Clearing the clutter, making the space...

This post is inspired by 2 things:
1. A certain process I am going through now (I am deliberately not specifying now).
2. a great post entitled: "Space...The final frontier?" by Richard Derwent Cooke, a great writer, coach and a friend of mine on Ecademy.

I went through something that was less than pleasant yesterday (emotionally) but it had to be done and experienced and I am glad I heard some things. Later in the afternoon I came across Richard's post on Ecademy. I almost started crying (I'm known for having "loose taps in my eyes" lol). The line that struck me most was: I would urge you to be ruthless in creating a little space, be it mental, temporal or physical, in your life and let yourself breathe a little and gain a fresh perspective on what is important.

That is exactly where I stand now - at the point where I have to be ruthless and make my space, or rather - reclaim it. But it is not just the space that needs to be reclaimed. Sure enough, there is emotional clutter in my life (and physical clutter in my house - you know how these two always go together) but even if I de-clutter my life and reclaim my space, it will be an empty one. What I really need to do in addition to de-cluttering is to "hunt myself' and reclaim all the little bits and pieces of energy I had left behind in other places and people. Reclaim my power.

It is easier said than done. The part where one has to be "ruthless" is the hard part. Ruthless is NOT cruel. You can be a good hearted person, a helping and loving person and still be ruthless. In many ways this is the only way to survive, and the only way to really give to others and help them. Only by being ruthless can you really teach others lessons they need so much to learn.

I am asked sometimes - how come you can help so many people, coach them, guide them, mentor them, counsel them....and yet you yourself have problems, you're suffering.... well folks, that next part might sound like a sales promotion but that is exactly why you need help. That is exactly why you need a coach, or a therapist, or a good clever friend, or a wise mother, or a grandmother or someone like Richard that writes just the right thing in the right time.... because we tend to tell ourselves stories, we all tend to choose the easy ways out of efforts and responsibilities... we need someone to show us where we go wrong and light up the path ahead so that we can select our next move wisely and from a place of knowledge.

So I wish to thank Richard in this post for lighting up my path and helping me make the decision that needed to be made, as painful as it may be for me right now. Because if I do not put myself back in the first place in my priorities, if I do not reclaim my space and my power.... I will not be able to survive. I will be so drained and so worn out that I will simply disappear.

If you feel that any of these words strikes a chord with you, I suggest you do the same and think about how you can reclaim your space right now.

Feelings - are you in synch with yours?

Ok... I admit this sounds like a total cliché (yes I laughed too when I first thought about "getting back in touch with my feelings") but bear with me for a moment while I try to explain what I am doing here.

This post is the result of a conversation I had with my coach, Michal, yesterday.

The issue is this: I am a very sensitive person (water sign - cancer - what did you expect? :-p) and yet I keep my feelings and thoughts towards others bottled up inside. Many of us do. How many times have you been angry with someone or disappointed but never said a word? I am guessing most of the readers would at this point smile to themselves and nod.... yes, it's happened to all of us, hasn't it?

We're soooooo good at holding complete arguments in our minds, we say to the other person everything we want to and how they make us feel and what we are experiencing...and we are soooo good at imagining and guessing what the other person would then answer us and we prepare our counter answer in advance. Oh yes, we're the world's best debaters/talker/conversationalists.... in the safety of our minds.

But when it comes to going out there and actually vocalizing what we feel, what we think, we avoid that like a fire. Usually we are afraid of the conflict that might arise, or afraid of rejection, or of the way we will be perceived by others.... but what happens then is that this feeling stays bottled up inside us and no - the inner talk does not resolve it, does not "process" it. If anything it "over processes" it - we keep running the scenarios over and over in our minds, we repeat the argument or speech so many times we know it by heart, we start dreaming about it (even if we don't remember it) and soon enough, we are relating to the other person, in our actions and daily interactions, as we would in the argument, often without the other person even realizing he or she have upset us in some way. This can also happen with "good" feelings such as love and passion and not just with the "bad" ones (anger, sadness etc.). Sometimes we love someone and we're afraid to tell them....

You know what happens next, don't you? We erupt at some point, just like a big old volcano. We blow up so hard - spewing out everything we've bottled up inside and burning and burying everything and everyone in our path of destruction.

Can you imagine how many such "over processed" feelings you are carrying inside you at any given moment? Can you count the number of people you feel them towards (just imagine current and past lovers, friends you've lost touch with, past colleagues...)? Can you even begin to realize how much energetic "garbage" you are holding inside you?

So when my coach and I spoke about getting in touch with my feelings again, befriending them, I at first thought "oh no.... that old cliché" but then I started thinking about it and the first thing that came to my mind is - write! write about those feelings, write TO those feelings... I bet Michal didn't expect me to do it on a public blog though :-D

So I shall try to befriend my emotions and feelings, see what they're about, try to remind myself why they showed up and why I never let them out and who knows, I might even come up with a technique to ventilate them once a while without my volcano erupting :)