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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

Co-vid 19: A Free Pass to the Roller Coaster of Feelings

5/10/2020

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Who in their right mind would want a free pass to the kind of roller coaster ride that life has taken us on for the past couple of months? My own feelings have gone from exhilaration to hopelessness and everything in between. I stay at home, go out only for necessities, see the shelves remain empty in the stores, notice the ever-present need to take precautions to protect myself from other people or environments, and find myself in front of an electronic screen for human interaction. I watch the feelings come and go. But when I get caught up, all I want to do is get off the ride.

Everyone I’ve talked to has spoken of having difficulty with various forms of depression, anxiety, worry and anger. I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t experienced some variation of those feelings at some point, whether lingering or in passing. Over and over again, I see that when we don’t really understand how to relate to our feelings, it’s a rough ride. Me, too. Up one day, down the next. Or maybe it’s up one moment, down the next.  Whichever way it happens, it really helps to know how to meet those feelings when they arise and how to be neutral or unphased by them.

No one paid money to get on this ride, but we’re all having our turns on it. Some of us go kicking and screaming, others have a more neutral approach, and there are a very few who are open to it. By that I mean they’re not resisting it.  How do they do that?

The first time I ever rode on a roller coaster was with my oldest brother who I trusted implicitly. As our car was slowly being pulled up the first big hill, my eyes were shut tight; I was gripping the handlebar with both hands and all I could hear was the sound of the slow, steady clanking of the chains as we came closer and closer to the top. My brother looked at me and told me to open my eyes. I opened them just as we went over the top and the ride was scary, but really not that bad, to tell the truth. For years I resented him for that “advice” - but I’ve come to see that what he was encouraging me to do was to be willing to experience it with open eyes (and an open mind). I went back on that same ride many times after that, sometimes with my eyes closed, but mostly with my eyes open. I discovered it was a much better ride with my eyes open.

Why? Because I wasn’t shutting out what was right in front of me. I saw it all - or at least as much as anyone could see while racing down that track. By the time we’d gotten to the end of that first ride, I knew that whatever feelings I had felt wouldn’t kill me or permanently scar me emotionally. There was something inside me that wasn’t afraid to be afraid. That “something” was deeper than the experience of the roller coaster, that made it possible to go through something scary and be untouched by it. I also realized that the ride, though intense, would end.

Our feelings can be so intense - sometimes they seem so overwhelming that we think we need to shut our eyes tight and wall ourselves off until they pass. But what I learned on that first roller coaster was that I - we - have the capacity to be on the ride with all its twists and turns and get off and ask, “what’s next?”  When we realize we are meant to experience them and let them go in order to be present to what’s next, we don’t hold on to the experience by telling ourselves over and over again what it was like. We go on from there.

To me, this pandemic is quite the roller coaster ride. It gives us the opportunity to have ups and downs, twists and turns to which we then have our own experience, which changes according to what we are able to notice and respond to. It will eventually come to an end. How we experience it - either with curiosity and openness or resistance and panic - or a combination of them all - can be easier than we think. This is not to say that our lives now are just a ride in the park. The pandemic does have life threatening consequences. We need to take the necessary precautions, but in addition to that, we can ride it out without letting it scare us out of our wits or prevent us from having a different, healthier and wiser perspective each time we go around another curve.
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