i meant to be learning through this? every difficulty is an upleveling.
stay open and curious to how the universe is responding to your questions through synchronicities, dreams, people and places you're drawn to
connect with your future self who's already living your dream life. ask them for guidance from the timeline where you chose to keep going being brave choosing the self-loving path no matter how challenging it was to let go of certain comforts and securities in the process.
recall past times you were confronted with a challenge and made it through. it's easy to forget in a current challenge and think this stuckness here is forever - don't worry it's not.
we learn through contrast - through unwanted experiences you uncover what is wanted. we're continuously refining what we want by facing the unwanted
stuckness implies internal resistance and internal opposition. one part of you may be opposed to change while another part is wanting it. the part that's opposed to change may be afraid of all the potential negatives that come with it, to protect you from the pain. what it doesn't realize is that the whole of you is already in a lot of pain and suffering from resisting change and taking action towards your dreams. and you're on a sinking boat the longer you wait. the thing to resolve here is your relationship with pain.
are you enduring something crappy in order to delay making a decision that isn't 100% guaranteed to succeed? what if there is no 100% guarantee - just take one baby step towards something that feels like relief, or gives you a bit more peace in your heart, even if it's uncomfortable to do
would you rather have the pain of living an unfulfilled life or the pain of going for your dreams? what's the pain you consciously choose in order to evolve?
your emotions are always holding vital information. learn how to let yourself become more available to feel and experience the emotions. let them go through you, rather than ignoring them or avoiding them, and in doing so you will develop a positive empowered relationship to your emotions because you're letting them open you to a higher degree of awareness, freedom, and new possibilities
stuckness holds emotions of fear, anger, powerlessness. again, shifting your relationship to these emotions - seeing them as important messengers from your inner being trying to get your attention to what's needing love rather than as dangerous enemies sabotaging your happiness you have to shun and deny. this will help you get unstuck.
find people you feel safe to open up with to be vulnerable with to share how you really feel. this can alleviate the stress of holding all the burden of trying to figure this out on your own. you're not meant to do this alone.
feeling depressed about stuckness can mean you're holding a belief of "i can't" which is essentially powerlessness that you can't change something unwanted into what is wanted, which is painful and untrue. and yet still very valid that you would feel this way. rather than punishing or shaming yourself for feeling this way, send love & compassion to yourself by completely validating the way you feel. tell yourself "it's ok to feel this" or "even if you feel this, i'm not going to abandon you" or "you have every right to feel this based on the lack you've experienced"
when you bring space and unconditional presence (which is pure positive focus) into a painful emotion, the emotion transforms. sometimes the sensation of the emotion can intensify, which means that you're doing deep work and there's much to release there. and sometimes the emotion seems to stay the same. which means there's more patience, presence, and love to pour into it. and sometimes the emotion transforms immediately, and you feel the relief and epiphany. when the emotion transforms, you transform. whatever happens, the goal is to strengthen your capacity for presence. presence with the up, presence with the down, presence with the in between.
inner child work. often times the powerlessness we feel in the present is an echo of actual powerlessness we felt in the past when we were totally dependent on our parents/caregivers and couldn't get needs met through them. how can you open up to receive what you need now?
as painful as this place may be, know that pain is a catalyst for change. pain causes us to become much more sensitized and alert - as long as we're not turning away or numbing ourselves down - there's information in the pain for you to course correct and truths held within this pain here to help you create new futures
love
kwonyin