by Martha Alderson, author of “Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-Doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks“
Many of us are finally settling into a place of acceptance about our new reality. One way to use your time while staying at home, sheltering-in-place, or under quarantine is to look inward and explore your emotions. Emotions define us, direct our actions, and express where we are in our spiritual evolution. Emotions affect our energy and make us human.
The longer you’re socially isolated the more you’re forced to examine and question and react differently to views and conventions you’ve always held dear. Beliefs you once identified with and which gave you a sense of yourself are stripped away. This is not always easy. In fact, it can feel quite painful.
We’re all going through these unprecedented times together, yet each of us meets, views, and experiences the challenges we face in our own unique way. How you react as the reality you’ve always known shifts and changes around you often represents what you are here to learn.
In other words, when you’re confronted with the external opposition facing us today: the virus, lack of money, out of work or having to work at home, holed up inside alone or with family, demands made by others (add your own challenges here), ask yourself, how often do you get sidetracked lashing out? How often do you give up completely? How often do you let whatever or whoever opposes you have their way?
Rarely Occasionally Frequently Constantly
Now, ask yourself, when you’re confronted with the internal opposition of exhaustion, discouragement, fear, and negativism, how often do you get side-tracked lashing out, give up completely, or let whatever opposes you have its way?
Rarely Occasionally Frequently Constantly
Both external opposition and internal opposition demand you fight through trials or lose energy and give up. As long as you give up your personal power to another person or a belief, emotions will dominate and bully you.
There is another way. You acknowledge what blocks you. You search for the significance and meaning of the opposition, the obstacle, the setback, the disaster, the bullying, or the foe. Often the greatest lesson in a conflict and while challenged is learning how to hold onto your individual power.
The more challenges you face, the more emotional you feel. Positive emotions fuel your energy and your desire to keep going. Negative emotions adversely affect your capacity to perceive and receive your intuitive vision. Preoccupied in fear and uncertainty, your powers of observation and ability to live in the moment are lost.
In order to truly understand how emotions affect you, it’s time to explore all your feelings. Allow raw emotions out into the light. Become aware of the bodily sensations you experience around differing emotions. In learning how to access, accept, and embrace all your emotions, you’re better able to use them productively.
Though you might not be able to do much about many of these challenges and external obstacles beyond facing them and doing your best, you can go inward and explore how the difficulties, fears and uncertainties effect your emotions and make you feel about yourself and those around you.
Think of trials and complications as emotional lessons created specifically for you to learn more about yourself, what makes you stumble and despair, what calms you down and soothes your emotional states, and what lifts your spirit. So long as you remain open and make your way around obstacles, you’ll soon find that the conflicts and setbacks offer you opportunities to gain new skills, tools and virtues needed to succeed in all aspects of your life.
When you’re willing to dive deep into your emotions, learn about yourself, and begin to trust your own inner knowing, you are gifted with insight, sparks of inspiration, and invitations to explore ideas that pop into your imagination. Releasing unproductive habits and belief patterns is a spiritual task that leads you to develop complete faith in yourself no matter what comes.
Martha Alderson, MA is the author of the best-selling “The Plot Whisperer“. She writes novels for readers, plot books for writers, and most recently “Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-Doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks” for anyone looking to enrich their lives with more creativity and inspiration. Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
