Feeling My Way Through 2013

Many of us devote time between Christmas and the New Year to reminiscing about the success we experienced during the previous 12 months. This year I’ve chosen to remember the feelings I allowed myself to express because I believe that our lives are truly shaped by the emotions we allow ourselves to feel. It’s quite clear to me that the day I started consciously “feeling” my way through life was the day that I started noticing the rich nuances that permeate my existence.  While this concept may seem foreign, I’ve found that each experience I have produces a specific feeling or emotion and that’s truly what makes the experience unforgettable and meaningful to me.

Feelings of joy, happiness, love and gratitude top our list of desired emotions but I also find great value in anger, sadness, disappointment, grief, resentment, jealousy and fear.  Bound within each of our emotions is a golden nugget of brilliance that brings us closer to our Truth while guiding us to our most desired life.  With this knowledge I try to fan the flame of my emotions rather than snuff them out, yet I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always succeed at it. Joy, pride and accomplishment were the main feelings I wanted to experience in 2013, and yet, I can clearly look back on the year and see that I wasn’t quite ready for the experiences I chose to bring about the feelings I desired.

Last January I looked forward to a year filled with great promise as I decided to substantially grow the readership of my two blogs, join a mastermind group and start my own business. What I didn’t anticipate was the amount of fear I would experience ultimately spurring me to deeply root my heels in resistance.

At the beginning of the year I joined a mastermind led by Tara Marino that’s focus was to voice our dreams and take action to bring them to fruition. While all was good for a week or two, it wasn’t long before I started feeling dread and fear. I realized that the group’s sole purpose was to hold everyone accountable to their dreams and that scared me silly. If I wouldn’t hold myself accountable (which I wasn’t), I sure as heck didn’t want anyone else breathing down my neck to do so. A late September group challenge finally brought me out of my shell and allowed me to begin allowing substantial change into my life. Little by little, I’ve let go of the fear and replaced it with the elation of sticking to something I find great value in along with the deep sense of satisfaction associated with watching my dreams begin to come true.

In regards to my two blogs, the success I’d hoped for never materialized. I found myself pouring more energy into my day job than my passion for writing and the longer I didn’t write, the harder it was to go back to. I’ve since found a rhythm to my writing and know that I feel more grounded and passionate when I allow the creativity of my writing to fuel me. While I still find it challenging to balance a full-time job with two blogs, I realize that every effort I make brings me closer to my desire for a well read blog.

Late this summer I learned of an amazing program called My Whole Life Transformation. Three coaches, Michelle Hastie – Body Image Expert, Geoff Laughton – Relationship Expert, and Frantonia M. Pollins – Empowerment Expert, would choose two people to guide through a 6 month transformation process which would be captured on video and made into a web-based reality show. The thought of being able to experience this made my heart sing! As fate would have it, I was chosen and have been on a high ever since. My self-imposed boundaries have been pushed many times now and yet I relish every moment I have with these incredible people. I’ve learned that I can open up to feeling even more of my emotions and that the payoff for doing so is a freedom and expansion I never knew existed.

As the result of both my Mastermind and My Whole Life Transformation, I’ve experienced the joy and confidence to give voice to one of my deepest desires. In October, I finally spoke the words, “I am a motivator and my dream is to be a motivational speaker.” While it’s quite easy to write the words, vocalizing them has been a very different experience. I could hear curiosity in the voices of both my coaches and Mastermind participants, but I could also feel their support because I believe in my dream. I own my dream. I am my dream. In the upcoming year, I will open up to more of this desire but because I opened up to the idea at all, I was gifted with a beautiful chance to spread my wings. In December, Antiqua Lisha Libbey of HUGS Talk Radio asked me to be a guest on her show and speak about trusting your inner desires, even if you’d never done so before. This opportunity thrilled me to my core and helped me lean into just how strong my desire to motivate others truly is. In fact, it was the moment I’m most proud of from 2013 because Antiqua saw the light shining within me and lovingly helped me share it with the world.

The one experience that really didn’t materialize was the starting of my own business. While I privately consulted with several people this year on both interior color and self empowerment, I didn’t trust myself enough to fully dive in to the life of a business owner. I imagine that the biggest reason for this is the uncertainty of it all yet something tells me that 2014 will arrive with more courage and moxie than did the year we’re closing out.

While 2013 didn’t exactly turn out the way I’d envisioned it a year ago, the emotions and experiences I welcomed into my life more than made up for any discrepancies. In fact, I know that everything I allowed myself to receive has more than prepared me to ROCK 2014.

Desires

Wikipedia states that desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. When a person desires something or someone, their sense of longing is excited by the enjoyment or the thought of the item or person, and they want to take actions to obtain their goal. This seems perfectly logical to me, yet I’ve found it hasn’t always been the way I’ve allowed desires to unfold in my life.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say that many times I’ve actively thwarted my chances of having my desires come to fruition.

If, desire causes us to want to take action, then I was frequently on track, albeit the wrong track. The action I so often took was in the form of self-sabotage which of course ruins any chance of receiving it. I was stuck in the emotional push and pull of my desires. Yet, that was actually an improvement over how I had historically treated them. Not all that long ago, I believed desires were things that “other people” had and the thought that I might actually have any of my own caused a mixture of confusion, denial and sadness.  If there’s one thing I’m now sure of, it’s that we ALL have desires. Some of us just choose to pack them away into the deep, dark recesses of our mind.

The beautiful thing about desires is that when we think about them they produce strong feelings.  Conversely, the not so beautiful thing about desires is that when we think about them they produce strong feelings…  Feelings for some of us, and I count myself in this group, are scary because as we experience them we may also sense a loss of control.  They can feel so good, or so bad, that we temporarily lose our grip on the control that we grasp at so tightly.

Frequently, our desires produce feelings of excitement, happiness and joy.  But, another key feeling associated with true desire is the frantic sensation of, “Oh my, is that really possible? Could it really happen?” While I believe the frantic feeling is necessary to experience in conjunction with our desire, it’s also the feeling that many of us choose to stuff away and as we do, we also snuff out the desire itself.  For years I was caught in this vicious cycle, so much so that snuffing out my desires became an unconscious habit that left me believing that I was devoid of having any.

What I required in order to become reacquainted with my desires was to activate my awareness and replace the unconscious action with a conscious one.  I had to consciously choose to keep all feelings associated with my desire, especially the frantic ones, at the forefront of my thoughts and use all of my senses to experience them.  In allowing myself to see, taste, hear, smell and touch my desires I was able to connect with them and through that connection start the process of receiving them. In short, I was able to access the dark recesses where I’d sent my desires to reside and bring them back to the light of day. I initiated this process by taking Tara Marino’s program, The Power of Sensuality, which encouraged me to live life consciously and engaged with each of my senses.  I unabashedly recommend every woman take that life changing program.

The self-sabotage that I used to succumb to so readily was the result of not wanting to experience the necessary frantic energy of “what if”.  I now see the blessing in “what if”. Without that feeling there isn’t the necessary passion associated with the action to actually follow through.  The pull I felt as I accessed the fullness of my desires, and the pushing away because of the uncertainty of “what if” feels like a slight tug now. Oh yes, I still experience the push and pull in my feelings and emotions, but I’ve learned to activate my senses in order to feel my feelings and stay on the right track headed toward my desires.  Self-sabotage has much less power over me now, and in full service of my senses, that knowledge tastes divinely sweet.