Sitting at the bottom of an emotional hole and waiting for someone to throw you a ladder? Sometimes you be waiting a looooog time while your life tick-tocks on by. I've come to appreciate that no matter the cause of the emotional hole, we ALWAYS have two key tools to help us begin to build our own ladder out:
- Perspective
- Gratitude
Of course when you are IN your hole, perspective and gratitude feel incredibly scarce and almost unachievable. Personally, I find access to those most two seemingly elusive things - readily and quickly, every time - through my never-fail strategy of service to others. Perspective and gratitude are the two long stable poles I start lashing my little rungs to, and from which I begin to build a ladder to get me out - no matter how deep the hole nor how miserable I feel.
This week was a wonderful example. In fact, after @eco-alex set the challenge I DM'd him to thank him and commented that the @ecotrain Getting Out Of An Emotional Hole Challenge might have been custom made just for me! My hole this week was a deep one of frustration and systemic crap that left me feeling powerless, excluded and horribly alone: the usual entrepreneurial-single-mama back-to-school financial and emotional stress (not one cent of child support in 10 years, no government benefits here at all and not a sugar daddy in sight!) was compounded by my first round of businesses tax for our new Thai public company (trust me you do NOT want to be a tall blonde single woman navigating the complex relic that is the Thai tax system, no matter how good your Thai language skills) and finally being denied the 1 year parental visa I had worked so hard towards. Urgh.
I felt like I had been hit by a bus, emotionally and physically. Fatigued, withdrawn and demotivated. And so I applied copious quantities of coffee (after wine the night prior), and listened to my gut in the early morning stillness for a whisper of an idea. I found a tiny germ of an idea. And then I forgot about myself, my 'problems', the hole and I went for it. And this is what my ladder looked like, when it was completed:
https://steempeak.com/freedomtribe/@freedomtribe/the-happiness-steem-challenge-creating-happiness-for-hungry-indigenous-venezuelan-children-loads-of-steem-prizes-to-be-won
In the course of developing, creating, writing and promoting @freedomtribe's new Happiness Challenge on Wednesday and Thursday, I had to collaborate with my generous and upbeat colleague, @richardcrill. I felt blessed already. I had to THINK about children with no food, about a country in deep political & economic crisis, and about amazing people like @lopezdaniel from @littledisciples creating magic from a few 'spare' steem slung their way. Literally a contemporary loaves and fishes story.
Just reading the children's stories, putting together the challenge post and inviting people in the steem community to stretch beyond themselves, I found perspective ....and gratitude followed meekly, all by herself. No effort required.
As I read the entries that are flowing in, comment and upvote, my wobbly ladder is strengthened, as if the loose bolts and screws are being cosmically tightened. None of the issues that I allowed to drag me into the hole have changed nor improved, and yet the hole is magically gone.
Let me share another example. There have been days - many days - when the money available at that particular moment is not enough to do or pay for what feels overwhelmingly urgent. I might need 2000 Thai baht (USD $65ish) for the overdue electricity bill and have only 300 baht in my wallet (like less than $10).
We have found a little second-hand store in Chiang Mai that has great quality children's clothes for 10 baht/piece. And so, when things feel so tight that there "is not enough", I grab my daughter and we spend 100 baht (a bit over USD $3) on 10 little children's items for the indigenous children from the Karen community along the Thai-Burma border. My daughter and I fuss and choose and imagine what the indigenous mama's will FEEL when their little one has a cute new tshirt or a much needed pair of sturdy shorts. After 15 mins at the secondhand store, I feel like a Queen: generous when before I felt deprived; grateful for the wardrobe full of clothes for my girl at home; and sometimes with tears in my eyes imagining what it must feel like to not have a tshirt to give your little child on a cool night in the mountains.
And when I shift to gratitude and to how much I already have in relation to others, I marvel that my emotional black hole simply disappears. Like Magic. Every single time.
"Serving others helps us to forget ourselves", @eco-alex said to me. That's not entirely true. I'm not forgetting or denying anything, just choosing to shift my focus. Because I still feel everything, but through a different filter. I have shifted the position from which I look at and experience it, and that is everything!
Crying, wallowing, hiding under blankets - that's fine in theory. But they are things I rarely do, as I have such a deep appreciation on TIME and that I'm here to be that light to others. So many of my friends have passed and had their lives cut short. The more I work with the dying, and each time someone dies in my arms, I get a whole new perspective on time, on purpose, on emotional black holes and the time they take and the energy they often suck away from others.
Perspective is everything. Through exposure to others and their needs, we gain a sense of gratitude - without effort - that is soooo empowering, which shifts our energetic vibration and allows us to SHINE and BE and CREATE, even with an undercurrent of deep sadness. Slowly that sadness softens as we are distracted and busy, and in the silence of sitting in the deep hole by itself while we're out and about changing the world, the sadness stops demanding our attention and simply is. Quietly and gently. In that place, the sadness begins to transform into something else, and the world is a more beautiful place.
Energy Flows Where Our Attention Goes.
Can I ask YOU to give some attention to our Happiness Challenge? If you can tear yourself away from your big, dark hole? See the link above - huge prizes and we'd like to make a BIG donation to help feed the indigenous children of Venezuela.
This post was prepared in response to @ecotrain's Question of the Week: https://steempeak.com/ecotrain/@ecotrain/ecotrain-question-of-the-week-how-do-you-get-out-and-stay-out-of-an-emotional-hole
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