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 :)

Something a little different - Cheap hosting and free domain name

Free websites are great but the problem will always be that your site can be deleted at any time. In addition it is hard to make a backup of those free sites and then restore them. I have seen many sites and hard work go down the drain because people wanted to save out on paying a few dollar.
Believe me, it is a good investment to have your own domain. Some let you pay through paypal so you do not need a creditcard. If you start advertising on your website, like google ads you may even get some extra income or play even on your website costs.
Here are 2 hosting companies we recommend:

StartLogic - Great host, good service and good deals
1and1.com - cheap hosting, free domain name

Finding my power and reclaiming it

Well it's been a rough week and I haven't written in ages. I haven't had much time for "fun" or for my health this week and in fact I broke down badly on Monday. My diet support group leader sends us SMS messages several times a week to keep us motivated... This Monday she sent a message simply asking "how's it going? are you keeping to the program?" and I replied (I usually do not reply to these messages) "yes, keeping to the program and yet letting myself down, not living up to my own expectations". As soon as I hit the "send" button on my phone, I burst into tears (and I was in the office - NOT a good place to break down!) She immediately called me but I had no time to talk, then she had no time and we tried emailing but Murphy's law kicked in and there was a problem with her email and nothing went through....

I felt very miserable. I did pick myself up, as I always do, and I went on and kept to the program as best I could and I DID lose quite a bit of weight this week BUT I still feel like I am not living up to my own expectations (especially in the sense that I cannot find the time and the energy to exercise).

And then it got me thinking... When I did my homework for the coaching course I am taking we had to answer several "in depth" questions with the technique of the "popping answer" (the first thing that pops into your mind, however absurd or strange it might seem). These are questions that are part of the value identification process and I came up with some very interesting answers and values that derived from them but the most interesting one was a word that never appeared in any of my lists before (we've been doing value identification for a few meetings now in the course). That word was "power". Not physical power but intense energy power. It came through stories of my life I suddenly remembered and it was a reminder of my "weakest link".... my own power. I later confirmed it and worked on it further with my coach.

Ever since I can remember myself, even as a little girl I was a powerful being. I did things other people don't do, I thought differently, I sounded differently... I WAS different (and not in a bad way lol). But I have also noticed along the way, that when unleashed with no boundaries or limits, that power was a fire that burnt everything and everyone in its path. I lost friendships that way, relationships and I taught myself to subdue this power, to hide it. In fact, like the dragon int he legend, I had manged to hide it so well and so deep that I have become a mere dragonfly, forgetting my true power, my true essence and that power all concentrated inside of me started consuming me from inside.

That revelation or insight that came to me this week tells me that it is time to unleash my power again, but this time I need to teach myself moderation. I also came to realize that what I miss most in my life at the moment is quiet. Both physical quiet - actually "hearing no sound" and mental. emotional, energetic quiet. With my hectic schedule it is very hard to find or create this quiet but it is my task for the week to try.

So for the next week I need to do 2 things:

1. find my power and regain it
2. create quiet in my life even just for a few moments every day