Happy Healthy YOU
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(A wellness column by Kelly Spencer: writer, life coach, yoga & meditation teacher, holistic healer and a mindful life enthusiast!)
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When we are born we are clear of how we feel, what we want and what we don’t want and we communicate our needs distinctly until those needs are met.
Think about it. A baby has a different and unique cry for when they are hungry, when they have a gas bubble that needs to pass, when they need a diaper change and when they are just tired and want/need to sleep. They know exactly how they feel and communicate said feelings. When the situation is rectified, they are deeply content. There is no worry about when the next feeding is coming or fear of the next awful gas pain. The moment is now. They were hungry, they are now being fed and all is right.
A baby lives mindfully in the present moment.
Through experiences in life, as we move through challenges and perhaps even traumas, we can learn to no longer trust the innate communication system we were born with. Through adversity and contrast, we might have learned that expressing our feelings is wrong and communicating our needs can be scary. We may have been given reason to belief our needs were unimportant. As we travel through childhood, with small and big confrontations and confusions, we can learn to be less in the moment.
Perhaps we remember what happened when we expressed our feelings and we got in trouble. Maybe we recollect expressing ourselves honestly to someone and the situation ended up hurting us. We may have even learned to be a martyr and put others feelings and needs above our own. Life could have taught us dysfunctional coping mechanism or to learn disserving, limited belief systems that held us in bondage or fear of life.
These divergent experiences can mar and taint our ability to stay in the moment, to listen to our inner truth and hold us back from fully expressing and communicating our needs, goals and desires. Through the adverse situations, we begin to protect ourselves by withdrawing our interpretation of our reality. We begin to add a protective layer with every struggle. Those that have lived a life with more adversity or trauma, build more layers.
Recently, I had three different people in my life express that they felt they shouldn’t be at the place they are at right now. They felt they should be more “advanced” than the current predicament of life. One individual communicated that they really felt that they should be finished with all this interpersonal work and not dealing with dysfunctional coping mechanism anymore, since they’ve been working on healing the past for many years.
But is there ever a finish line?
It is my opinion, that if we are living mindfully, in this present moment that we are continually evolving, progressing and peeling back the layers of past experience. Use the onion analogy: each adverse and challenging experience we have had since childhood builds like an onion layer. Layer by layer the onion gets larger. Some folks have a small cooking onion to deal with, others have a massive Spanish onion. As we live mindfully with the acknowledgment of the truth in this moment, we tap into our newborn essence. We begin to fully acknowledge how we feel in our body and our mind, we express ourselves clearly and we trust our needs will be met and experience deep gratitude when they are.
Slowly and surely, as we live in the current reality, walking in truth, we peel back and rid of one old layer. Like peeling back a layer on an onion, it can create tears or emotions as you deal with the old experience that formed that particular layer.
When we are working so hard in the rat race of life, trying to get to the finish line, we are missing the point. The endless and self-defeating scurrying to keep up to others or to get ahead financially or just get to some sort of finish line, leaves us living an external lifestyle of repetitive exhaustion. The real reward comes from not a marathon to the end but a slow deep breath of acceptance of where you are in right now.
So many would rather fixate externally than peel back the layers. Looking for contentment in jobs, another person or an instant feel good action such as drinking, gambling or sex, can have its moments, but they are temporary, unpredictable and can leaving us feeling out of control since we cannot always control external situations, as hard as we might try. When we can look inward for our happiness, rather than fixating on outside extrinsic forces, we create a lifestyle of more enjoyment, appreciation and ultimately more control.
It may be more work, it might even be hard work, but looking internally and within for happiness and peeling back the onion layers is ultimately more controllable.
My friend has been peeling back the layers for a lot of years. They feel they should be done. Unfortunately, their past was full of challenge, trauma and abuse. The years preceding this moment created many layers of dysfunctional coping strategies and their onion is large... indeed, very large. I reminded them that no matter how far we’ve come, we are here to continually grow and expand.
So if you are feeling like you “ought” to be somewhere else, or perhaps you believe you “shouldn’t” be dealing with this challenge, maybe it’s just time for you get more mindful, understand your truth in this moment and for the next layer of onion to be peeled back. The point of living is the awareness, truth and acceptance of the now. This moment is the only moment, whether we think we should be experiencing it or not. There is no finish line and the real winner of the “race” is always you, when you live mindfully with growth and expansion.
“I thought again of life, which has no obvious end, except the process of enjoying this particular moment in this particular place, and the joy of meandering. I am in no hurry to reach the end point of my life, nor to wish away any of the time in between. I don’t want to live life efficiently, nor cause others to. I want to live deeply, broadly, richly, with resonance, in full enjoyment of my own particular life.” - Derrick Jensen, author and environmentalist.