Perception is Everything

Perception is everything, but you’re still allowed to be sad!

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.” – Eckhart Tolle

I love this quote, but I think there is something to be elaborated on here:

So one thing I’ve been really adamant about lately is the detrimental side of the “self-help” industry and their ridiculous standards of “ALWAYS THINK POSITIVE”. Eh hem, is it just me or has spending years of life trying to stifle out every perceived ‘negative’ emotion left us with a shit storm of emotions that never got dealt with on our plates to deal with all at once? Yeah, I thought I wasn’t alone in this.

The additional angle is hyper-analyzing every single situation and attempting to trace it back to what thought, word or action I messed up with to create my current reality. A nail in my tire? Ohhh….how did I manifest THIS experience. Must have been that moment I drifted from gratitude from my current car and thought about having a new one. A friend died in a tragic accident, wait…. don’t grieve,..understand everything in life has its perfect purpose and focus on the joy of knowing them while you did. Maybe even a touch of religious undertone with “they are in a better place now” ETC. ETC. ETC. You guys know what I’m talking about. If you were a part of the explosion of people who adopted the law of attraction as your religion after the movie The Secret you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Chances are quite good that this movie changed your perceptions and therefore your life for the better. It was a beautiful intro to a complex subject that allowed the masses to understand and was the starting point for so many of deeper discovery. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told someone to watch that movie before I ever attempted to have a deeper conversation about quatum phyisics with them, but it was only the tip of the iceberg and after years of coming up short with this limited set of ideas I started to realize how much we are continuously trying to NOT feel. Not only not feel, but to judge and label each feeling as good or bad, positive or negative.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Chances are quite good that this movie changed your perceptions and therefore your life for the better. It was a beautiful intro to a complex subject that allowed the masses to understand and was the starting point for so many of deeper discovery. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told someone to watch that movie before I ever attempted to have a deeper conversation about quatum phyisics with them, but it was only the tip of the iceberg and after years of coming up short with this limited set of ideas I started to realize how much we are continuously trying to NOT feel. Not only not feel, but to judge and label each feeling as good or bad, positive or negative.

We have to stop the nonsense. We have to wake up and start filtering through the words of gurus and success coaches and start asking what truly resonates and helps us experience life in the best way. The best way isn’t one that entirely excludes any patterns of thought or emotions, it’s one that helps us integrate and process through those in the most helpful way. The most helpful way is one that allows us to truly feel, process and then release these thoughts and emotions so that they no longer impact us in a negative way. It’s so much more important to approach things from this perspective than it is to be prejudice to your own feelings and disown them for fear or their impact on your reality.

One of the first places I finally realized the downside to my oh so precious law of attraction mindset was during massage school, in an Eastern anatomy and physiology class. There is something called the <a href=”https://yinyanghouse.com/lifestyle/a-discussion-of-the-five-element-theory-and-applications-to-life-seasons-diet-relations-and-wellbeing”>5 element theory</a> that relates to our various states of mental and physical wellbeing and also uses the seasons of nature to correspond with these things. I’ll never forget sitting there and suddenly it all made sense. I thought “NOTHING in nature is permanent, the seasons ALWAYS change for various reasons”. I realized the law of attraction and success theories I was striving so hard to live by were literally trying to make me believe I could (through my will, intention, and actions) create a perpetual springtime of perfect bliss. Um, does anyone else feel like that is a tall order for one girl? I also realized, who would WANT it to always be in springtime anyway? The seasons all take us to different parts of ourselves, they teach us, grow us, nourish us and each transition from one to the next comes with a sense of excitement and desire because of the change. Ah, doesn’t it make sense that nature would be our biggest teacher? That by understanding her and the perfect way she goes through each season without question she would give us the example of life we really need to be striving to replicate?

So you see, thoughts do create our lives in multiple ways. The more you can focus on the positive, put out positive energy and engage in positive things in life the more of that you will create. But for goodness sake, give yourself some grace, compassion, and SPACE to experience those things that are less than “high vibe”. You don’t have to deny yourself these emotions or feelings and the more you attempt to do so the more you’re going to have emotional shit storms come up in your life where you can’t distinguish one feeling from another or process anything because everything you’ve suppressed has hit you all at once. It’s much like dieting actually. The more you restrict, create rules, deprive and beat yourself up for not being ‘good’ the more you set yourself up for binge eating patterns and unhealthy associations with food and eating. The extremes will never win. We have to learn a different way.

So today, I invite you to take one thing you’ve been dealing with the past week and let yourself FULLY experience and acknowledge the feelings and thoughts it brings up in you. If you have a friend who you know is great at validating your feelings without judgment get together and ask them to just fully hear you on this one topic so you can get it off your chest. If you don’t have someone in your life you feel safe doing this with, open your journal and start writing. Let the words and tears flow however they may, but be 100% brutally honest with yourself and don’t filter a thing because you think it’s how you ‘should’ be interpreting or viewing it.

Let me know your thoughts on this topic and if you’ve experienced the downside of the positive thinking movement. I love hearing your stories and feedback.

Much love,
Holly Joy