In case you have not noticed...I am a "step" kind of gal :) Steps help you get where you want to go and I am all about laying them out for us.
Yesterday I talked about sifting through bad experiences to find the gems (or lessons or gifts...whatever you want to call them) that might have come from those experiences. I happen to come from the school of thought that everything happens for a reason. You just may not know what the reason is yet. Sifting through experiences can help us figure that out.
For the next couple of days I will lay out the steps for gem hunting.
Step 1 is clear the debris...you have to clear out the debris before you can really see what you have in the sieve. I know, I know I may be carrying this prospector stuff too far..but stick with me..it could be fun and enlightening too!
So back to Step 1...clear away the debris. And debris to me is the emotions that are tied up in what happened. You need to set them aside...get the emotions out of the way so you can really look at what is left.
How do you clear them out? Good question. Here are a few ways I have done it...and I am sure will continue to.
1. I write out how I feel about what happened. Hurt, betrayed, frustrated...I write until I cannot write anymore. It just helps to get it out. When I am done I either..shred it, rip it up or burn it. No need to keep those negative thoughts around.
2. If I feel bad..I cry. Crying is highly underrated if you ask me. Crying is your body's way of expressing emotion...so I say cry away. Cry your eyes out. It's like an emotional cleansing and do not knock it until you try it. Crying can move moutains of emotional debris out of the way.
3. I honor how I feel. I do that by knowing whatever emotions I had...were okay to have because this happened to me. I give myself permission to feel them and then let them go.
Here's an example of how it can work...I have been angry at someone for awhile. I doubt the person realizes I am even angry. So carrying that debris any longer makes sense how? So I say...yes I was angry because of yada, yada, yada. But that was then and this is now. I wrote out how I felt and I ripped it up. And I acknowledged to myself that I had every right to feel how I have felt...but if it's not helpful to me..I need to set it aside.
And now with that debris out of the way...I will see what there is left to see. Tomorrow I will tell you what I found. :)