When it comes down to it, I think I’d been searching for peace all along.
There are a lot of emotions that I could have picked from the smorgasbord of life, but in the end, I think that peace encapsulated most of them:
Happy enough
Loved enough
Safe enough
Financially secure enough
Healthy enough
Participating in life enough
We talked last week about the highs and lows of emotion, and I think that for me (at least) balance looks a lot like peace.
I’m at peace with most of what I do and say and feel (most of the time). I’m aware enough of myself that I know when I’m pushing for a slightly higher emotional charge. I am in control of my ego enough that I’m able to see myself when I do it.
Sometimes I’ll stop myself going after that emotional charge, because my peace is more important. Sometimes I’ll think, what the hell, life could be a bit more interesting, and I’ll fall down a rabbit hole that I know full well will interrupt my equilibrium for a while.
But do I know that I’m doing it, these days, and most of the time I know what I’m doing before I throw myself into it head first, mostly I recognise it before there’s no going back. Awareness is definitely the first step.
Pssht, was that a tough lesson to learn.
I’m going to tell you a story now, to illustrate the extremes that I used to go to to get a chemical cocktail of emotions that I knew how to deal with - even though it was bad. Bear with me, because it’ll probably make you feel so much better about yourself. I bet that you don’t pull this kind of crap.
OK. I really dislike the Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper in the UK that’s carefully tried to cover up its extremist roots. It’s considered mainstream these days, and it’s one of the most successful publications in the world from an advertising income point of view.
FYI: In a former life, I ran a much less successful publication.
And I knew perfectly well why it was less successful; because we deliberately didn’t use the standard tricks of the publishing trade to get more eyes on our stuff. We didn’t run scandal and we didn’t polarise, we were proudly middle of the road and resolutely fair. We didn’t trigger all of the lower chakra emotions (fear, guilt, shame) that we knew full well were the way to scale up our audience numbers, retain more of their attention and increase our advertising income.
I know, go me, how magnanimous, eh? But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t mightily pissed off by the success of the Daily Mail.
When I started waking up to myself, I realised that I was addicted to the emotions connected to it; especially when I was feeling a bit tired and lethargic. Coffee didn’t work, chilli seemed a bit extreme and a G&T for breakfast (in my experience at least) has never seemed the healthiest start to the day.
So I’d go and read the Daily Mail.
I’d clutch my pearls at the garbage they were spewing, I’d gasp in horror at their blatant manipulation, and I’d manage maybe a minute and half before I’d close the browser tab in utter disgust. Which, incidentally was also disgust at myself, because I’d just contributed my own eyes to their stats, so advertisers would be even more likely to pick them over publications that might be less harmful to the world in general.
And then I’d merrily get in with my work, sustained by the Adrenaline rush I’d just totally artificially created.
It was, my friend, RIDICULOUS.
I did that for a long time before I realised what I was doing. I was horrified at how much time and energy I’d wasted, and how much harm I’d caused to my adrenals (and psyche) so I blocked them from my browser and my phone for ever and ever, amen.
Because those chemical are addictive, and I was self-aware enough to know that simply deciding never to go visit that particular sewer again just wasn’t going to work for me.
Today, I look at my behaviour and I giggle. In some ways, peace is very effectively found through anger. It’s found through the ‘Not Me’.
Which is a boundaries thing, it’s an our-ego-is-protecting us thing, it’s a Solar Plexus Chakra thing, it’s a standing in our power thing.
I’ve found in my work with clients that the first step towards peace is actually quite often anger. It’s anger at what will no longer stand, at what’s not acceptable, at what offends us so much, and makes us so cross that we’re (finally) willing to step up and be counted for what we believe.
It’s anger that draws the line.
I used to find anger terrifying. I’ve been on the receiving end of it, and it’s not nice. But I realised that what I was really scared of was the anger that I felt inside; my own anger. Because I knew that if I expressed it, if I cracked, then something would change. Which meant that I’d no longer be ‘in charge’, I’d no longer be controlling the narrative. I’d no longer be able to keep artificial equilibrium by keeping quiet. I’d no longer have access to the chemical cocktail that I knew how to deal with.
And I was scared of the damage I might cause; I was scared that it would be unforgivable.
Some of us are brilliant at fooling ourselves about the reasons we do what we do. I did it, and I held myself back because I was scared of getting it wrong.
But the truth is, in personal development, there is no wrong, there is only forward. It’s just data, feedback, information that we get to use to assess if we got the results we wanted when we took the action.
And if we didn’t, then it shows us how we can act differently next time around.
I found a journal entry recently (during my Big Dig into what I’d actually created over the last few years). It was from a time when I was just starting to hold myself responsible for my decisions and their results. I’m going to share it with you now:
"I can choose to drag the carcass of my past along for the ride, or I can leave it here, now and move forward, freed of the bullshit stories I’ve been telling myself.
Enough is enough.”
Which brings me nicely back to the start of this story.
I hope that you have peace in your life. I hope that you have enough of what matters to you. And I hope that IF you have a ‘Daily Mail’ kind of thing that you’ve been using to beat yourself up, that reading this has helped you (to at least start) to let it go.
Love,
Alli
P.S. if you want to start to stop worrying about getting it wrong, then this is what I’ve got to offer.
P.P.S if you’re looking for the waiting list for Safe & Sound - A Modern Day User Manual for the Root Chakra, then it’s here.