In the tradition of the four elements, winter is the season of water. The element of water relates to the emotions. Emotions flow like waves through us, wash over and past, or can pool up in an eddy. Water, like feelings, need to move or becomes stagnant, stinky and gross.
Too much water and we become isolated, depressed or overwhelmed. Ever feel like you’re drowning? Got a sinking feeling? Not enough water and our emotions freeze, like ice. Water teaches us how to ride the emotional waves of life, to not resist, thrash around and burn out.
What do lifeguards tell us to do if we get sucked into a riptide? To relax, let it pull you out, and trust that it will return you to the beach. Sounds simple, right?
As someone who has been tossed around the surf like a sock in the laundry, more times than I can count, I know how disorienting, scary and powerless water can make us feel. I also relish moments of calm water when I can just float, gently rocked and buoyed by the soothing motion of the sea.
QUESTIONS FOR WATER:
How can you find calm?
How do you relate to your emotions?
Winter is also the perfect time to go inside, reflect on the previous year and make choices about what’s next.
This January I will be hosting a Desire Map workshop for anyone who wants to take some time to be intentional around creating the life we want. I found the Desire Map (created by Danielle Laporte) when I was contemplating my divorce from alcohol. I was quitting drinking because I didn’t like the way it made me feel. I wasn’t having serious consequences, my health was good, on the outside things seemed fine, even good. But I wasn’t feeling right.
Desire map drew me in right away because it flipped something for me. I thought that I had to do things, and that would lead me to feeling a certain way. For example: having a job will make me feel like I’m contributing to society. Not yelling at my kids will make me feel like a decent parent. But I was doing these things and still feeling frustrated, tired and grouchy. I wanted to feel as good as possible every day.
I would look around and see a great home, neighborhood, community, healthy family, cute dog. I had achieved all the things that I’d wanted to, but it still didn’t feel like enough. I didn’t feel the joy that I was working so hard to create.
Desire Map dovetails with the thought worked I learned in coaching, in that we can lead with our feelings, use the way we want to feel as a kind of steering mechanism. Our emotions can be used as a compass, and then we can make choices from that place.
The truth is, feelings are produced by thoughts, not by outside circumstances.
Many of us want to “get out of our heads” for a few minutes (or more) each day. At the end of a long busy day, I just wanted to tune out for a little relief, a little peace. Our culture has provided us with many options for numbing out. Well, my coach asked “what is in your head that you’re trying to get away from?” hmmmm…
Basically I had given my mind way too much control. Minds are great at following through, carrying out tasks, they make great worker bees. But the mind isn’t the Queen. The heart is the Queen, and when we lead from there, we can experience positive emotion without really changing much at all.
The Desire Map process asks us to really narrow down to just a few feeling states that we want to feel every day. Not at the end of the year, not when this project is finally complete, or this thing ends.
How do we want to feel today? Every day?
I was able to move from surviving the week and living for the weekend, to finding joy in each day.
When you lead with feelings you can bounce your daily choices off of those feelings and decide if a particular action will lead to that feeling state. We can slow down and listen to our hearts.
The heart whispers, while the mind tends to scream.
For example I want to feel free. Will signing up for x y or z help me feel this way? Would cooking more or less for my family help me feel this way?
If you’d like to join me for this virtual Desire Map workshop, please chick the link below.