“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
What an important reminder from Maya Angelou.
Picking up tormenting WHAT IF thoughts when life gets challenging can be as addictive as picking up a drink or drug.
We self-sabotage our peace of mind and productivity with tormentful WHAT IFS.
Choosing to deliberately replace our WHAT IFS by gently accepting “what is” in front of us will decrease anxiety.
WHAT IF’S keep us focused on the future or our past unable to be present to today and cause us unnecessary emotional unrest.
Let’s stop this tormenting WHAT IF habit moving forward and improve our discipline and lessen our anxiety by choosing to not be our own worst enemy.
What is happening in our lives right now is where we are up to in our journey. If it’s really bloody awful all we can do to get through is hold on to love and let go of fear. Remembering the love that does exist in this world for us and for others will help us move through our darkest days. If we let go of love and hold on to fearful thoughts we snowball our anxiety into an unmanageable size and all progress will grind to a halt.
In my darkest days I have had to learn to stop tormenting myself with the WHAT IFS. When facing death of loved ones, healing my childhood sexual abuse, being ejected from my biological tribe for speaking up, my divorce and the relentlessly tough recovery one day at a time from addiction with booze and drugs I can honestly empathise with those who feel emotionally lost in the dark. Where we allow love, light follows to help us see our way forward.
So if you are feeling lost or are supporting another going through their own dark hell, please remember to hold on to love no matter how much familiar, dark, scary, intimidating ghosts from the past try to spook you into doing nothing, saying nothing and believing you are nothing.
Grief, fear and trauma will always accompany opportunities for emotional growth. Emotional pain, distress and discomfort nudges us to move forward, to change, to learn, to stand up and speak up and own our personal power, not give it away. When a child is birthing it is painful, messy and overwhelming. When new chapters to our life are birthing it’s often the same. Ask for help if you need it, and remember all those in your life today that you love and are grateful for. We can use love as a handrail, a reason and a responsibility to be the very best versions of ourselves we can be.
A tip that works a treat if the WHAT IFS are swamping us with fear and the shaming “shoulda, woulda, couldas” is to remember to just live one day at a time.
When times of big changes get tough I also try to remember that if nothing ever changed there would be no beautiful butterflies, rainbows or babies.
May your heart’s fears be washed out with nothing but love.
Lotsa love Cynthia xxx
© Copyright 2016 Cynthia J. Morton Emotional Fitness™
This Word Vitamin is an excerpt from my latest bookset “The Four Seasons of the Heart”. If you would like to order your own full set of Daily Word Vitamins one for each day of the year, in book form for yourself or as a gift just click on the SHOP tab and place your order.
