Being present with and navigating the energy and emotion of endings and beginnings at the same time is a tricky process.
It’s easy to fall into the pattern of creating great plans, intentions, strategies and long lists as we wrap up one year and begin another, and do it all on auto-pilot. In a way it’s a holiday tradition – finding our personal way to say goodbye to the current year and look forward to the promise of the next. But let’s be honest, 2020 has offered up a much more of a “hold your breath” and “watch out” kind of vibe, putting us in a mental and emotional space where we are constantly trying to balance and calibrate new realities, moment by moment – all without the luxury of any certainty (or at least the fantasy of certainty existing).
Many of us have never experienced a compounded level of chaos like this, especially for such a long period of time. And while our heads try to gather up the scattered pieces into a neat and tidy story that makes some dang sense, we have come to realize it’s not that kind of “year end”, this time around the sun. Our emotional bodies know it, too.
Yes, the world has been in total chaos before and pulled through. Yes, there is a bigger over-arching collective human story that overlays our personal life story. And yes, it’s all messy and unpredictable. All of it.
So now that I’ve pointed out the obvious, what’s next? Being with the reality of what we see, think and feel about it all, and connecting with our unique sense of inner balance and understanding. Basically, getting used to balancing the energy and emotion of endings and beginnings while being true to the core of who you are as you transform with each adjustment.
Being With All the Thoughts and Feelings To Discover New Thrive Points
The chaotic and dynamic energy flow of 2020 is what inspired me to explore balancing the energy and emotion of beginnings and endings. Now more than ever we need to be present and aware of what we are doing, thinking and feeling moment to moment. It’s the starting point to help us understand how to build something better for ourselves – and by extension the world – that feels solid and realistic.
The luxury of cruise control is gone loves’, just accept it. It was just a fantasy anyway. Now the curtain is FULLY pulled back we have to get real with life and ourselves. This is how we clearly see where we are wasting time and energy pushing at something that will go nowhere, rather than discovering where we can heal at the deepest levels both personally and globally.
And as much as we may feel we’ve aged decades within this one year, (or maybe that’s just me), 2020 does offer up one very powerful gift – deep clarity.
We have a clearer sense of what doesn’t fit, feel good, or is completely intolerable moving forward, as well as what and who we simply can’t live without. On an individual and collective level we are also unraveling pain and hurt we’ve experienced throughout our lives. Our extensive time in social isolation places us face to face with all our hard-worn habits and routines that are actually coping mechanisms or distractions from what we weren’t ready to see, and is now plain.
The hot mess “otherwise known as 2020” is our chance to turn personal clarity and realizations into active steps that connect us with our true selves, and enable us to thrive in ways that are natural and sustainable long-term. This deep level of clarity can hurt, feel enormously frustrating and put us in a position of facing ALL our personal and global demons and loose ends at once, which is super intense. However, it also creates solidarity on levels we could have never imagined. Collectively we can connect and bond over shared impacts of this year’s events, while also facing what we have been able to cleverly avoid, or stay on the edge of personally, for years. It’s a pretty powerful opportunity, even if it stings in all our uncomfortable places.
Ebb, Flow and Finding Balance With Endings and Beginnings
There is no way to avoid feeling all the feelings right now, nor should we. For too long the modern world has been operating mostly from a “mind-centric” space focused on doing, results, and working on a never ending to-do list to feel “successful” or “worthy”. Now we have to create something completely different and counterintuitive to the well-worn rules and dynamics that indicate “success” for ourselves and humanity as a whole.
It’s time to get creative and innovate how to blend our emotional selves and well-being with making a living and building a life we enjoy without needing to escape it on a regular basis. Each aspect of this equation is essential to generating balance within ourselves, and assists with navigating the outer world in a clear, grounded way that creates safety and freedom physically, mentally and emotionally. As we practice and live into a new expression of self, we can share this enlightened vibe with the rest of the world. Think of it as being your own powerful anchor in a sea of anchors each doing their part to create stability with a wider, more expansive reach.
Look, it doesn’t take a genius to notice humans often unknowingly act in pursuit of feeling good or to actively avoid unpleasant emotions in equal measure. When you throw in a variety of the unpredictable conditions generated in this year alone, compounding that with A LOT of pre-existing global issues, finding stability in the ebb and flow dynamic is a heroic act of constant alchemy. Right now we are being asked to consistently blend our thoughts, feelings and actions into a fresh way of doing and thinking to meet new needs that are often quite unpredictable, and will continue to be in many ways. It’s a living and breathing expression of the creative process, over and over, which also means we get to play and make different choices as we move forward, too.
Personally, I was living in a fantasy of avoidance about a few things, and this year woke me the F up. I’m sad, grieving and fearful like anyone who goes through big, deep, unexpected levels of transformational change very suddenly, but I’m also extremely grateful. I truly feel I would have been stuck repeating the same old acts of emotional avoidance repeatedly, and playing out old family patterns, without doing the necessary healing to finally break free and thrive.
Now I have an opportunity to choose what something means rather than jump to assumptions (old family habit), and be more proactive in deciding what is garbage mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I can slow down and really listen at a slower pace, rather than power through using the same old routines and strategies to “get it done”, believing that pushing gets me farther than simply “being”.
I have a whole new frame of reference for so many things, but most importantly, for myself, especially when it comes to balancing the energy and emotion of endings and beginnings to help me release what needs to go without judgment. When I can be and stay present with this idea, and put it into practice, I’m in a state of creative alchemy that feels empowering instead of limiting. My hope is that you feel this opportunity, too.
Interested in reading more from similar posts? Check out Uncertainty Paired With Acceptance Creates Personal Empowerment or Time to Trust Your Feelings As a Guide to Clarity and Self Mastery. If you like podcasts, check out mine called Flirting With Enlightenment.
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