We can’t be happy all the time. We are going to have times when we are feeling down, sad, disappointed, blah. That is not ever a problem.
You are having a human experience. I will share my personal feelings and a few thoughts as an example.
This year has been a lot, a lot of emotional ups and down and big decisions have been made. It has been a hard-hitting financial year also, with some big-ticket items being of necessity. Thing is, these are all my personal thoughts about 2023 thus far. These thoughts are leaving me with feelings of sadness, and just feel blah today.
Nothing has gone wrong…it is ok
One thing I remind myself currently is that it is ok to have sad days, down days, it is all part of being human. If we didn’t have sadness sometimes, we wouldn’t know what happiness is and we also wouldn’t appreciate happiness to the full.
So today I am giving myself the grace and the space to process and allow the emotions of sadness and some disappointment to be there. I am not forcing them out, I am not forcing myself to feel something that I truly don’t.
Remember, our emotions are driven from our thoughts about something, this can be consciously or even subconsciously. It isn’t that 2023 as a year in itself is an issue at all, it is all my thoughts about things that have happened this year. If I stopped and really examined the year, I can find a lot of things to be thankful for and appreciate. Fun things that I was able to do as well. So, it is all my thoughts about the events that are causing me to feel the way I do today. I have awareness around that and that is so important.
Now I am just letting myself be, holding space for myself to just feel the feelings I have today. I am allowing myself to just be in them, not pushing them away or trying to distract myself from them with shopping, eating, binge watching TV or anything else. I am just being.
What this means for you?
You can do the same thing, you don’t have to feel happy all the time, if we did, we wouldn’t know what happiness really was. Like Brooke Castillo says, “life is 50/50”. When we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, we get to know ourselves that much better, in a deeper way. When you know yourself better you know how to find the cause of your unhappiness and start changing it.
When we don’t turn to false pleasure so we don’t have to feel the sadness or disappointment, we gain confidence and as we keep doing it we keep building confidence. This empowers you and the more confidence you have the more you keep empowering yourself and life changes.
Not that you won’t ever feel sadness or other emotions, but you will know how to allow them, learn where they are coming from, process them and start creating more happiness and fulfillment.
When we think that we should always have happiness then we turn to external things to create happiness, such as food, shopping, watching TV, drinking, etc.
The thing we can do is realize that half of our life is going to be and should be negative emotions and we can allow them and process them. Building a deeper relationship with ourselves.
When we are willing to feel a negative emotion half of the time, without having to turn to an external source as a buffer for the emotion, you remove any negative consequences of the buffering, but you also get to create more happiness and fulfillment long term.
Is it wrong to feel sad?
The simple answer is no. We have sad days, down days, it is all part of being human. If we didn’t have sadness sometimes, we wouldn’t know what happiness is and we also wouldn’t appreciate happiness to the full. Sadness is a natural emotion we experience in our bodies.
What does it mean to allow an emotion?
Easiest way to allow an emotion is, ask yourself, What am I feeling? Where is it in my body? How do I know this is what I am feeling, and not another emotion? Once you have identified it, just breath it in. Allow it by being open it it, move towards it, Remind yourself that the emotion is just a vibration in your body.
Where do emotions come from?
Our emotions come from our thoughts. When we have a circumstance we then have a thought, consciously or subconsciously. That thought, regardless if we are aware of it o not then creates us to experience an emotion in our bodies. An emotion is a vibration in our bodies.