Have you ever smiled through something to mask your pain?

Or believed that it’s better to be positive and have a good attitude?

I know I have. This was a state I knew all too well in my 20’s. It wasn’t until I started pausing in my desire to smile that I started to really gain more insight. I got to feel what was actually true in my body.

There’s nothing wrong with smiling and celebrating and sharing our positive energy with others. However, when it gets to the point when you silently suffer or wonder why you’re down or can’t feel up all the time and question your self-worth that it really becomes an issue.

I also noticed, it was challenging for people to really get to know me when they didn’t realize what I was really feeling privately.

Do you ever feel like you have to be a certain way? 

Over the course of about 8 years of consistent personal development study, embodied feminine movement practices and coaching I started to learn about grounding.

You may be asking, what does that even mean? 

Grounding means you’re solid, planted and connected. You’re in your flow in your being and not influenced by other people’s agendas, energies or feeling conflicted with what you’d love to be doing versus should or need to be doing.

You can say no with grace and ease. You can say yes to what is most congruent to your highest values. You can make decisions that serve your highest good in the moment. You can attract and receive abundance in all forms and are poised and neutral around others so you can be loving and open without judgment.

It’s a pretty powerful place and one that I realized was true personal freedom. I can be anywhere and I can have it without anything actually changing or needing it to change. We get to be real with what we truly would love to have.

The issue with just focusing on happy is we lose access to this grounded place.

 

Happy is a mask we wear. It’s a 1-sided view. 

See, if we hold the view that there’s two polarities/sides that are always existing, then it makes sense that we can’t experience one emotion without it’s polar opposite being present somewhere.

The thing is when we’re present to one side of the emotion, we’re unconscious to the other, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there when we look.

See, when we’re happy about something, we’re just not thinking consciously about the stuff in our life we may be disappointed with, or things we’re actually sad about or feel is lacking. It’s not that this is wrong, but it leads to an imbalanced perspective and one that has us strive for something unobtainable.

Going after something unobtainable or something that truly isn’t important to us dims our light. It creates stress, dis-ease, frustration, confusion, anxiety and so much more.

This can happen from things we inject from people that are important to us and we don’t take the time to pause and ground and see if it’s truly right for who we are. Then we go seek out experiences to make us happy, sometimes even as an escape.

On the flip side, when we’re down, depressed, anxious, angry, sad…there’s a positive we’re not being conscious of. It’s just a feedback to help bring us back into balance and into our true source of inspiration. It’s letting us know we’re seeking something that isn’t quite true or obtainable in that moment. Whether it’s a fantasy of a one-sided business, relationship, health opportunity or practice we’re wanting or something that’s more congruent with someone else’s values rather than our own–we’re getting valuable feedback if we listen and decipher correctly.

Neither side is a complete picture. When we stack these incomplete pictures and don’t train ourselves to see both sides, we start to loop on one side or the other. When we’re up in an ungrounded way, see what you’re unconscious of on the downside. And when you’re down, see what you’re unconscious of on the positive side.

The more charged the sides get, the more we start to feel I always want to be happy and up or I’m always down and depressed, no one’s there for me…the stories start to build and this is how they gain traction. 

These all or none situations keep us stuck and create diseases and challenges to help us grow and see truth. 

We tend to put on this super human cape and ignore one side, instead of seeing and relaxing into the fact we all have two sides consistently present and we can choose to be neutral and vital and full of life and inspiration and focus from seeing both.

The more we bring the other side to our awareness too, the more present, grounded and poised we are. This is the space to be our integrated and inspired self.

In Kundalini Yoga this is called the neutral mind. We assess the positive and negative mind. We see the opportunities and challenges and then move forward in a neutral way without an idealistic or simply negative perspective.

When we CHOOSE to bring ourselves to full conscious and see both sides, then we create even more freedom vs a desire to only feel happy or worried. 

Feeling happy all the time is short-lived and actually affects our self-esteem because we know it’s not the whole picture deep down and we search for things that aren’t as meaningful to fill us up. When we’re comfortable seeing both sides, our self-worth goes up.

We shine in our unique light.

The balance of these positive and negative charges are what bring us to our true light. 

This to me has become true happiness and freedom at an even new level. We’re fully alive, full of energy and people can truly see us and connect with us through our presence. It’s allowed me space to focus on what’s truly important to me and provides meaning without getting side-tracked following 1-sided happiness.

I like to think of it as our most connected and inspired state of being.

What better gift can we give ourselves and the world that being truly ourselves? 

Here’s to you living as your most inspired self.

xx,

Laurin