A few weeks ago, I reflected on Ghandi’s message to “be the change you want to see in the world” and HGTV’s slogan, “change the world, start at home.” I was reminded of these messages again when posting the Inspiritual Thought for the Day “my life is my message” by Ghandi. It got me thinking, if my life is my message, what does it look like. When someone walks into my emotional and spiritual house what do they see. Are you greeted with a sofa of fear, a loveseat of anger, and a couple of chairs of hatred or do you settle into a sofa of love, a loveseat of joy, and a couple of chairs of peace?
To borrow the name of an old show from HGTV, sometimes we need a re-design. Sometimes, the negative feelings and energies in our life seem to have taken up residency. They get so comfortable in their placement in our homes, that they feel as if they are irreplaceable. Sometimes, these feelings become so comfortable in our lives, we cannot even imagine what our lives would look like if we redecorated them emotionally. So we just keep falling back on the same emotional responses and make no changes.
While I might sound like I have a multiple personality disorder as I write this, it is more about me being honest about the internal dialogue with the feelings I have had every time I do some emotional re-design in my life. My goal in life has been to transform the emotional players in my life from those that focus on fear, or a manifestation of it such as lack, doubt, worry, anger, jealousy, suspicion, etc to those that focus on love or a manifestation of it.
Like any re-design project, the transformations rarely occur smoothly. When I first decided to remove fear from my emotional design and replace it with love, it was complaining about the change. I could hear it at times, “gurl, look I served you well all these years, and now you’re telling me you don’t want me anymore.” At first, it was a challenge, but over time, I learned to ignore it’s complaints and focused on reminding myself how good that love looked over there accompanied by the joy and the peace. Over time, the emotional responses of fear learned to accept their place in storage.
I can imagine that this process is similar to what happens when a coach makes a significant change in the starting line up for a sports team. Your starting line up might be anger, fear, jealousy, lack, and doubt. They have been your starting line up for so long that they just assume they are always going to be the ones out on your emotional playing field. Sitting on the bench are the players of love, peace, joy, happiness, grace, wisdom. So can you imagine what would happen if you benched your starting line up and let your second string be your starting players? I have a feeling they would be yelling at you, wondering what you are doing and trying to convince you that you are making the wrong move. They might even try to run out on the emotional playing field when you are not looking and you will have to call a time out, seat them back down, and resume play. As hard as it might be to ignore the complaints of the newly benched emotions, you do and eventually they will either leave your team or get used to sitting there and wait for the occasional opportunity to be played.
Thinking about this, I am reminded of a commercial for Wolf stoves. It begins with a woman at the fishmongers ordering a whole fish. There is this man behind her asking her if she has a back up plan and if she knows a caterer. In the next scene, he continues to goad her as she cooks this gourmet meal. He finally sees that she is confident and realizes she is no longer afraid. Once he realizes she is ignoring him, he leaves.
Redesigning your life is not easy. As with any redecorating project, sometimes you have to move things around several times before you get just the right placement. It is all about the journey! Do not be afraid to put some of that old and negative emotional furniture in storage or in the trash. You are worthy of investing in emotional furniture and accessories that are about self-love, self-respect, and self worth.