What We Do with Our Emotion + My Story on Being Real

We are human beings with emotions. We have a heart.

It beats.

It feels.

In a world where we often spend a lot of time in our heads- we feel and move less to find ourselves thinking more.

Somewhere along the road, many of us grow up believing that emotion is too messy and raw to be expressed. Many of us feel the need to stuff down, hide our feelings as if they are something to be ashamed of.

Our need to talk about how we feel and express ourselves hasn't always been honored and seen as a sign of our strength and beauty which it is.

 Somehow we thought that putting on a masque, hiding our feelings and vulnerability from the world is how we move through life.

But how are we to move through life feeling human if we are not acknowledging the very part of ourselves that makes us human? 

In this time more than ever, we are experiencing the need to connect and share. To feel that that we belong, that what we are doing with our lives is meaningful in this world. And while I acknowledge how resourceful technology is, how many opportunities we open up by using it, I can also say that technology doesn't provide us with that meaningful, soul-satisfying human connection that we all need.

We are so good at building walls. At numbing how we feel. We learn to use food, alcohol, drugs, sex, violence and even technology to help us build our walls instead of simply allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.

Let's learn to take down our walls. To embrace uncertainty and discomfort so that we can release ourselves from the limits of our expectations of how things should be.

I talk about vulnerability in many of my blogs. Why? Because I know the power we can find in it. It is our vulnerability that makes us really feel alive. It is our vulnerability that allows for true understanding and connection.

In my life, I didn't know what I do now about vulnerability, self expression and connection and how they all tie together growing up. It was through experience that I realized what being real is all about. And it was only when I allowed myself to be vulnerable that I found myself and true connection.

I grew up with the belief that life was supposed to be neat. That because letting out our emotion and being honest- with ourselves and the people around us- felt uncomfortable, it was somehow wrong. What I didn't realize then was that when we embrace all of our emotion including our pain and anger, we naturally ourselves to experience real connection and joy. We open the door to gratitude, creativity and joy. 

Blessings,

Julie

Taking Time to Reflect

Often in the fast-paced world we live in, we feel unnecessarily rushed. In our relationships, with our decisions- the list goes on. Very rarely does a decision have to be made within the minute, hour or even day.

Making decisions without waiting too long is important, but I have realized that letting go of the need to fix things right away can create some much-needed space to make the right decision.

Taking some time for ourselves and time to reflect brings us back to the decision with a clearer perspective.

And all within balance. Sometimes a very delicate one requiring us to really be in touch with ourselves and our needs. The fine balance in taking the time we need to take care of ourselves and reflect, but not allowing this time to make us passive and avoid what it is that we are needing to take action on.
 This is the essential balance.

Perhaps at the end of the day, we are challenged to really be with ourselves. To talk to ourselves honestly and with compassion. To see what it is that we need at each given point in our life journey.

Blessings,

Julie

Embracing the Unexplainable

We all have great minds, and sometimes we feel the need to explain ourselves, rationalize why we feel a certain way and why we are doing what we do.

But what if understanding is beyond the stories of the mind?

What if true understanding comes from our hearts?

Our heart has a language of its own. It understands the world and communicates in its own way. One that may not be subject to wordy rationale. It speaks intuitively and guides our actions instinctively.

"I don't know why I did that but it just felt right"- this is the heart speaking. Its language is spontaneous and unplanned. It flows naturally.

To free our hearts is to embrace its language, whether it makes sense to our mind or not.

We don't always need a reason or explanation for why we choose to do certain things.

Instead of carefully arranging our lives into bento boxes and getting caught up in the details, let us embrace uncertainty.

Let us embrace the truth that life is messy and allow for our authentic expression without feeling the need to back it up with thought all the time.

Because the minute we try to create an explanation, we create a limit. A mental explanation suggests that something is a certain way- that it is fixed- this way of categorizing or labeling our experiences can sometimes take away from the magic of uncertainty and possibility.

Some things just are. And in their simple beingness, we see their truest beauty.

Blessings,

Julie

"We Carry On" - The Courage to Feel

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW7WH2j4Y3o

This song is so beautiful and so greatly captures what I've learned about how we handle our pain and suffering in life.

Without our capacity to feel pain, we would lack the contrast to appreciate our happiness. Pain is real and needs to be acknowledged.

As the famous saying goes, "It's not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain."

We don't just pretend that our pain doesn't exist, yet we don't become paralyzed by it.We feel it and move forward with it. We embrace it. We free ourselves.  Living in denial takes a lot of energy, it is exhausting. Because sooner or later, we will be faced with a buildup of our pain from all the time we spent avoiding it.

So let's courageously embrace our pain for it is beautiful. Yes, sometimes hard to feel. But when free ourselves to be who we are, we are allowing for the expansion of our joy as well.

"We've got holes, but we carry on." - Passenger

We can choose to move with our pain. We can get up in the morning and say to ourselves "I may not feel by best right now, but I continue to live my life the way I want because I am worthy of love and belonging."

Feeling pain is not a condition that makes us less worthy. Nor is it something to be ashamed of.

We stand tall, follow our dreams and express our truth with our pain as well as our joy.

We allow ourselves to be fully seen. For in this vulnerability, lies power. We have the capacity to create deeper and more genuine connections with others.

And we have the capacity to feel.

I say that its better that we feel all of who we are, rather than be numb to the world and not feel at all.

Blessings,

Julie

Bored? We Create Our Adventure

We can easily confuse adventure with being busy.

I've realized that simply being busy, having things to do, doesn't necessarily make our life an adventure. In fact, instead of being bored, we escape our boredom by being busy. This is one way to describe what we all know as "going through life with the actions, yet not really feeling engaged and present."

No wonder we are not engaged and present, if we are not interested in what we are doing. Our curiously and alertness dwindles and we can become more passive. No wonder!

When we are not being challenged and filling our life with a healthy level of risk-taking, we have less motivation to focus and be engaged in the present moment of what we are doing.

And how do we change this?

We slow down and become present with our truth.

In my own experience of a few weeks of overworking, I realized that we can easily put too much emphasis on something we are not interested in until it becomes a distraction. Maybe we think that it is what we "have to do."

Well, I have certainly realized that at any point in our lives, we have a choice. There is always a way to adjust, or change our situation.

It is with awareness that we are able to truly change.
Consciously change.

There is always a way to re-ignite our spark and turn our sails in the direction of our desire.

And sometimes when we are simply present with ourselves, our heart has a way of instinctively guiding us to that which we really need.

We won't have to "think" about what we "should" do to change things.

Our heart will simply know.

Blessings,

Julie

Sometimes It's Ok to Quit

Our bodies often know what we need better than our minds.

We can be "thinking" that we are doing everything right, that all the pieces are together, when in fact they aren't.

Overworked and exhausted, I recently found myself completely burnt out. It was time to put the brakes on. What this also meant was a wake up call to re-examine my life and have an honest conversation with myself.

Sometimes things work for a certain period of time. They serve a purpose for a time. Relationships work for a time- they rise and fall, like an ocean swell. And then it is time to let go. The cycle of life continues.

When the things we do become routine, become too comfortable, we realize that life needs constant adjustment. Each day we must ask ourselves how we feel and check in with our path and if we are in alignment with what it is that we truly want and need. Are we doing that which excites us and nourishes our soul?

The cycle of life demands that we wake up each day and look around us as if our environment, the people around us and our own selves have changed, grown, evolved. And yet, we sometimes forget to see that each day we face really is a new day.

Today is like no other. A blank canvas waiting to be painted. And we are the active creators of it.

When our bodies tell us to stop and reflect on our lives, to check in with where we are within our individual selves, we realize that although these times may be the hardest, they are also times to face truth.

When we have the space to question our current reality, to face the truth of how we are feeling, what we are doing and who we are spending our time with now, then we may realize that as the cycle of life continues, so must we.

Awareness of truth is what creates powerful change. Change from the heart.

We move with the tide. We take the time to reflect, focus, reshape our perspective, shift our actions, create new challenges, re-ignite our spark or simply get rid of that which is not serving us to create space for that which will.

Why do we often avoid slowing down to reflect on our truth? Because we fear change and uncertainty. We create stories, we rationalize- to avoid making tough decisions. Maybe we are afraid to hurt others in the process of these important decisions. And while, yes, this is a safe route, it is not serving the growth of anyone.

In the end, the decisions we make that serve our becoming the strongest version of ourselves are precisely the same decisions that allow us to naturally inspire growth and strength in others.

Blessings,

Julie