Saying goodbye. Missing what used to be. Losing a friend, income, health. Persistent hard times in our relationships. As tough as these things can be, I believe the most difficult thing we endure is self-doubt. Loss of confidence is crippling and robs us of love, joy, peace and fun. We’re stuck in fear. The no-mans-land of transition between what was and what will be.
Goodbyes, losses, and transitions are times of uncertainty. The pieces of our lives get tossed in the air and how they might land is unpredictable at best.
I’m in the process of writing the first draft of my book and I hit a wall of doubt so hard I felt like I’d been in a car crash. I was frozen in fear, emotions raw, and ready to pack it in – defeated.
Times of transition in our romantic relationships are no different. Those times when all we want is for the hard times to end. This is when we can stay stuck in fear and doubt or, we can patiently (or impatiently) wade through the muck taking consistent steps to go from the dream to the outcome of what we desire.
I’m in transition. The concept of this book was exciting. The dream of seeing it in print is exciting. The transition between desire and outcome is messy, challenging, ugly and hard.
Anything that feels hard means we are out of alignment with our true self. And our true self is what we’re missing more than anything else. Yes, we miss who are partner used to be, but we really miss is how we used to feel with them.
When transition times are tough, and we feel frustrated, discouraged or sad, our memories often make us feel worse than we already do. They become our foe instead of our friend. We compare life as it is to life as it used to be.
Good memories leave us longing for what was, and we grieve our loss. Difficult memories are the evidence ‘proving’ our hurts are valid.
This happens because we are perceiving those memories through the lens of our current emotions, and when we’re tuned into the hard emotions it reinforces our current discomfort. An unwanted side effect is that we’re changing the good memories into difficult ones and making our situation worse than it already is.
Shifting out of those tough emotions and returning to your true self isn’t as easy as think positive, repeat affirmations and everything will be okay. The only way to effectively heal emotions is in the body where they are felt.
All of it requires consciousness of thought, word, action, intention and energetic presence. It requires a return to love, and authenticity. It requires empowering oneself to confidently (whether we feel it or not) choose how we are going to show up in the present moment.
In writing my book I’ve been facing old hurts and conflict that are difficult memories – definitely my foe not my friend. Through conscious attention I used good memories to circle out of the muck I was in.
I brought up memories of clients whose lives were changed because of the work we did together. I recalled their faces, their words, the sound of their voices, the time of day and the seasons when we held our sessions. I felt my own body transition from self-doubt to the energy of their delight in how amazing their transformations were. And I carried that energy with me.
You are a sensory being and an emotional being. The more you can evoke feel good emotions through as many of your senses as possible the better. You’re imprinting positive emotions at a cellular level instead of your mind just repeating affirmations. Your mind is powerful, but your emotions are more powerful.
The messy work of writing this book still needs to be done. The messy work of transitioning out of your tough relationship times still needs to be done. But we can use our memories as friends and make the work less challenging and ugly.
We can allow self-doubt and fear to consume us and stay stuck in perpetual transition or, we can step-by-step transition to the other side and live our dreams instead of just dreaming them.
It’s healing one emotion and hurt at a time. It’s returning to your true self through love. It’s choosing to transition from self-doubt to confidence. You have free will and every choice can be a conscious one.
You get to tell your mind what to think. You don’t have to be a slave to it. Memories can be that warm friend who helps you through the tough times by reminding you of fun, joy and love. Embodying those emotions eases the transition and is part of how you make love great.
Love,
p.s. Be part of a community that is focused on how to make love great and learn how to love your love life. Click here.
