THE MOST IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP

The most important relationship you have or will ever have is with yourself.

This is because a) your relationship with yourself is central to how you experience life,

                            b) it affects how you live your life, and

                            c)  it’s the only relationship you have control over.

Your relationship with yourself is central to how you experience life.  Broadly speaking, you can only experience feeling loved by another to the extent that you love yourself.  If you feel largely unloveable, you can be surrounded by enormous amounts of love, but will be unable to trust it and feel it.  Likewise, if you have trouble seeing and appreciating the positive in yourself, heartfelt compliments coming your way won’t be able to get through to you as you won’t be able to receive them.  You may tell yourself that the person giving the compliment doesn’t know you well enough, that you don’t deserve it, or you might minimize it and take it for granted.  Others might place their trust in you, but if you don’t trust yourself, you will continue to doubt and question yourself.   If you tend to believe, even at an unconscious level, that you are bad and have been chosen to suffer or be punished, you may tend to expect the negative in your life and you may tend to focus on the negative rather than the positive. You may tend to feel self-pity and be angry at the unfairness of life.  You may be good at judging and punishing yourself.

How you see yourself affects how you live your life. Not valuing yourself or feeling worthy can result in a host of serious effects, including not taking good care of yourself physically and emotionally. It can lead to not exercising, abusing your body, having poor boundaries, easily giving up on yourself, being reckless, not having goals, being apathetic, and so on.  If you don’t feel that you are worthy of good treatment, you may end up having difficulty engaging fully with those who treat you well, and instead find yourself involved with people who don’t treat you well.   Of course, this is often at an unconscious level.  Asking for respect is less effective if you’re not treating yourself with respect. 

Your relationship with yourself is the only one you really have control over. Ultimately, we do not have control over anyone else.   Regardless of how wonderful anyone is or how much he or she loves you, another person is always going to have the capacity to let you down, by virtue of being human, and because of difficult to control circumstances.  It is actually very helpful to be aware of this, in order to have realistic expectations.  But if you have healthy self love, you are more likely to not take such disappointments personally, and can continue to feel loved without as much or perhaps without any upset.  For example, if someone forgets your birthday, you might understand that it is because of their circumstances, rather than feeling unimportant to them and feeling hurt and angry.  When you accept yourself the way you are, you lose the fear of being judged by others and the misperception that there is a lot of judgement happening.  You take your power back.  If someone judges you, it’s their business and their problem.  When we can be so easily negatively influenced by others’ judgement, perceived or real, we are giving away our power. So having a good relationship with yourself will make you much more resilient, and less easily upset.

Because your relationship with yourself is so crucially important, it’s well worth nurturing. 

Every day, all of us humans encounter feelings, thoughts, and behaviour- in ourselves and others- that we consider less than ideal. It is very easy to judge ourselves and others, and as a result, judgement happens all the time. The toll it takes in suffering is high: self-judgement can lead to guilt, shame, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, and maladaptive behaviour. Judgement of others can lead to hurt, anger, conflict, and broken relationships.

Conversely, compassion for self and others feels far better, feeling peaceful instead of tense. It makes for more well-being in us and harmony in relationships. Furthermore, as I will further explain, it is always the appropriate response.

The insecure part of a person, or ego as it’s called by some, likes to judge. It needs to feel either superior or inferior, not feeling comfortable with the truth of one’s equality. Judging another elevates it by looking down on someone else. This protects it from feelings of inferiority, which are usually at an unconscious level.   Judging one’s self reinforces feelings of inferiority and lack of acceptability.   From a secure position of feeling loveable and acceptable with all of one’s limitations, one can be humble and honest, and feel neither superior nor inferior. One can have compassion for one’s own and others’ failings as there is no need to judge.

The compassion is towards the person for feeling a negative feeling, and possibly acting out of it. I am not saying that the feeling is grounded or trustworthy, or that the behaviour is acceptable. Instead, I am separating the person from the feeling and behaviour, and saying that the person couldn’t help feeling that way and was doing his or her best given everything, such as his circumstances, the resources available at the time, his past, her genes etc. It is very important to remember that having compassion for someone does not need to interfere with having healthy boundaries, which are vital in relationships. One can still, for example, have consequences for certain behaviour. Also, one may choose to no longer associate with someone and still have compassion for him/her.

Imagine with me, please, a shop with various feelings on the shelves, and a person who is feeling fine and free to choose whatever he wants. Would anyone who is feeling fine choose a negative feeling, such as fear, anger, hurt, jealousy, confusion, hopelessness or apathy? Of course not. Everyone who is feeling fine and therefore truly free to choose, would prefer positive feelings to negative ones, as they are more pleasant to experience. So when we realize that the negative feelings are not chosen, but just “jump into the cart” – people just find themselves feeling upset, we can see that people deserve compassion, not judgement, for being upset. In other words, they can’t help it. This does not mean, of course, that nothing can be done. They can learn better ways of coping. It’s just that until they’re learned, they are not yet learned.

Now imagine a hypothetical person who never got upset. Would this person ever choose to behave badly? Why would they? Or imagine a person who is feeling fine as above with a shopping cart in a shop of behaviours. Would he choose a negative behaviour? No! There would be no reason to. What I am saying is that people behave badly out of some negative feeling or feelings that they did not choose to feel. For example, a child might lie out of fear of getting into trouble.  The child is not evil; he did not choose to be afraid. He couldn’t help it, so he deserves compassion.   This does NOT make the lying okay or acceptable. At the same time, he needs to take responsibility for his behaviour. He needs a little discussion about the importance of honesty and trust, reassurance that he is still loved, request for an apology if one was not spontaneously given, and perhaps a consequence.

Having compassion for someone who has wronged you makes it easier to forgive them.

Some very basic neuroanatomy sheds light on the same topic. Very simplistically, the brain is made up of three parts that have evolved over time. The most primitive is the “reptilian brain” or brainstem, which is concerned with basic physical survival. In us, it controls breathing, our hearts beating etc. The lizard is not concerned with much beyond physical survival.   The next most evolved part of our brain is the limbic brain, which a dog would also have. It is responsible for the well-known fight or flight response, and therefore is also about survival, as there are many negative emotions, such as worthlessness, that feel very threatening and thus emotionally unsurvivable. So when we are functioning out of these two parts of the brain, it is about survival, and therefore not a choice. Often unconscious defence mechanisms automatically and immediately kick in to protect us, such as denial, defensiveness etc. without our conscious awareness or approval. This is because whether we survive or not is not an option, and our subconscious is designed to protect us in an urgent manner. The experience is that there is no time for the luxury of reflecting and choosing how to act. This is why people often react badly in the immediacy of a situation, then later upon reflection, when calm, regret their reaction, and are able to apologize and respond in a constructive way. This brings us to the third and most evolved part of our brain, the cerebral cortex. From here, we are calm, can reflect, and truly choose. From here, people do not feel a sense of threat to their survival, and they make better choices. From the first two less evolved parts of the brain, however, there is at some level a sense of threat to survival, and so people react unfavourably from a no-choice place. Of course, when there is an actual threat to survival, such as walking across the street with a car speeding towards you, or having a grizzly charge you, operating out of fear from the limbic system is adaptive. The fear is appropriate because there is real danger. This is in contrast to the usual situation of misperceived threat when there is none, leading to maladaptive responses, such as anxiety and anger.

The other suggestion that I am making, which goes along with the above, is that people are always doing their best. Why would anyone out of choice choose to do less than his or her best? Even if someone is sitting in front of his exam paper without even looking at it because of his profound sense of hopelessness and futility, I would say that given how he feels, which he is not choosing; he is doing his best. Alternatively, imagine someone who has a severe depression and struggles to get out of bed in the morning. On Tuesday, he tries hard to get out of bed, but is unsuccessful. On Wednesday, he again struggles, but somehow manages to get out of bed. What I am suggesting is that things were not identical on the two mornings, whether the difference, which may not be apparent to an observer, or even to him, was within him, his environment, or both. It’s these subtle differences that allowed him to succeed on the second day. If he could have succeeded on the Tuesday, he would have. I am saying that given a person’s genetics, past, circumstances, feelings, beliefs, and the resources that he or she has available at any particular time, he or she is always doing his/her best. One needs to recognize that sometimes one’s best is very bad indeed. When one adopts the viewpoint that people are always doing their best, one feels compassion instead of judgement towards oneself and others. It makes sense, as well as makes for less suffering. It works.

It is easy to judge when one doesn’t understand. It’s useful to wonder what someone might have been feeling to explain that behaviour. Understanding tends to lead to compassion to replace the judgement. And even when one doesn’t understand, one can assume that there was some reason(s), and there were some negative feelings involved.

Who are we to judge, when we ourselves are far from perfect? One is reminded of the wise advice:   take the log out of your own eye instead of worrying about the speck in your neighbour’s. After all, there is enough to keep us busy when we focus on our own feelings and behaviour, and they are the only things that are within our control. And there is the old story of the stoning of a prostitute, where the challenge for anyone who was “without sin” to cast the first stone was met by silence.   Of course, nobody stepped up to throw a stone. Nobody is perfect.

The good news is that people can change, mature, and heal. They can operate more out of their cerebral cortex and less out of survival mode than they used to. Their best can become better. This is the journey that we are all on, aiming for these positive changes. Learning and practicing being more compassionate and less judgemental of ourselves and others is one way in which we can grow.

And when you catch yourself judging yourself or another, be compassionate to yourself about that! We’re just human! 

Think of a toddler who is learning to walk.  He falls down all the time, and that’s OK.  You don’t get mad at him or call him an idiot or a loser, or give up hope in him.  No, that would be violent and just plain wrong. Instead, you brush him off, kiss his hurt better, and send him off encouragingly, accepting of his fall, and believing in him that he will one day succeed in learning to walk without falling.  What if you were to treat yourself that way when you “fall”/make a mistake/fail to achieve a goal?  What if you were to accept your “fall” with compassion, study what happened so you can learn from it if there are lessons there, and continue on your path with determination and feeling OK about yourself?  Wouldn’t that be much more pleasant than beating yourself up and suffering with guilt, shame, or hopelessness?  And wouldn’t you be more likely to perform better with the constructive problem-solving approach than you would being weighed down with negative emotions?

All normal people have different parts within themselves.  This is what leads, for example, to inner conflict, or “being of two minds”.  If you are one of the many, many people who are hard on themselves, it is helpful to separate out the “critical part” of you from the “part being criticized”.  This makes it possible for each of these two parts to be studied independently, and for the two parts to have some much needed communication with each other.  When I ask people to verbalize with the appropriate tone of voice what the harsh, critical part says to the other, they are often aghast to discover how mean and deflating it sounds like.  When the critical part, which is, after all, a part of the person, explores what its purpose is and what it is feeling underneath the harshness, it often discovers that it is afraid of not being good enough in some way, and the harshness is trying to whip the person into shape in order to protect him.  The degree of harshness is a reflection of the degree of fear, and this part has a one track mind. It is intent on doing its protective job and oblivious to the effect it is having.   Then, when I invite him to notice how he feels when he is spoken to that way, he is struck by how small, defeated, and inadequate he feels.    He might expect failure, and might not even feel like trying.  When this part tells the critical part how his communication has made him feel, how ineffective it is, and to please stop because it feels so bad and will never work, the critical part feels sorry and states that this was not its intent.

So if you have a harsh inner critic/judge, give him a new job description of being encouraging, believing in you, reassuring, and constructive.  It will be more pleasant for both parts of you, and more effective at achieving better performance.  To help it do its “new” job, it will likely need ongoing reminders and reassurances that you are good enough, capable, and don’t have to be perfect or take blame for things that are beyond your control.  Because it has had such a longstanding habit of criticising, it will likely also need help by being alerted when it’s doing it again so it can switch to the new job, which is both more effective and kinder.

Sometimes, people blame themselves when there was a negative outcome, even though they did nothing wrong.  This is clearly unfair.  Sometimes, people keep “falling” in the same way repeatedly, without taking any corrective measures to prevent another “fall”.  It is important to reflect on what you might do differently the next time to increase your likelihood of success.  A multi-billionaire once said that one of the keys to success is to be willing to fail and to be able to accept failure without giving up.  The key is not to take failure personally i.e. rather than “I am a failure”, ask “Why did I fail that time?” The answer might be multifaceted, including factors within you that can be changed, ways of handling things that can be changed, and external factors that may have been beyond your control.   Often, in my work, I see people who have been struggling from lack of knowing how to help themselves, and often untreated symptoms of a mood or anxiety disorder, and who are very good at beating themselves up for struggling.  They deserve compassion and help, not the whipping that they are subjecting themselves to.  It is perfectly OK to get help to prevent patterns from repeating.

People often struggle with forgiving themselves for having done something bad.  Without minimizing what you have done, you can separate yourself from the action, understanding that just because a person has done a bad thing does not mean that they are bad.  If you look back at that time, you will discover that you were not OK in some way (e.g. scared, angry, hopeless, intoxicated etc).  Ultimately we would always choose to feel OK, so you deserve compassion and forgiveness.  You may want to apologize or make amends, depending on the circumstances.

People admit that they would not put up with a friend who talked to them in the way their “inner harsh critic” did, so they need not put up with it from it either.  One woman thought of her grandson and how she would NEVER speak to him like that, so saying his name was her reminder of how to treat herself.  You might want to come up with a reminder that’s good for you.

Enjoy being kind to yourself, and reaping the rewards of feeling a lot better, and performing better!  

One thing we were all naturally good at as children, but tend to lose the ability to do to various degrees, is finding pleasure in small things, or celebrating.

Whether it is jumping up and down and clapping one’s hands, shouting “Yay”, or just quietly feeling gladness, pleasure, gratitude, or even relief, celebration is a habit that can be fostered and practiced, to the benefit of the celebrator and those around.

What to celebrate

Where thought goes, energy follows. 

There is so much that we can celebrate, including things that we can so easily take for granted, such as our freedom, fresh air, the sunshine, good food, life, health, relationships, etc.  There is so much beauty, power, and wonder in nature that are very worthy of appreciation.

Very often in life there are situations that can be likened to the glass being half empty and half full.  Obviously what you focus on is going to greatly affect how you feel.  So while it is important to acknowledge and grieve losses, if one looks for the “silver lining(s)” that is in every cloud, one will surely find it (them) and benefit.  Having physical limitations that limit enjoyable activities that one used to be able to do,  I and others who have chosen to focus on what we CAN do rather than what we cannot do, have found this attitude very helpful to our mental state.

I have met many people who on their journeys have difficulty acknowledging and celebrating their progress.  This can be because they feel that they have a long way to go, because they have not “arrived”, or because of fear of going backwards.  Thankfully, the truth is that there is absolutely no risk and it is perfectly appropriate and safe to celebrate any movement in the preferred direction.  This allows one to feel any combination of self-appreciation, pride, gladness, gratitude and relief.  Any improvement in another’s behavior can likewise be celebrated.  When you give them positive feedback about the improvement that you have noticed, this positive reinforcement will speed up their improvement.  When undesirable behavior in another is diminishing, the successful acceleration of improvement through giving positive feedback is called shaping.

Basically, fostering a habit of focusing on the positive and celebrating it, you find that there are so many positives to celebrate, and that it is an enjoyable habit that improves your life.

Why celebrate?

There are many good reasons to foster the habit of celebrating:

First of all, it engenders positive feelings, such as happiness, gladness, joy, gratitude, relief, self-appreciation, or appreciation of others/nature/God.  It can also make us feel awe, wonder, amazement, and humility as we celebrate  the ocean, a star-studded sky,the beauty of a flower, the amazing human body, or even what we can with technology these days, etc.  Positive feelings are enjoyable, and shift us away from negative ones, thus helping us if we are struggling with a stressful situation or with symptoms of depression or anxiety.  Therefore, positive feelingsare good for our mental health, and because we feel our emotions in our body, feeling tense muscles and other unpleasnt bodily sensations with anxiety, and pleasant body sensations with positive emotions, it is thought by many that good mental health is beneficial to physical health.

Secondly, “success breeds success”. So celebrating leaves us with positive feelings that improve our performance.  For example, celebrating losing two pounds is likely to leave us feeling encouraged, optomistic, and feeling capable, increasing the chances of us persisting in our efforts, whereas judging that as not enough or not worthy of celebrating is more likely to lead to feeling discouraged/hopeless and giving up.

A habit of focusing on the positive and celebrating often co-exists with a habit of being optomistic and expecting the positive.  This leads to more calmness as opposed to worrying, and pleasurable anticipation.  Obviously, these habits do not interfere with appropriate planning.

When one is feeling positive, that positive energy is picked up and enjoyed by those around.  You are more pleasant to be around, you are more likely to be treated in a pleasant way in response to your pleasantness, leading to more positive interactions with others and better relationships.  You may inadverdantly brighten someone’s day.  You may inspire another to also be more positive.  Because of the ripple effect, your big smile or friendliness can have far reaching positive effects, essentially helping to make the world a better place.  Like Ghandi said, peace in the world begins with peace within.

Important Implications

The more you truly believe that you are loveable and deserving, and that you live in a benevolent universe, the easier it is for you to focus on the positive and celebrate.  And the more you focus on the positive and celebrate, the more that will strengthen the belief that you are loveable and deserving, and that the universe is benevolent.  It is very good to foster the true beliefs, and to foster the habit of celebrating. The two can be done simultaneously, and will feed each other.

When something negative happens, as it undoubtedly does in everyone’s life, rather feeling like a victim or feeling like you might be being punished for being bad, you will know that this is part of your journey, which has to include challenges if you are going to grow.  You will know that you are good, and not being punished.  You will know that everyone suffers, and can
feel connected to the rest of humanity through that common experiencing, feeling compassion for yourself, and for your fellow humans.

What forming a habit of celebrating is NOT

It is not ignoring the pain, stress, and difficulty that everyone experiences in life.  It is not judging yourself or others for being negative. It is not denial of situations or problems that are appropriate to grieve or be aware of and take appropriate action to try to resolve, if possible. In these situations, you will find that the positive attitude and its accompanying belief in the truth, will help you feel more empowered and thus effective in dealing with challenging situations, more compassionate towards yourself and others, and have an easier time accepting things that are difficult to accept.

Forming the habit of celebrating

Like any habit, it takes more effort initially, then later comes more and more naturally.  All day long, make a conscious effort to look for positive things, and positive aspects of situations.  The more you look for the positive, the more you will find it.  Look everywhere: in constant things you take for granted, in nature, in any movement in the preferred direction, in you, another, or a situation.  Then give yourself a little time to feel whatever positive feelings come up with celebrating it.

This will result in a re-wiring of your brain, so that over time, the noticing of things to celebrate and celebrating them becomes more and more of an ingrained habit that occurs naturally.

Because it is a pleasant and beneficial habit, it will have a self-reinforcing element. The more negative you are when you begin, the more re-wiring it will take, and will feel foreign at first.  It’s perfectly OK for healthy patterns to feel foreign at first.  There is nothing dangerous about positive change; it can feel uncomfortable initially though, because it is unfamiliar.  I have had motivated clients who rarely celebrated and had a very strong habit of self-judgement develop the habit of celebrating quite quickly.

Good luck with practicing your habit of celebrating, and enjoy feeling happier!

We have all behaved in ways that were less than ideal, and we have all experienced the bitter taste of guilt. But is guilt inevitable, or is there a better way-other than having no conscience?

Fortunately, there is a healthy alternative: remorse.  There is a very big difference between guilt and remorse. Guilt is a toxic feeling that is never appropriate whereas remorse is a healthy, appropriate feeling that is important to feel at times.

Guilt causes an unpleasant tightness in the body and can be paralyzing.  Even though a person may not be thinking it, she is feeling like a bad person when there is guilt. That is why a lack of calmness  is experienced when there is guilt.   

Sometimes guilt arises in association with some action or inaction, or because of a feeling that the person is self-judging as bad.  Sometimes the person has indeed done something wrong, such as lying.  At other times the person is entirely innocent, as in the case of survivor guilt, when for example one survives an accident when a loved one doesn’t. Another example of an innocent person feeling guilt is while experiencing pleasure in the period after a relative has died.

It is important to separate one’s self from one’s actions and feelings, allowing one to still know that she is a good person, and that the negative behavior or feeling arose due to being human and imperfect, and was subject to conditioning by the past, circumstances, and culture.  This does not mean that a person is not accountable and responsible for her behavior.  She is, and needs to deal with the consequences of her behavior.  It just does not mean that she is inherently a bad person.  All good people with good intentions do bad things at times.

And that’s when it’s appropriate to feel remorse, a sadness for having hurt someone and a wishing that one had behaved differently.  There can also be a sense of having let one’s self down.  Unlike guilt, with remorse there is no tension in the body.  Instead, there tends to be some heaviness to correspond with the sadness of having caused some harm through one’s action or inaction. One remains calm with remorse. One is differentiating between one’s self and one’s caring on the one hand, and one’s bad behavior for which one is sorry on the other.

Guilt leads to a lot of suffering.  As well, it can tend to lead to denial or defensiveness, and a lack of acknowledging, apologizing, or taking rectifying action.  For example, for the person who eats too much ice cream, guilt often makes her eat even more in an effort to soothe the guilt.  The person who got angry and feels guilty is more likely to be led by the guilt, at an unconscious level, to be defensive.  As guilt is based on the lie that we are bad, it is never trustworthy.  Leading to nothing good, it is a useless emotion.  Remorse,

on the other hand, is based on the truth that a good person has behaved badly and is feeling sad about it.  It is much more likely to lead to acknowledgement, empathy for those wounded, and apology.  Because it is not paralyzing, it is more likely to lead to corrective action.  For example, the person who ate too much ice cream who feels remorse is more likely to feel compassion for herself, and resume her healthy eating habits sooner.  The person who got angry who is feeling remorse is more likely to acknowledge her anger and apologize.  Some kids in our neighborhood who did some vandalism voluntarily engaged in a day’s worth of yard work out of remorse, as well as paying for the damage caused.

In summary, remorse is based on the truth of one’s inherent goodness, feels much better than guilt, and is much more likely to lead to better behavior.  Unlike guilt, one can feel remorse while grounded.  So any time you catch yourself feeling guilty, shift into remorse, and then take whatever appropriate action is called for. 

This is a long form text area designed for your content that you can fill up with as many words as your heart desires. You can write articles, long mission statements, company policies, executive profiles, company awards/distinctions, office locations, shareholder reports, whitepapers, media mentions and other pieces of content that don’t fit into a shorter, more succinct space.

Articles – Good topics for articles include anything related to your company – recent changes to operations, the latest company softball game – or the industry you’re in. General business trends (think national and even international) are great article fodder, too.

Mission statements – You can tell a lot about a company by its mission statement. Don’t have one? Now might be a good time to create one and post it here. A good mission statement tells you what drives a company to do what it does.

Company policies – Are there company policies that are particularly important to your business? Perhaps your unlimited paternity/maternity leave policy has endeared you to employees across the company. This is a good place to talk about that.

Executive profiles – A company is only as strong as its executive leadership. This is a good place to show off who’s occupying the corner offices. Write a nice bio about each executive that includes what they do, how long they’ve been at it, and what got them to where they are.

When you think of all the little things you judge yourself for or worry about, and how much they actually matter compared to how important you and your well-being are, there is absolutely no comparison! Most little judgements and worries of the day are forgotten by the next day, and replaced with new ones. Certainly most things that you get fussed about are long forgotten a year later if not much sooner. So how important really are they? Not important.  In contrast, you are extremely Important, and your well-being is extremely important. Self judgement, worry, and stress over minor decisions create discomfort, and don’t achieve anything constructive. 

So try to be aware of when you are judging yourself, worrying, or stressing over a minor decision, and say to yourself “ It doesn’t matter. I matter” about the topic, or “ It’s not important, I am important” to remind yourself that the topic is not worth getting upset about, thus valuing yourself and your well-being. Instead, give yourself the compassion that you deserve and trust that things will be OK and you will be able to handle what happens. Or better yet, just dismiss the  “garbage thought”, and don’t replace it with any other thought about an unimportant topic. We have way more thoughts than we actually need! 

It is very common to grow up without the need for attunement to your feelings being met ie your feelings being seen and validated. This teaches the child that some feelings are not OK, and he or she learns to not allow those feelings. These are generally unpleasant emotions, often anything other than being fine. The child is not met with these feelings often because their caregivers are not comfortable with these feelings themselves, or are not present due to their own issues. The child is not aware of suppressing his or her feelings. This is done subconsciously as a survival strategy, and often leads to people pleasing. People pleasing is therefore a trauma response. Lack of emotional attunement is often not recognized as a trauma, as there is no unpleasant memory. Rather, it is the lack of having something happen that was needed. This is a very common trauma, and people pleasing is a very common problem as a result.

I had always believed that I was just naturally optimistic.  I was even called "The Eternal Optomist" in university by my friends.  It was only at age 65 and after nearly a quarter of a century as a therapist, that, lying down with my heating pad in pain from a severe illness, I was struck by the realization that some of my optimism was an unconscious defense against unconscious fear!  And that I wasn't allowing some of my unpleasant feelings due to lack of emotional attunement as a child.  There can be so much below the surface of our awareness that we have no awareness of! Until it surfaces!

It is healthy to allow yourself to feel all your feelings without any judgment. People are very good at being judgemental, and one of our favorite things to judge is our feelings.  There is a great feeling of calmness, ease, and freedom, when no feeling is pushed away, suppressed, or judged, but is rather just allowed effortlessly to be, and accepted.   Every feeling is understandable when you consider the past as well as the present. Even when you don’t know somebody’s past, or a part of your own, know that every feeling is understandable.

Visualize the universe, with so much space between all of the stars. Feel that there is that much space for each of your feelings to coexist. It’s like each feeling is a part of you, and there is all the space in the world for all the parts of you to coexist: the part of you that is patient, and accepting of reality, the part that is impatient, the part that is trusting, the part that is worried, the part that is curious, the part that is angry, the part that is forgiving, and so on. Enjoy the peace that comes with accepting and allowing all your feelings to coexist, including opposite ones, and including the feeling of judgement. Practice coming here and resting in the spaciousness of allowing all of you to be as it is with acceptance and without having to do anything.  

This how the universe/God/Spirit sees us: aware of all our parts and feelings, and just loving and accepting us exactly as we are with all our human-ness. And your ultimate essence is the universe itself experiencing all of itself through all of life, including all the emotions.

It is a messy business being human, with all those feelings!  And like my son once wisely said, it is beautiful to be human.