The choices for writing for today were:
- Recognize a time when you felt disappointment and another when you felt frustrated. What was the difference? What were the signals? What were the best responses to each?
- In The Emotional Hostage, by Leslie Cameron-Bandler suggest we name sex emotions we would to experience for the rest of our life and six to do away with. Try this out in your journal and see what your wise speaking person says.
- Using the techniques of gazing into the water and then streaming, write what activities make you happy.
Yes, I so get this one. I can definitely think of at least one time in which I felt disappointment. And to be honest, it generally had nothing to do with the other person or persons involved. It was always me. I was the one who was disappointed because I had expected someone to do something, they did not, and then I felt dissed. It was like you know what I expected you to do this because of x, y or z and you did not and then I felt disappointed because I was expecting you to do something. When I started looking at the expectations, I had placed on people and releasing them, I found myself experiencing less disappointment in my life. When I do experience it now, I find it is connected to an expectation that I did not realize I still had. So for me, the best response is to release the expectation and then I am no longer disappointed.
Frustration on the other hand – yeah, I know that feeling intimately well – that for is about those movements when I feel out of control. Like when I temporarily lost my use of the para transit services. My initial reaction was frustration. I had done all I could do and I still found myself being affected by a process over which I had little to no control. I feel frustrated when I find myself in a situation where I have little to no control over a situation. My frustration, when I stop and look at it is also connected to a deeper fear. So then, I look at the fear, look for the gifts in it, and try to refocus my energy on the gifts. I remember my grandmother who used to tell me when you can see the good in a bad situation you know it is going to be ok. And then I remember the saying that behind every dark cloud is a silver lining. And then I hear Don Miguel Ruiz reminding me to not take things personally. While the paperwork not getting in on time affects me, it not getting processed in the time frame I expected it to be done was not about me, except that I expected it to be and ah so there was some disappointment. Yet not sure who I am disappointed in, other then the process. So why did I expect the process to work in a timely, efficient and customer oriented manner. Who said the customer was always right. Just waiting to see if they tell me I have to come down to see them so they can verify my need for services and they have to send a liftline bus to come get me because I can’t get there otherwise. lol
So do I want to get rid of these feelings? Not so much. On the other hand, I don’t want to feed them either. I am not about wanting these feelings to get stronger. At the same time, I don’t want to get rid of them because they help me to evolve as a human being. I think this is true for all of my emotions. I am not sure that I want to live my life without any of them. To use a sports analogy, however, I would like to make some drastic changes to my starting lineup and bench quite a few players. Fear, discomfort, anger, jealousy, envy, insecurity can all have a seat on the bench. While I need to them periodically, especially fear and discomfort. I do not need them in my starting line up. I want them to be like the robot on lost in space going warning Will Robinson danger – but I don’t need them being the emotions that rule my life. On the other hand, I don’t want my life to solely be focused on love, grace, compassion, courage, wisdom, and forgiveness. I don’t want to become so Pollyannaish – is that a word, that I fail to acknowledge that there are those in the world who have a very different starting line up then I do and are not necessarily seeking to greet me in love. What a world it would be if we could all see the divine in each other, if we could all treat each other with dignity and respect. The reality is that we are all not on that journey or on different places in the journey or maybe just taking different routes to the journey. So until I reach that space where that exists, that sense of nirvana, of heaven, of that peace that surpasses understanding, I guess I will just fill my life with those things, which bring me as close to that place as possible. Things like journaling, writing, reading, cooking, crocheting, meditating, and being in the peace and quiet under the water with the Spirit.