Sometimes people send emails about how they’re yearning to make big changes but feeling stuck and frustrated. You’re not going to accomplish everything in a day. Just doing something that uplifts you or someone else is enough because when you turn your attention toward increasing someone else’s happiness quotient, the payoff for you is equally great.
When you’re looking to make big shifts but the way isn’t clear, the whole thing can feel overwhelming; it’s easy to feel defeated and hopeless before you try. Maybe you feel paralyzed in your personal life, or maybe your professional situation isn’t inspiring you. You may be grappling with those big questions, like what it is you’re doing here, or what the point of it all may be. If you pick one small, kind act, it’s enough. I mean, truly, let someone merge on the freeway, or hold open the door for a stranger, or ask your barista how he’s doing, and really care about his answer. Think of one thing you’re thankful for, one thing you do have, that is going well. If you want to make a shift in your life, you’re going to need energy. Depression creates many feelings, but one of the strongest is a total lack of hope.
Without the hope that things can be different, that you can live a life that feels good to you, there’s no way you’ll feel motivated to do things differently, but if you pick small things you can tackle, like making it your mission to make one person smile today, you’ll find you start to feed that little glimmer of maybe. Maybe life can feel good. Maybe I can have a positive impact on the world around me. Maybe is all you need, because maybe has some hope in it. If you start feeding that maybe, you’ll find your perspective shifts. It has to begin in your heart and in your mind. If you feed the maybe long enough, you’ll find it turns into a yes.
An inner yes is what you want, because along with that comes a lot of energy. Don’t underestimate the power of feeling your particular life has meaning. First of all, it does. There are seven billion people walking around on the planet, and only one you. That’s significant. You have gifts to share that no one else can, and it’s my belief that your work here is to uncover them. The joy in life comes through love and connection and the feeling that your life has purpose.
That all sounds great, but the how of it is not always obvious. Sometimes you need to do the work to heal very old, very deep wounds. Ancient history may be blocking your way, so that would need to come first, and how you do that is personal. There are so many beautiful, powerful healing modalities available, you just need to explore a little and see what moves you. Yoga, meditation, therapy, reading, journaling, hiking, body work, anything, really, that allows you to become immersed, to lose yourself so you can find yourself, to get quiet so you can hear the voice of your intuition which is not loud, but is full of what is true for you. If you think you have healing to do, pick one small thing you can do today. You could just sit quietly for five minutes and become aware of your breath, that would be something. Every time your mind wandered, you could pick it up and bring it back to your inhale, your exhale. That would be enough for today. You could go for a walk and leave your phone at home. You could do a short, approachable yoga practice, even if you’ve never done yoga before. Just something, some small amount of time you take for yourself to breathe and to feel, that would be enough, and then you do it again tomorrow. That’s how you start to feed that maybe.
Life is not something to be endured, it’s a gift. It’s devastatingly painful sometimes, but that’s because it hurts to break open. Breaking open is what you want to do so you can feel everything. Just make a tiny crack in the shell today, and keep chipping away.
Sending you love,
Ally Hamilton
Some things in this life will just break your heart. The beautiful and extraordinary thing about the heart, though, is that when it breaks, it opens more if you let it; it expands. There are things that can bring us to our knees. Losing a loved one too soon, that’s at the top of the list. Going through a divorce, a breakup, any kind of rejection from a person who was once a lover and/or a friend. Being fired from a job. Being abandoned, neglected, discarded or betrayed. Dealing with someone who won’t or can’t communicate so you’re left to grope for the answers yourself, and have to learn the painful lesson that some things will never be explained, that the only closure you’ll get is acceptance.