*A beautiful Message from Louise Hay*(author of 'you can heal your life)
One of the common emotional disorders in our culture is emotional pain. Emotions such as sadness, frustration, and overwhelm all have the same brain energy (or chemistry) and all come under the heading of depression.
But what causes the emotional pain of sadness, frustration, and depression? Sometimes you feel that you’ve lost someone forever. Sometimes you feel worthless. Other times at work you’ve been disrespected. You’ve been treated unfairly. You’ll get irritated, aggravated, thinking things should be different. This grumpiness, loneliness, and irritability are all flavors of sadness. And then your body feels it. You get hungry. You get tired. You move slowly. You find yourself slamming doors. Small things make you snap. You criticize yourself. You criticize others. And you look in the mirror and you say, “I don’t like myself.” You can’t figure out if you’re sad or if you’re angry. It’s difficult to know where the sadness ends, the irritability begins, and the anger erupts.
Our feelings are an intuitive part of our well-being, letting us know that some need is not being met. When we feel sad or angry, it can overwhelm us, take over our lives, and make our relationships a battlefield. We may abuse ourselves with food, drinking, bad relationships.
Often when we’re in a “bad mood,” we feel we’re not “good enough,” because depression, anger, and irritability aren’t just about being in a bad mood. They’re about not having enough joy and love.
The winter months can be a particularly challenging time of year as many of these emotions surface during family gatherings or excessive amounts of time indoors. It’s critical when you’re feeling low (and even before) to find joy and love in your life and you can do that through practicing thankfulness by:
Spending 10 minutes every morning being thankful for all the good in your life. What are you grateful for? How do you begin each day? What is the first thing you say in the morning?
Listing at least 10 things in your life that you are grateful for.
Close your eyes and really think before you write. It may take you a month to write this. That’s okay. There is no time limit, and you can add to the list at any time. The point is that it’s hard to be grateful and upset at the same time.
Another exercise to help shift your thoughts and emotions is to write 50 positive feelings about yourself. I know it can be difficult to write positive feelings about yourself when you’re feeling sad, angry or depressed but focusing on what’s good about you helps neutralize these emotions. Be sure to pay attention to your feelings while you’re doing these exercises. Is there resistance? Is it hard to see yourself in a positive light? Continue on, remembering how powerful you are.
Instead of thinking about why you don’t love yourself, whether it was because someone hurt you or you were in an environment that was filled with hate, focus instead on loving who you are, where you are. The key to turning around mood problems like sadness, depression and anger is by making the choice to add love and joy into your life. Because when we love ourselves, we’re loving the divine, the magnificent expressions of life that we are. When we love ourselves, we know we are tuning into the universe and the inherent love that flows through life. When we love ourselves, even during our most challenging times, we are respecting and cherishing the incredible miracle that every single one of us is.
