In the Fall in Love With Life group, this month’s daily practice has been body, mind, heart and soul self-care. This week, one of the members of the group asked this question – “What do you do when you don’t know what you need? When you feel totally lost?” I know she is not alone in feeling like this. At times, we all do. So when I feel like this…
I stop.
I breathe.
I meditate (or simply stare into space if meditation is beyond me).
I do what feels good.
I ask my body, mind, heart or soul what they need (whichever one is crying out for the most care).
I let it be easy.
I am kind to myself.
I am loving to myself – I try not to criticise, badger, harangue, shame or shout at myself.
I do the things that always work for me…reading, dancing, walking in nature to name but 3. If I can’t be bothered to move, I just stick to reading.
I don’t aim for perfection, just improvement. As one of my coaches puts it, I reach for ‘peace and relief’.
I just look to feel a little bit better.
I write. I write about how I feel…and from that comes relief and sometimes answers.
I ask my spiritual dream team for help (when I remember).
I let myself feel how I feel. If necessary I cry and scream and wail and stamp.
I ask myself if I’m ready to feel better, to reach for a better feeling. If I’m not, I wallow in it for a while. I once sat on the sofa just scowling for an hour because I felt cross with life. After an hour I was really quite bored of being cross and started to laugh at how absurd I was being. Generally when I let myself feel the feelings, they go of their own accord or I get bored of being grumpy!
If I was advising someone else, I’d say get some support from your dream team (your loved ones, friends, the people who make you feel better). But I was asked what I’d do. And generally speaking I retreat into my cave!! 😀 But if the lost feeling persists more than a few days, I definitely get my dream team involved. Even just saying “I’m having a bad day/week/month” helps me feel better.
This is especially important if you’re feeling a bit lonely and lacking in friendship – reach out to your people and let them know you need them. They might just think you’re busy, rather than having a break-down! (True story, happened to me, I thought my friend was just too busy to be in touch and all hell was breaking loose in their life!)
Give yourself the time, space and support to understand what you need. We usually do know…we just might not want to see it or have not given ourselves the luxury of asking the question and waiting for the answer.
And if your brain is going 10 to the dozen, saying “I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m lost, I’m broken, it’s all shit”, go to your heart. Your heart knows what you need. Breathe into your heart and ask your heart what you need in this moment (let it be easy by saying ‘in this moment’ rather than feeling you need to turn your whole life upside down to sort it out).
Find one thing that will make you feel better and do that. Then you might want to do another thing that makes you feel better. And another…and before you know it, you’re actually feeling good.
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