It may feel like you are at the whim of the world sometimes, but you don’t just stumble across emotions, you create them
For much of my life, I was a person that had to navigate deep depressions – name treatment and I have likely tried it. For years, it seemed that I could not escape my biology. I thought that happiness was an experience reserved for other people, but not me.
That is until I started practicing the first concept…
#1 Non-attachment:
The concept of non-attachment stumped me until I realized how powerful the stories that we tell ourselves are. One of the stories that had an especially strong hold on me (for good reason) was that I was a depressed person. Mental health issues were part of my identity, I always claimed it, “my depression”. This made my situation feel hopeless like I would never be able to change anything about it.
Once I made the decision to stop claiming the depression, it opened up ways for me to take meaningful action. I stopped saying things like, “I’m depressed” or “my depression”. Instead, I treated the heaviness like a storm system and allowed it to move through me — not attaching any label to it beyond the emotion. I have found that these “storm systems” move through a lot faster when you don’t cling to them
“Non-attachment is not that you own nothing, it’s that nothing owns you.”
You can be attached to people, places, ideas, and things. That is not what causes suffering. You create suffering when you are attached to outcomes — when you create expectations around how you think a situation should be.
#2 Unconditional Love:
This is actually a misnomer. Like Sadhguru says,
“There is no such thing as unconditional love, there are conditions and then there is love.”
Somewhere along the way, we started treating love like a transaction. Someone does something that you deem as bad or undesirable and you withhold love.
I have done this with past relationships (not just romantic) in all sorts of painful ways like stone-walling, lashing out, or giving silent treatment. More important though was the reason why I was withholding love — it was so automatic that I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Through therapy and other practices, I realized that I was withholding love because of the ways that I had been wounded in the past.
Unconditional love is not about putting up with unacceptable behavior or staying in toxic relationships. It is about meeting people where they are at. That doesn’t mean that we settle for anything less than what we deserve in any kind of human-to-human relationship.
Loving unconditionally allows for growth and evolution without resentment.
#3 Radical Candor:
This one can radically transform your life, but there is a price to be paid. You could lose friends, your relationship, family members might quit speaking to you, but what’s on the other side is a sense of immense freedom.
Start with asking yourself:
- In what ways are you editing yourself?
- Which situations are you contorting yourself to fit in?
- In what ways are you not doing or saying what you know to be true?
Once you’ve identified these, start speaking your truth—but remember this isn’t free reign to act an ass. Having radically candid conversations require a level of safety and the whole point is to stand in your truth and integrity. If your truth is anything like mine, it’s insanely uncomfortable to set boundaries with people that you might not have ever set them with before.
Watch how all the wrong people will start falling out of your life and all the right ones start popping into it.
The aim is not to be happy all the time, but to experience more of it. Like any other emotion, happiness is something that you create.
These practices won’t solve all of your problems, but start implementing these practices and see how you and your life will begin to radically shift.
What practices would you add?
?This week I’m…
? Reading:
Recapture the Rapture by Jaime Wheal
? Listening:
The Rich Roll Podcast ft. Anthony Taylor
The James Altucher Show ft. Jaime Wheal
??♀️ Practicing:
Somatic Experiencing Therapy
Releasing trauma and stress
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