Bah Humbug Feelings Are Normal
It is starting to feel like the holiday season in my home. Our eldest daughter just got home from college. My husband Angus and our youngest daughter found and put up our Christmas tree. The laser lights are sparkling outside. Angus’ birthday is just around the corner. There is a festive air, but the holidays can be difficult for people too. There are often high expectations for joy and connection that don’t get met. I have talked to some people who say they feel lonelier this time of year and others who feel the loss of loved ones more poignantly.
Whatever your experience, it is helpful to see that putting pressure on yourself to feel differently or to do better is never helpful. Not this time of year or any other. We are so conditioned to think it is a problem when we have a bad feeling. We are bad feeling phobic. It is good to know when you are not in a good feeling state, but not so you can react to it. Simply to have it as an indicator that your state of mind is not at its best. It lets you know when you are pointing your mind in a direction that is not serving you. It is a good wake up call to relax and be kind and gentle with yourself.
I have been seeing lots of posts about stress and the holidays. Feelings of stress let you know when you are caught up in thinking life will be better when something is different out there. Even this morning when I thought about Christmas shopping I felt stress. This is not bad or wrong. It simply lets me know that I am thinking life would be better if I didn’t have to go shopping this weekend. It looked to me at that moment that my happiness would be coming from having my shopping done. This may seem like a silly or trivial example, but it translates to everything. A client might say to me I hate the holidays because I am alone. I don’t have children. I’m not in a relationship. I feel terrible. Now those may be factual, but that is not where the unhappiness comes from. Unhappiness comes from the misunderstanding that inner well-being is dependent on being in a relationship and having children. It doesn’t, but when we think it does our feelings reflect those beliefs. That is the gift of consciousness.
But what about loss?
People say course, the holidays would feel better if the loved ones who are no longer with us were here. How can I be so cruel and unfeeling to say otherwise? A client recently said that if she really embraced the understanding I was sharing with her that she would become a robot. I see it completely differently. The small and limited time that I genuinely see my feelings of peace and well-being are not dependent on anything outside of me or on my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors being a certain way, I experience freedom. The feeling fills me up with the experience of well-being and peace. At those times I feel full of life and vibrancy. I feel the opposite of a robot. I feel alive and vital. This means I am okay with whatever my feeling experience is in that moment. I don’t need it to feel a certain way in order to be okay. I might feel grief and loss fully, but my well-being is not lost in that experience.
I do not live here all the time. I have plenty of times in my life when it looks to me like life would be better if… But even just knowing that is what I am doing makes this feel less painful. Just a small taste of the infinite peace and love that is who I am, goes a long way to making the times I forget easier to bear.
My wish for you this holiday season is that you experience the love and peace of who you are more fully in whatever circumstance or state of mind you find yourself in, and when it looks like life would be better if… May you not need to change that or make yourself wrong for it. May you have compassion for your experience in the moment and know nothing can stop you from being who you are. Your true nature is always right there. You have all you need to navigate any life circumstance. You are your greatest resource. Your love, wisdom, and peace of mind are right there within you. All it takes is to look in that direction with an open or some might say empty mind. Sending you love!
If you would like to look in the direction of your Authentic Self with a delightful group of people and explore an understanding that leads to greater inner freedom and effortless access to your potential join Barb Patterson and me for this two-day workshop New Year. Fresh Start. in January. Click here to learn more. And if you are a Solopreneur and would like to be part of a dynamic group as you take your business to the next level here is the link for our upcoming Mastermind. If you sign up for the Mastermind by December 15th, the New Year. Fresh Start workshop is included for FREE.
Rohini Ross is excited to present The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks with the original students of Sydney Banks in Santa Monica, CA. She is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a transformative coach and trainer, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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jeanne
22.12.2018 at 06:39Wow. I really “heard” this post. Thank you, Rohini.