We are kinda obsessed with the pursuit of happiness…we believe this is pretty much the point. That if we aren’t feeling great, something has gone wrong. That if we’re feeling something icky, we’ve made a mistake. That the end goal is happily ever after.
Folks, this week, we are going to debunk the myth of the “pursuit of happiness” and instead, focus on the pursuit of reality. We’re going to embrace the concept of Emotional Balance. And, y’know, we’ll use anxiety as the lever because that’s what we do around here.
Sometimes we’re going to feel amazing. Sometimes, it’s all going to feel like crap. <— This is emotional balance.
If we believed that the idea was to be happy 100% of the time, then we’d have to sign up to be happy about things like arguing with our partner, we’d have to sign up to be happy when the washing machine stops working, we’d have to sign up to be happy about really big things like…illness, violence, war, and death.
When we stop and think about it, we want to make space for emotions that we tend to categorize as “negative emotions” because there are life circumstances that call for, well, negative emotions.
And, yup, anxiety? It’s an emotion. But it’s just ONE emotion. And, speaking of emotions, I made something cool for you. I wanted to expand our collective vocabulary around emotions, the language that we use to describe what we’re experiencing. And all too often, we answer “fine” or “busy” when we’re asked how we’re doing. Out of everything available, the last thing I want to be is “fine.” So I made an entire Inventory of Emotions! You can grab your free downloadable copy by clicking here.
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Here are the podcast links so you can listen in to this week’s show. See you there!
For iTunes, just click here.
If Stitcher is your thing, then click here.
And Spotify? Click here!
To find out more about Jesse Blake, who is responsible for the wonderful music on the podcast, click here. He’s got loads of great stuff and all of you yogis, meditators, and yoga teachers will find his stuff especially wonderful for your practices and classes.
