Contrary to popular belief, attaining a state of peace, calm, happiness, and balance in our emotional experience is rarely a permanent outcome. In fact, from a therapeutic perspective – it isn’t even the goal.
Let’s face it – in today’s culture, there is a lot of pressure to feel happy.
We are frequently inundated with messages that support an idea that happiness, or any of the other pleasant emotional states that we may experience, is the ideal. Messages from social media and other sources can be confusing – often portraying life as if all others are in a continuous state of satisfaction and bliss.
Seeing these images, videos and stories of others having a happy life – can lead us into traps of comparison, judgment and trying to figure a way out of our personal lived experience.
Collective myths exist, and this is one of them. This myth tells us that not only "should" we be happy all the time, but that others already are and therefore, if we feel anything less than a pleasant emotional state – we must be doing something wrong. It can feel very personal.
Despite increased engagement around mental health initiatives in recent years, this belief system remains thick and incredibly challenging to see through. It speaks directly to our expectations for how to best define and cultivate emotional balance.
The truth is, as humans – experiencing a range of emotions that exists from the farthest, most intense end of pleasant (fulfillment & bliss) to the farthest, most intense end of unpleasant (hopelessness & doom) and everything in between – is an inherent part of our design.
Period.
Our natural capacity for feeling the full range of emotional states actually serves us, and with the right information, tools and supports we can come to know that emotional balance can be experienced in the presence of any emotion. It is normal to feel unhappy, it is normal to feel anger, dissatisfaction, lack of motivation… JUST as normal and okay as it is to feel joy, happiness, ease, excitement… Not a single one of our emotional experiences is abnormal or wrong. Not one. In fact, it is the myth itself that breeds comparison, judgement, and frequent thoughts about how our experience "should be" different than it is. This builds momentum, creating a whirlpool-like current that creates patterns of stuckness and imbalance. In order for us to clear the fog of conditioning, shifting the currents of the collective, and redefining our aims, we must expand our knowledge around the truth of what is normal and to be expected in relation to our emotional experience. To cultivate emotional balance in our lives, we must consider:
What is emotional balance really?
How do we activate, sustain, and nurture it in our lives?
Can we do so with grace and ease?
As we learn to answer these questions, we support the uprooting of myths that have not been serving our path or that of the collective! Facts: Balancing emotions is a big topic, and shifts can be activated with some simple steps. If you'd like to learn more about balancing emotions and the tools that can empower us to do so, check out the replay of our Empowering Health Connection Event: Balancing Emotions with Mindfulness and Bach Flowers on YouTube!
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