SFH #18: Feelings and Change

How a healthy lifestyle and our emotions connect ⚡️

How do you feel about the change you've experienced over the last year? Going through COVID is indeed testing our resilience and ability to adapt to change and reach the goals we've set for ourselves. 🧫

My emotions have been all over the map with all the changes, whether I desired the change or not. 🧭

Whatever our feelings are, we do not typically achieve the change we desire until we slow down, pause, and become aware of our own emotions. Awareness allows us to access a 'truth' that we may not be facing or seeing. Awareness enables us to 'be' with our feelings. No 'doing' is needed here. Once we can 'be, ' we can acknowledge the feelings, investigate, and hold space for our feelings. That last part sounds easy and yet takes plenty of practice, especially for deep-seated stories and beliefs. I've had a heck of a journey unpacking mine throughout the last few years. 

I'm not asking you to dive in and unpack your uncomfortable feelings. If that is something you want to explore, it can be pretty gratifying and, at the same time, unsettling. Today, I wanted to offer the first steps of recognizing and bringing attention to your feelings. Through attention to your emotions, you may access a pathway to the kind of change you seek.

The more we identify the emotions surrounding our struggles (and triumphs, for that matter), the more we start to see the obstacles and the pathways to success in the goals we set.

Here is a strategy you can try to practice around your healthy habits and feelings.

1. Identify ONE small change that builds into a long-term goal for success. It could be drinking more water, meditating in the morning, putting together a routine for family dinner, or anything healthy you want to try. ☝🏽

2. Focus. Focus on that one thing and the action steps you can take daily to make it happen. For example, put meditation on your calendar, carry around a large water bottle with you, do some meal planning/prep for dinner. At this stage, as you think about these action steps, see what's coming up for you? How do you feel when you start to plan things out? Joy, frustration, exhaustion? All you have to do is recognize and 'be' with whatever comes up. 🔍

3. Write and reflect. Keep a daily written account, or log, around this change. Write down your new healthy choices and how you approached the steps while documenting the feelings that came up for you around these choices. Whether it's all positive and easy, up and down, or tricky, try not to hold judgment of what it means for you. It lands however it lands. After recognizing and experiencing the feelings, the next step is to investigate--asking 'why do I feel this way?' ✍🏼

Take it slow and be gentle. If you want to go deeper, see the video below. 📺