I have such plans before I go away. I imagine this relaxed me chilling at the beach, walking in the mountains and laughing delightedly at nothing in particular. Of course I am thinner and prettier and just “oh so happy’ with everything! Instead, the reality is that no matter where I go, I take myself along and that is not always a good thing. Travel sickness, an aversion to mattresses that other people have slept on and a natural impatience are a few issues that spring to mind. I’m just saying!
We all have excess baggage that we carry around and usually have been for quite some time. Sometimes it really is a whole lot of stuff we’ve shoved into cupboards but it can also be relationships that we have outgrown but hang on to out of habit. If we dig a little deeper, underneath both of these, we often find outdated thought patterns that weigh us down, and keep us stuck. When we are bogged down with useless things, bad relationships and unhelpful beliefs, we get stressed and life loses its sparkle.
If your boss ridicules or shames you, or a co-worker snubs you, through professionalism we often shove our emotions into the closet and ignore our feelings. When friends or lovers let us down, we keep quiet because we don’t have the time or energy to fight every battle. While these are effective short term strategies that we do need to employ at times, if it becomes our modus operandi, over the long term, the build up becomes a problem.
Sit quietly without the usual noise and distraction and allow things that were hidden to come to light. Come back to all those times when you’ve had a strong emotional reaction to something, but have suppressed your response because it was the appropriate thing to do.
Ask yourself what happened for you? What was going on inside you? What were you reacting to? Examine your thoughts, your emotions and your relationships. Are you reacting to a memory or a reality? It is only when we know what we are dealing with that we are able to decide if this is something of value to keep or something outdated to toss.