Why we feel bad…
Life may feel a bit like a roller coaster, sometimes we will feel good AND sometimes we won’t.
So why do we feel bad and how can we feel better?
When we believe that what happens in our lives has the power to make us feel good or bad we will struggle with life. We are living in a fundamentally insecure world. We have made OUR ok-ness and wellbeing conditional on other people and things. We then live in a world where we are only ok if all our conditions are being met, and we feel bad when they are not.
Now I don’t know about you - but rarely do people do what I think they should be doing and pretty often things don’t go my way… Oh yes. Just this week, I didn’t get the well-paid opportunity I wanted; my husband still gave the kids a big bag of sweets each (even though my daughter just had her first filling!?) and yes, I got another bloody parking ticket… Humph.
You will know the daily ups and downs of life where things happen - and we experience them. But our experience is not pre-determined. Some of us may not even notice the giant bags of sweets in sticky fingers, or shrug our shoulders at a parking ticket. Sometimes we may even welcome a break from more work. I may not mind tomorrow or today - but hell, it really mattered to me yesterday.
The examples I have used here may not be very serious but the same is true of all experience, however bad.
Things happen - even bad and tragic things - and we will experience them in each moment differently. This is simply how it works. In no way does this diminish the depths of our experience BUT when we understand how it works - for us all - it is very helpful.
You see many of us come to believe we are not ok. Especially when our experience of feeling bad is overwhelming and scary. We begin to doubt our own capacity to handle life. This doubt creates a lot of insecure thinking. And boy will we feel it.
The I am ok “IF” we create is the missing piece of the mental health puzzle. Really. Because we have innocently become completely dependent on things outside us. Of course, we feel insecure. And because we are so clever, our minds will get very busy organising ideas about what should happen and creating solutions - so that we can be ok again. This is a busy mind. We will live in the experience of this thinking.
In this state, we are not present. We are living in a virtual reality of potential scenarios. They look real and can feel terrifying.
When we begin to grasp the genius way our human mind works, we realise that we have everything we need, to not just survive in life, but thrive. We realise that we are really ok - underneath all the ideas and thinking created in our minds, there is a secure way the mind works. A universal way that our personal experience is created. Here we can know that we are ok regardless of our circumstances. Despite facing difficult people and situations. It is not on us to get back to being ok. We are actually designed perfectly to cope with life.
Where we feel bad about life and ourselves will illuminate our fundamental beliefs. It is our beliefs that will impact the way we think and feel. What is it that we believe makes us ok - or not ok?
When we take a step back and marvel at the big picture we settle down. We can appreciate that through birth we have the innate capacities to learn, evolve, connect and create. This is who we are.
It no longer makes sense to worry about all the things that have happened and may happen. And when we do, we know we will feel it. We will feel what we think.
As human beings we are only ever ok - right now - no matter what we face. We can only act in the present. This is game-changing for us as we have secure ground within to return to where we KNOW we are ok.
From this security we are responsive to the unknown - ie. we will know what we need to do when we need to do it. We are independent and free to be as we are right now. Safe in the knowledge that we have what we need inside.
If you like this blog, I have made a video here on what really helps when we feel bad.
