On Inquiry

I wake up every morning and I try to do a little personal development work before I start my day. Right now I'm reading, "Women, Food & God by Janine Roth. I first learned about this book from one of my mentors, Cathy Heller.  And this morning I was reading the the chapter called, Tiger in the Mind and she talks a lot about Inquiry in this chapter and what I mean by that is she talks about asking ourselves to get quiet and think about what's really going on in our bodies. How do we feel? Do we feel sad? Where is that sadness? And one of the things she wrote that really struck me this morning and I'm an underliner in a book. I don't know if you guys do that with the books that you read, but I do. I underlined this sentence when she was talking about. "Our feelings in our bodies and how we react to it. And when we feel uncomfortable, what it means? In an attempt not to feel what is uncomfortable, the mind will often rant and ramble and tell us how awful it all is. Here's some examples of what you might hear. This pain will never end. This sadness will overwhelm me. If I let myself feel it, I will not be able to function." Those words as I read them this morning, really struck me. It's just our minds like to tell us these crazy things and then our body associate's a feeling or an emotion with that. And we take that as gospel and it's just not true. What I invite you to do and what Janine's inviting us to do, is to sit in our bodies. And really, pay attention to whatever that unsettledness feeling is and just notice it. And like my therapist says, don't judge the judging like let it just be there and say, oh, I feel kind of sad today. I wonder why I feel that way. It's not the end of the world, it's just a feeling. It's going to pass. But I wonder what that's about that's interesting. I'm not going to go eat a whole pizza right now. I'm just going to notice that I'm kind of feeling a little sad. So I would invite you the next time you feel like an overwhelming negative dialogue going on inside your head or some overwhelming feelings that you just stop for a minute and take a breath and close your eyes and tune in to your body. Your physical body. And think about where are you feeling that is it in your throat? I feel a lot of my stuff in my throat. Is it in your belly? Is it in your chest? Is it in your shoulders? Is it in your head? I think knowing is the first part right to understanding how our crazy brains work, because our brains are crazy girls. Let me tell you. It will just fire and wire that same feeling and emotion over and over again. And if we let ourselves stay stuck in that, there's no movement, there's no way to move forward. And that does sound black and white but there's real evidence to support that. There's also real evidence that shows us that when we pivot and pay attention to what's really happening in our bodies and pay attention to our thoughts and retrain those. That real progress can be made. That real change can be made. And that joy and peace and. Zest for life can be found in the new way that we've not imagined. And so I want to leave you with that today if you are fighting yourself. On the struggle bus and you're feeling really strong emotions about something. Take a pause. Take a break. Do it right now if you need to pull the car over or press pause on this and go sit down, go in the bathroom and close the door for your parents. You need 5 minutes. Lock the door. Go to that quiet place. Take some deep breaths and think about what it is you're actually feeling in your body. And then just allow it to be there. I'm not asking you to like solve World Peace, I'm just asking you to notice what's going on in your body and be aware of it. Like and follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/livelessafraid/ At the bottom of this episode, you can also send me an audio message. I'd love to hear from you.