One thing we can all agree upon is that our world is different. The Coronavirus pandemic is here. The Black Lives Matter movement is here. The Tiger King happened. And because of this we are different. I am different because conditions forced me to change. Cumulatively we have had to change how we shop. How we work. How we interact with others and, for many, how we relate with ourselves.
Change itself isn’t good or bad – those labels are judgement. Change happens regardless of how you feel about it. Our society is the midst of a major transition period and we have the ability to choose how we come out of it.
How you feel after this transition period will depend on how you process what comes up for you. Do you “deal with” your fears, anger, and other emotions, doing your best to get through each day with minimal disruption? Is it possible that you can use this unique opportunity in our lives to heal deep wounds and come out a stronger, fuller version of yourself?
Coping vs Healing
In our recent Fresh Tracks Podcast interview, Vincent Genna encourages us to use this opportunity to deeply heal issues that appeared during and/or because of the pandemic. Let me share an example of what came up for me. A few weeks into the stay-at-home orders I had some panic around food shortages. It caught me off guard watching the news on a Saturday morning. Out of nowhere I was crying uncontrollably.
Why was I responding this way? I had money, a house full of food. I had toilet paper. There is food in the grocery stores (even though there are empty spaces, which were incredibly upsetting).
Intellectually I understood that we are not even close to starving. And yet, seeing the empty spaces on the shelves sent me into a panic more than once. No rice of any kind. No flour of all things. I didn’t even need flour, but if I DID want some, I couldn’t get any.
Perhaps something like this came up for you? Being alone? Being stuck at home with people you don’t want to be stuck with? Losing a job or fear of closing your business? The inability to physically hangout with others? Fear of getting sick or dying?
I pulled creating a fuller version of our self out of Vincent Genna’s recent interview because that is ultimately what we are empowered to do no matter what the situation. It is what makes digging into our trauma’s, examining our choices, our irrational responses, our fears, hurts and beliefs, worthwhile.
Take this opportunity of transition to be malleable in how we live, create, interact and communicate with ourselves and others. It allows us to release, heal and strengthen the spiritual, emotional and mental aspects of ourselves. Digging in and healing the wound rather than surviving through the trigger is what allows us to more deeply “be” the quality of “more life”. To ultimately live a fuller version of the amazingness that is us.
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